Answers to Lesson 6

In Lesson 6, we learn about telling day and date. There are some exercises given at the end of the post. Check your answer here:

1. What date is the day after tomorrow?
hòu tiān shì jǐ hào?

2. The day after tomorrow is August the 4th
hòu tiān shì bā yuè sì hào

3. What day is yesterday?
 zuó tiān xīng qī jǐ?

4. Yesterday is Sunday
zuó tiān (shì) xīng qī rì

5. What date and month is 2 days ago?
qián tiān shì jǐ yuè jǐ hào?

6. 2 days ago was 31st of July
qián tiān shì qī yuè sān shí yī hào


Listen to the following

Practice it everyday! Wake up in the morning and tell yourselves that:
Today is Monday, Yesterday is Sunday, Tomorrow is Tuesday, 2 days ago is Saturday, and the day after tomorrow is Wednesday.

Also... Today is Aug 2nd, Tomorrow is Aug 3rd, Yesterday is Aug 1st, and so on...

It will not take long, do it while you are showering, etc... In a month time, you will be very fluent in asking and telling day and date as well as in numbers! :)

Happy Weekend,
Linda Tan

Lesson 4: Activities for Kids (C)

How is your counting activity with your child for the past week? Can they count 1 - 3 already? or maybe more...? Keep up the good work. No matter how slow the progress is, make sure you keep moving! Consistency and commitment is the key.

Again, I suggest verbal counting only to younger kids below 4 years old, while you can point or show them the Chinese character while counting.

By doing this there is chance that your child might be able to read the words in the long run. However, if they can't now, do not get frustrated.  It is okay. Focus on counting fingers. Lead by example! You have to show them how to count using your fingers as assistants. They will copy you for sure. This helps the fine motoric skill for the young :)

Anyway... Always find the chance to practice the counting, anytime and anywhere.

You can even do it in 2 or 3 languages.

yī, one, satu
èr, two, dua
etc...

Moving on..

One of the most important part in learning language is to know as many vocabularies as you can. Same thing applies here. Since we are not rushing for anything. You can mix the Chinese lesson with some art. The most basic art that anyone can do is COLORING. Coloring (with crayons or any other wide tip coloring pencil) may also help children to train the strength of their grip, this will come useful when it is time for them to really hold pencil and write letters/words. If you are asking why and how? Try to hold a pencil now, do you need strength to do it? Yes, you do, we all do. That's why we get tired of writing sometimes. If your hand is weak, you can't even hold the pencil properly, let alone trying to form shapes of alphabets. That's why and That's how Coloring may help your little ones.

So, what I used to do with my preschool (age 3 - 5) is ask them to color 1 or 2 things in every session. KEEP the final result and FILE them. DO NOT chuck it away. One item a day means one new vocab every day. Imagine doing it everyday for a month. Voila!

Here is the thing that you need:
1. Blank Paper (A4 is fine), always use the same size for neat filing.
2. Crayon or coloring pencil of your choice (don't choose the thin/slim type, choose the crayon which is "fat", wider in diameter (easy to hold) and wide tip (finish coloring faster, since most kids get bored fast, or rather have shorter attention span)
3. Printer (you may need or not need this). I used to hand draw the items. Keep it SUPER simple. Not too much detail on the thing:

Here is the sample of the page that you need to create for your kids before let them start the coloring:

Write the Chinese Character, the Pinyin, the English/Indonesia on the paper with the picture

The reasons for keeping are:

1. You can use them like a flash card (just bigger in size)

2. With the Chinese character written on the paper, they will get exposure to the shape of the character, every time you "flash" this paper to them. One day you will be surprise to know that your child is reading the character in addition to recognizing the object.

I usually start introducing the vocabularies that are going to be used often in our daily life. In classes, they will have lots of encounter with books, pencils, bags, tables, chairs, etc. So learn those words first. Remember to stick to NON abstract object, something that you can actually show. "Table" is easy to show, but "kind" is not, "Pencil" is tangible, while "heavy" is not. So stick to common nouns for now.

