Living in China part 1 - Basic Chinese language lesson [View all]

[Nanjing to Seoul]

Six years in the PRC, I am pretty much fluent in the language. Still working on the writing part of the language, but speaking and reading is pretty good now.

In China, if you can read about 1,000 characters, you can read a newspaper with ease. So, let's begin with the lesson.

Writing Chinese is rather simple. I will use Simplified Mandarin because I am on the Mainland and not in Taiwan or Hong Kong.

There are three basic rules:

01: Left before right
02: Top before bottom
03: Outside before inside

Let's take a simple character 口. That's "kou," and it means mouth or opening.

To write it correctly it's very simple.

01: write the left down stroke first.
02. write the top stroke and the right down stroke next without lifting the pen
03. fill in the box.

Let's take another. 江 which means "river." This is jiang (pronounced gee-on-guh).

01: write the three dashes first top to bottom
02: write the top stroke
03: write the downward stroke
04: write the bottom stroke

Stroke order is extremely important in the language. Trust me, Chinese people can tell if the character was written in the correct order by looking at it. It's a bit frustrating for beginners, but you pick it up quickly.

Practice with these ten simple one:

见 - jian, means look
十, shi (pronounced sure), means ten
太, tai (pronounced tie), abverb too
火, huo (pronounced who-oh), means fire
公, gong, means public
女, nv (the v should be a u with an umlaut over it), means woman
三, san, means three
小, xiao (pronounced she-ow)， means small
大, da, means big
园, yuan, means garden

Mandarin is not a difficult language, except for the tones. The thing is, when people talk, I don't hear the tones at all. I just hear the speaking. What makes it easier is context. If someone is talking about men, 男 (nan) means man. They don't mean 南 (nan) which means south.

It is getting colder here in Suzhou. What is amazing is the sea convection currents around here. Shanghai, no matter the weather conditions, during the day, is always five degrees warmer than here in Suzhou, which is less than 30 miles away.