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Lesson 1 - The Foundations
What we will cover today
Having a strong foundation is important when learning any language, let’s familiarise ourselves with the basics of the Chinese language.
1. The Chinese language
2. Understanding pinyin and characters.
At the end there is a key for any new or complex language used in this lesson. Whilst some words may seem tricky, it is their content and what they mean that is most important.
The Chinese Language
Mandarin Chinese has four main tones and one neutral tone. Each tone has a distinctive pitch and sound which is used to distinguish between words and meanings. This is why accuracy in pronouncing tones is important.
Chinese is a mostly analytic language, meaning that it mostly uses grammar such as prepositions. In contrast, a synthetic language uses affixes. This affects the language’s structure. A good example of this is how the grammar system varies from English. Whilst English uses affixes such as ‘–ed’ or ‘–ing’ to show tense change, Chinese does not add or detract from the character of a verb, instead it might add ‘了/ le’.
Finally, logographic means a language is character-based, with each character representing a part of the language. This contrasts with non-logographic systems such as the alphabet, where individual letters do not have inherent meanings. Chinese has two main character sets: simplified, which is what you will be learning, and traditional. These characters are known as ‘汉字/ hànzì’.
What makes up a word in Chinese?
Here are the three main things to keep in mind when learning Chinese: the character, the pinyin, and the meaning.
Pinying
First, let’s tackle pinyin and tones.
Pinyin is the romanization system for Chinese, it’s very helpful in identifying words and pronunciation.
Every Chinese character has a syllable of pinyin, and the pinyin itself has three parts: the initial, the final, and the tone.
The initial is ‘m’, the final is ‘a’ and it has the first tone.
Here is another example of pinyin, from the character 找 / zhǎo / look for.
This time, the initial is ‘zh’, the final is ‘ao’, and it is the third tone.
Initials and finals are expressed through English letters, and the letter ‘ü’ which does not exist in the English alphabet.
Tones
There are four tones in Chinese.
妈 / mā / mother is a character with the first tone.
The first tone is flat and steady.
麻 / má / linen is a character with the second tone.
The second tone rises upwards, it lifts at the end.
马 / mǎ / horse is a character with the third tone.
The third tone drops down then lifts up again at the end.
骂 / mà / scold is a character with the fourth tone.
The fourth tone drops down sharply.
Finally, 吗 / ma is a character that denotes a question and is a neutral tone.
The neutral tone has no inflection.
A diagram to help visualise the tone differences.
Pinyin accuracy is important because the pronunciation of the words matter. Since all the above examples have the same syllable with the initial ‘m’ and the final ‘a’, their audible differentiator is the tone.
Whilst pinyin accuracy matters, you should remember that it is the character that carries the meaning. To clarify, let’s look at the following two examples.
电话号码 / diàn huà hào mǎ / phone number.
马 / mǎ / horse.
The character for number 码 has the same pinyin as the character for horse 马, ‘mǎ’. Audibly, they sound the same but they have unique and different characters, therefore, they are separate words with their own meaning.
Having to accurately pronounce and differentiate pinyin tones can seem daunting, but with practice it can easily be mastered!
Characters
There are several different types of Chinese characters including pictographic, associative compounds, indicative/self-explanatory, and pictophonetic.
These names may seem complicated but it is not necessary to remember them. Focus more on understanding the different kinds of Chinese characters that they categorise, having a good base understanding will make reading and writing easier later on!
Pictographs
Pictographs, literally ‘picture writing’, are characters that physically resemble their meaning. For example, the character for mouth 口 looks like an open mouth. The character for door and mountain also visually represent their meaning.
kǒu
口
mouth
mén
门
door
shān
山
mountain
Associative Compounds:
An associative compound is a character that contains at least two character parts which represent the visual and meaning of the word. The association, or relationship, between the characters creates and represents the meaning.
lín
林
forest
This is composed of the character for tree doubled: 木 / mù. The association of several trees creates a forest.
dàn
旦
dawn
The upper half is the character for sun: 日 / rì. The lower half is the line of the horizon. The sun over the horizon creates dawn.
kàn
看
look
The upper half is the character for hand: 手 / shǒu. The lower half is the character for eye: 目 / mù. A hand over eyes creates looking.
Self Explanatory:
A self-explanatory character is, as the name indicates, self-explanatory. These characters are often abstract shapes or lines that represent their meaning. For example, numbers and directions are indicative characters: the character for one is one line, the character for down points down.
yī
一
one
xià
下
down
Pictophonetic:
A majority of Chinese characters are pictophonetic, literally ‘picture-sound’. One part of a pictophonetic character represents the sound (phonetic) whilst the other represents the meaning (picto). These tend to be split into left / right and top / bottom characters.
The part of the character that represents the meaning is called a radical. A radical is especially useful in understanding characters as they group words together and directly correlate to the characters meaning.
mā
妈
mother
In this case, the left character represents the meaning. It is the radical for female: 女/ nǚ. Since mother is related to woman, the female radical is used. The right character, horse: 马 / mǎ, represents the pronunciation.
cài
菜
vegetable
The upper part of the character represents the meaning. It is the radical for grass: 艹 / cao. The lower part is the character for pick: 采 / cǎi, it represents the sound.
zhàn
战
war
The left part is the character for occupy: 占 / zhàn, it represents the sound. The right part is the radical for spear: 戈 / gē, it represents the meaning.
These are examples of how radicals are useful in understanding characters. Learning radicals means that even if a character is new, if there is a radical you are familiar with it is much easier to understand and learn the meaning of the word.
For example, if a character has the radical 女 / nǚ, it will be related to being female or women. 姐姐 / jiějiě has the female radical and means ‘older sister’. Following this pattern,花 / huā has the grass radical and means ‘flower’. 你 / nǐ has the person radical 人 / 亻/ rén and means ‘you’.
Brush strokes and stroke order
There are eight basic strokes in Chinese, with their own correct way of being written. Chinese also has a correct stroke order when writing words.
The character 永 / yǒng / forever has all eight.
This is 点 / diǎn / point. It is similar to a slightly extended dot. The stroke goes downwards, from left to right.
This is 横 / héng /horizontal. It is a horizontal, straight line. The stroke goes from left to right.
This is 竖 / shù / vertical. It is a vertical, straight line. The stroke goes downwards.
This is 钩 / gōu / hook. It is a similar to a sharp, short flick or hook. The stroke goes downwards, angling and rising to the left.
This is 提 / tí / lift. It is a short, upwards line. Whilst it looks relatively flat in the character, it should be written as tilted and rising upwards, from left to right.
This is 弯 / wān / bend. It is a curved line that goes to the left. It goes downwards from right to left.
This is 撇 / piē / skim. It is similar to a slightly extended dot. The stroke goes downwards, from right to left.
This is 捺 / nà / press down. It is a curved line that goes to the right. The stroke goes downwards and angles right.
Chinese stroke order generally follows these rules:
General: top then bottom, left then right, horizontal then vertical.
Diagonals: right to left diagonals before left to right diagonals.
Enclosures: partially enclosed from the top means outside then inside, partially enclosed from the bottom or bottom left means inside then outside, fully enclosed in a box means outside frame, inside, then complete the outside
Lines: centre lines before side lines, stroke cutting lines go last.
Dots: top or upper left dots go first then inside or upper right dots.
Language Key