Here are 5 words that I want you to create for your child:

1. 书         shū                     Book / Buku

2. 笔         bǐ                       Pencil / Pensil

3. 书包     shū bāo              Bag / Tas

4. 椅子     yǐ zi                    Chair / Kursi

5. 桌子     zhuō zi                Table / Meja

Aim for them to master this in a week along with the counting. :)

So this is how you do it:
1. First day:
- Let them color a book and then ask them to say the word "shū"
- When they are finish coloring, show them the final product and ask them to say the word "shū" again

2. Second day
- Before start, show the book picture that they colored yesterday and then say the word in Chinese. If they forget, help them!
- Then let them color pencil and teach them the word in Chinese. Ask them to repeat after you or repeat after the audio in Pleco. :)
- When they are done, show them the pencil and ask them to say it in Chinese. Then, refreshing memory on book + pencil.
They now know 2 new words :)

3. Third day
- Refresh memory of "pencil" and "book"
- Color a bag (remember to keep the drawing simple) and not too big. Something that they can finish in 10 - 15 mins max. You know your child best! If they are the type who get bored easily, aim for something super simple! :)
- Show them the picture and ask them to say the Chinese word for "bag"
- Refresh "book" + "pencil" and "bag"

4 & 5. Fourth & Fifth day
Apply the same things.

So each day, they will have more "flash card" to recognize and read from.

If you would like to add more words, since your kids is a fast learner and not able to wait for my next lesson for children, then, please feel free to find the words in Pleco. :)

Drop a comment or email me if you need printable materials that you can use for the above activities.


Fun Learning,
Linda Tan

Answers for Lesson 3

Here is the answers for some new vocab which you are supposed to translate in Lesson 3. I believe you have found your answers.


1. 头            tóu               head / kepala

2. 目            mù               eyes / mata       (Most characters / phrases that come with this Chinese character has something to do with eyes. See below:
（+）眼睛      yǎn jīng      eyes / mata (when we use it in a sentence, this is my eyes)
Look at the left side of each character, it has the character of 目 mù

3. 口            kǒu              mouth / mulut   (Most characters/phrase that comes with this Chinese character has something to do with mouth)

4. 嘴巴        zuǐ bā        mouth / mulut     (when we use it in a sentence, e.g. this is my mouth)

5. 耳朵        ěr duo         ear / telinga

6. 足 / 脚     zú / jiǎo     feet / kaki   

7. 大            dà                big/ besar

8. 小            xiǎo             small / kecil

9. 多            duō              many / banyak

10. 少          shǎo             little / sedikit

Translating to Mandarin

1. Sun             日  / 太阳           rì / tài yang     

2. Moon          月           yuè

3. Mountain    山                      shān

4. Field           地           dì

5. Rock           石头         shí tou

6. Water          水           shuǐ

7. Fire             火           huǒ

8. Soil            土           tǔ

9. Wood           木          mù

10. I / Me           我         wǒ

11. You             你          nǐ

12. We /Us         我们       wǒ men

13. He/She/It (same pronunciation different characters)            他 /她 /它     tā

14. They / Them            他们      tā men

The above (except subject pronoun) are the basic words that you might need to know to ease your learning of Chinese characters. As I mentioned before, although Chinese characters might look complicated, most of the time it is a combination of a few characters. By introducing the basic/simple character, I hope will allow you to look at Chinese character from different angle.

Although, it will allow you to "guess" the meaning of the word. For example: 火huǒ means fire. So most of the characters that come with that will have something to do with fire/light/hot temperature. E.g. 烧 (shāo) burn, 灯 (dēng) lamp / light, etc.

