中文 - Week 18 (New Practical Chinese Reader 1)

The book I am using is New Practical Chinese Reader 1 by the Beijing Language and Culture University Press. Volume 1 of the book has 14 lessons. Target end date is June 3, 2012.

MONDAY: Lesson Nine – 他今年二十岁

Chinese Character! We have fifteen this week so let’s start. Let us start with 今年 which is composed of two separate characters. The first one means present day. If you are also learning Japanese these two should be familiar. The second one means year. The first one is used in other construction involving days, such as the term in Mandarin for “today”. Our third character means he/she and is written as 其 and this confuses me because we already know some high-frequency characters that mean the same thing.

TUESDAY: Lesson Nine – 他今年二十岁

We have three for today. The first one is 果 means fruit, and for some strange reason I see it as a fruit when I look at it even if it looks more like an alien squid thing. I remember this character best as the second character in the word for “class”. Let’s take the next two characters in tandem, together they mean morning and is written as 上午. Treated separately, the first one means above and is also the first character in the word Shanghai. The second one means noon and is also used with the antonym of the first character to mean “afternoon”.

WEDNESDAY: Lesson Nine – 他今年二十岁

Our first character for today means to come or go out and is written as 出. I remember this best as the first character in “taxi” but is more popularly known in the text in tandem with another character, the combined meaning for both means “to be born”. 面 is the second character in the word for “longevity noodles”. Yum. The last character is 尸 which is supposed to mean dead body or a corpse. Morbid. The sad thing is, I could not remember for what words it was used in the text!

THURSDAY: Lesson Nine – 他今年二十岁

I love our first character for today because it is easy to write and it is very useful when talking about completed actions. It is the particle 了. The next character means insect/worm and looks like 虫. This is used in combination with many characters. As for its usage as a solo character, I really have no clue. The last character is the one for ear which sounds almost similar as it is in English, and looks like an actual ear because it looks like 耳. Pardon the font. In the book it does look like an ear.

FRIDAY: Lesson Nine – 他今年二十岁

The first character is 乞 and in the illustration it looks like an old man with an arm stretched asking for alms. The second one is a favorite because it means rice, although it does not look like it because it looks like 米. Our last character for the week is the one used for head and written like 头.

For next week I will be covering lesson ten. We are making progress! The goal is to pass the lowest level of the HSK in September 2012! =)