As of the introduction to subject pronouns will allow us to create sentence (simple ones) in near future :)

Revisit this over and over again, until you have them all on your finger tips :)

Happy Learning,
Linda Tan

Answer for Exerises in Lesson 1 (A)

Here is the answers for the 2 exercises on lesson 1 (A)

Exercise 1

The missing numbers are:

Fifteen (15)                 shí wǔ              十五

Sixteen (16)                shí liù               十六

Seventeen (17)            shí qī                十七

Eighteeen (18)            shí bā                十八

Nineteen (19)             shí jiǔ                十九

Exercise 2

Twenty Four (24)         èr shí sì               二十四

Twenty Five (25)         èr shí wǔ             二十五

Twenty Six (26)           èr shí liù              二十六

Twenty Seven (27)      èr shí qī                二十七

Twenty Eght (28)        èr  shí bā               二十八

Twenty Eight (29)       èr shí jiǔ               二十九

Thirty One (31)          三十一          sān shí yī

Thirty Two (32)          三十二         sān shí èr

Thirty Three (33)       三十三          sān shí sān

Thirty Four (34)        三十四           sān shí sì  

Thirty Five (35)         三十五          sān shí wǔ

Thirty Six (36)          三十六           sān shí liù

Thirty Seven (37)      三十七          sān shí qī

Thirty Eight (38)       三十八          sān  shí bā     

Thirty Nine (39)        三十九         sān shí jiǔ

If you notice, the only character that is changed is the first, When we are in 20ish, all start with 二 (èr), when we are in 30ish then we change it to 三 (sān).

I believe you can do the 40 - 99 yourself by now.

We will stop at 100 which is 一百 （yī bǎi）

Hope you get all your answer right. :)

Happy Counting,

Linda Tan

Lesson 1: Basic Numbers (A)

For me, teaching Chinese for adults and kids are different. The way of teaching is definitely different, the order of things that I teach is different too. I have the background for both, but coming from a city where Mandarin is something common and nothing exclusive, I used to have high expectation to the learners. Moving to Bali, I have to lower my expectation towards the learners (both kids and adults) and slow down my pace of teaching.

For every coming post in the future I am going to label them “Chinese for Adults” and “Chinese for Children”. Also, I will put (A) for adults and (C) for children within the title. So, you can refer to the relevant posts easily.

Today, I am going to start the lesson for adult. Like language in general, we start from numbers!

Zero - Ten in Chinese

Here is the basic numbers 1 – 10, in Chinese

一   yī             One (1)

二   èr            Two (2)

三   sān         Three (3)

四   sì             Four (4)

五   wǔ          Five (5)

六   liù           Six (6)

七   qī            Seven (7)

八   bā           Eight (8)

九   jiǔ           Nine (9)

十   shí          Ten (10)

Apply your knowledge on the Chinese phonics here (from now on, you will get to practice that often!). If you need help to confirm the pronunciation, key in the pinyin above and look for the correct character on Pleco and listen to the pronunciation.

Get a hold of 1 - 10 above,  Master them first, before continuing. Moving on I would like to introduce 10 - 100 to you, that comes in exercise. Try your very best not to peek the above. You must be able to recall "nine" as "jiǔ", "six" as "liù", and so on without referring to your note...

Let's start:

十一     shíyī           Eleven (11)

十二     shíèr           Twelve (12)

十三     shísān         Thirteen (13)

十四     shísì            Fourteen (14)

：           :                    :

二十     èrshí            Twenty (20)

Can you see the pattern above?

Exercise 1: I want you to fill the missing numbers between 14 - 20

Answer can be jotted down in the following 3 ways:

1 . You say it and record it down with your phone, so that you can check your answer later on and also this allows you to compare your pronunciation to the correct pronunciation, OR

2. You can write down the pinyin, to practice on your hanyu pinyin (the phonics), OR

3. You can write down the Chinese characters, if you wish to learn to write and read the Chinese characters, remember there is order of strokes that you have to follow, check this on bihua site. If you have forgotten how to use the site please refer to the previous post, OR

4. You can do 1, 2, and 3 all together

Finish the above before continuing... You can stop if you think you have enough for this one session and continue the following later.

Moving on. The last number that we learnt was 二十 (èr shí) Twenty (20)

二十一        èr shí yī        Twenty one  (21)

二十二        èr shí èr        Twenty two (22)

二十三        èr shí sān      Twenty three (23)

     ：                   :                  :

三十            sān shí yī        Thirty (30)

三十一        sān shí èr        Thirty one (31)

：                      :                    :

四十            sì shí               Forty (40)

五十            wǔ shí             Fifty (50)

六十            liù shí              Sixty (60)

 ：                      :                    :

 ：                      :                    :

九十             jiǔ shí              Ninety (90)

 ：                      :                    :

一百             yī bǎi               One hundred (100)

As you can see there are many missing numbers from 23 - 100.

Exercise 2: Please fill in the missing numbers by looking at the pattern from the numbers that are shown. Numbers in Chinese is quite easy no changes in writing or whatsoever like in English (forty not fourty, twelve not twoteen, thirty not threety, and so on).

Answers to be revealed in a separate post!

Please Note: 

In Chinese, the number "2" that is usually written as "二" and read as "èr" will change to 两 (liǎng) whenever it it is used to measure things, like 2kg (weight), 2 o'clock (time), 2 dollars (money), etc.

We say:

2 kg            两公斤       liǎng gōng jīn

2 o'clock     两点           liǎng diǎn

2 dollars     两块            liǎng kuài

Happy Numbering!

Linda Tan

P.S. For your knowledge

Pinyin should be written without space if they are one phrase.
For example: gōng jīn means kilogram. It is ONE word in English and it represented with 2 Chinese characters, they are gōng and jīn, thus, gōngjīn is supposed to be written WITHOUT space. However, for easy reading for beginner, I would like to separate all the pinyin from one another.

Hanyu Pinyin - Part 4 - More Phonics

 Here are the phonics that you have been introduced before:
Single vowels: a, o, e, i, u, ü and
Consonants: b, p, m, f, d, t, n, l, g, k, h, j, q, x, zh, ch, sh, r, z, c, s, y, w

Other than the above, there a few more that you have to know and understand. As you can already see in the pinyin chart on Yabla's site, there are many of the remaining that I haven't covered. In fact, I am not going to cover all. I will show you the other basic pinyin that is formed by combining the 2 vowels, that is known as 双韵母 (shuāngyǜnmǔ) and sounds that come out from your nostril, known as 鼻韵母 (bíyǜnmǔ )

Let's first look at 双韵母 (Shuāngyǜnmǔ). It literally means double vowels. Here they are:

ai    ei    ui   

ao   ou

iu    ie    üe    er

Tips on pronouncing the above:

1. Pronounce the first alphabet (remember it is more to Bahasa Indonesia ABC than English ABC) and without stopping (no gap), followed by the pronunciation of the second alphabet.

2. Repeat the sound in a faster pace.

3. Again, it sounds almost the same like Bahasa Indonesia pronunciation. You do not have to memorize them all. Just try to pronounce it with the trick above (no. 1 & 2) and you should be able to get the correct pronunciation. Again, NO memorizing)

Let's see the video below (I am sorry, that you can only view this on your desktop).

Here is the implementation in spelling a word:

Remember! The spelling of the 2 vowels must be pronounce continuously without stopping. Treat "ao", "ei" as One phonic, not 2 separate phonics. Here is the difference if you spell it one by one with a gap in between, and this is not the right way to do it!

Here is how you use it in spelling a word!

More Example:

Try spelling the following on your own:

1. k - āo
2. x - i - ǎo (try spelling word with 3 syllables)
3. t - uō
4. l - uò
5. j - üé
6. m - ài
7. q - iē
8. l - óu

The last one from phonics is to know that there are certain phonics which sounds are produced from our nostril, known as 鼻韵母 (bíyǜnmǔ ). Here they are:

an  en  in  un   ün 

ang, eng, ing, ong

Let's see how to use it to spell a word:

With this, the basic things that you should know about Chinese Phonics are all covered. Here are a few important rules that you should know:

1. I mentioned that vowel is the one that should carry the symbol of intonation on top of them. It will be easy if there is only one vowel in a word. If there are more than one, such as in the word "shuoI", then you have to know where to appropriately place the small symbol for intonation.

In the first part of Hanyu Pinyin post, I asked you to memorize the vowel in the given order: a, o, e i, u, ü. It is for a reason. That order helps to decide who is going to wear the "crown".

Here is the rule:

a. If you see an "a" in the word, then "a" should definitely wear the crown (E.g. hǎo)

b. If you don't see an "a" then either "o" or "e" should wear it. "o" and "e" has never come together in a word (E.g. xiè, shōu)

c. However, if "u" and "i" come together, whichever that place a the back, then it should wear the crown. (E.g. shuǐ, xiū)

2. When 2 words with 3rd tone comes one after another, the first word should be pronounced as 2nd tone (while the writing have to be kept as 3rd tone "v")

Listen to the following:

3. When you see a word that comes without an intonation symbol, it is known as 轻声 (qīngshēng), literally means soft tone. It has to be pronounced softly and keep it short! See the following:

There are more rules that we should (not MUST) know, but I am not going to explain all of them here. It will be ongoing process. I will explain them when we see them during our learning. 

Now, you can practice reading the following sentences yourself:

1. wǒ shì Linda                         I am Linda

2. wǒ xué hàn yǔ                       I am learning Chinese

3. tā shì shuí?                            Who is he/she?

4. nǐ hǎo                                     Hello

5. wǒ de mā ma                          My mother

6. nà shì shén me?                     What is that?

7. Ní hǎo ma?                             How are you? / Are you good?

8. Wǒ xǐhuān chī pángxiè          I like to eat Crab

For the past 2 months you have been introduced to the tools and the very basic of Mandarin that will allow you to explore more yourselves. I want you to revisit every post about Pleco and Bihua.com to refresh your memory and also starting practicing the hanyu pinyin (Chinese phonics) from the single phonics to the one that we learnt above. 

To perfect your Chinese phonics, you can do the following:

Pick the things (noun) / activities (verbs) that you would like to know and translate them in Pleco. DO NOT play the speaker for now, look at the pinyin and start spelling and pronouncing them. Then for comparison, you can check the recorded audio to see if you have pronounced it right. Do not look at the sample phrases or sentences for now. If you get 80% of this right, then you might want to pick up a Mandarin book that comes with hanyu pinyin. And start reading short article. Best is to use the primary school kids' books (P1 or P2 books). Not only reading, you can start translating the short article to English and see if the story makes sense to you. :)

Happy Trying,

Linda Tan 

P.S. Here is the answer to the previous post exercise:

xī         mǎ       tā         chē      hé

Bihua - Part 2 - Components of Character (Search Words based on Radical)

Open up bihua website. Click here!

It will take you its homepage that looks roughly like the following. Today, we are going to look at 部首查字 bu shou cha zi, word search based on Radical. I have given a short simple explanation on radical. Please refer to the explained a little about Radical in the May 31st Post. Please revisit it to rephrase your memory.

Click on the circled and it will show you the following. There are about 268 radicals. It is categorized based on the number of stroke.

The question is how to use this?

1. Use this feature to enrich your vocabularies

You can click on the one that you interested the most (maybe something that you encounter often), such as the following:

Under the 2 strokes radical, please find the first one above, and click on it. It will take you the following page:

The circled part above is the name for it. Unfortunately, they don't give you the pin yin. At this point, you can use Pleco just to find out on how to pronounce it.

is known as 单人旁 dan ren pang. 单 dan means 'single' 人 ren 'human' 旁 pang comes from pang bian that means side (this is often found on the left side of the character). The shape of this radical is actually a modified 人 ren. Thus, if you notice, the first character that consists of 2 strokes (right underneath the circled part) is called "ren". We always write it in this form when we use it as a word by itself.

On this page, you can see all the words that carry this radical. It is usually used on the left hand side of the character.

From here, you learn each words by click on the blue hyperlinks that will give you either the meaning (CH - EN or CH - CH), the order of strokes or the words formation. If you need to refresh what I am talking about, please see the previous post.

2. Use this feature to search for words

If you ever need to use PRINTED Chinese Dictionary, the thing am about to mention below will come handy for you too

If you encounter new word, let say "花", and you want to know more about this word, the meaning, the strokes or the possible word formations, here is how to utilize the site to satisfy your need.

a. Find the radical.

I have mentioned that Chinese character has a few components, as what you can see on Pleco when you search for a word. Thus a Chinese character can consist of only the radical (the most basic word, such as; 一，人） or it can be formed by a radical + other parts which are non-radical.

So, if you look at 花 you will probably break it down to:

 + +

In which it is all possible for the 3 components above to act as "radical". So how? Try one by one! :)

If you decide that the radical for 花 is , then click on it and see if you can find it.

So you have to count the number of strokes for 花， which is 7 strokes. Scroll down to strokes 7 see if the character that you are looking for is there. In this case, it is NOT! So you know that you have got it wrong! The radical is not dan ren pang.

You will definitely find out that the correct radical is   草字头cao zi tou。

Don't worry if you are concern about the radical that is split in the middle (looks like 2 crosses instead of 1 joint fence). They are the same. They both come from the original character of cao (meaning: grass) that looks like this: "艸". 

So that is the 2 usage of "word search based on radical" 部首查字。

Please take your time to digest ALL the posts (about both Pleco and Bihua.com) and do the following exercise:

1. Using Pleco, please find the components for the 4 characters below:

鱼，猫，妈，上 (what is the radical and what other parts that you can find in those characters， how many strokes each and what is the total strokes for the character).

Then, Write down the meaning for each one of them and pronounce them.

For example: "神 "

Answer: I will use the simplified handwriting mode on my phone to find this word on Pleco (because  I do not know the pinyin). Then, once I found it, I know that this (神) is pronounced as shen that means "god/mind/..."

The components that form the characters are as followed.

The radical is shi or widely known as 示字旁 shi zi pang.  The other part of that form the character is shen (meaning: to state to a superior).

The radical has 4 strokes, while the other parts have 5 strokes. Total strokes for the character is 9 strokes.

2. Using Bihua.com, please find the components for the 4 characters below:

让 (rang)，收 (shou)，六 (liu)，胖 (pang)

(what is the radical and what other parts that you can find in those characters and how many strokes each and what is the total strokes for the character).

Then, Write down the meaning or each one of them and pronounce them.

Do the same like the sample above. In this case, please use Bihua.com

If I am looking for the same word on bihua 神. Here is what you can do.

1. Using the handwriting mode just like the above. I will get the following. Try your own!

The homepage

From the website URL we know that this site is intended for checking of bi shun (Chinese strokes). So by default your input, will return you with the page above. You can click on the blue bold character and it will take you the following page.

From here you can open up the 字典 （zi dian）= dictionary to show you the meaning of the word. See the screen result below.

2. Identify the radical yourself by guessing, just like what we do to the character 花 above. Try it yourself.

As a reminder, do not overwhelm yourself with all the information that you are trying to absorb now. The post may look long, but put into practice it is actually very brief. So, step by step!

What I am showing to you is the usage of the tools that might come useful for you now or in the future. So if you find that certain things are not relevant to the level you are in yet,  do not use it. But when you reach certain point and need it, you know where to look.

One more post on bihua.com's feature, then I might probably introduce you to hanyu pinyin. :)

加油 Jia you!      => Look up the meaning  and make yourself one phrase richer than you were!

Linda Tan