Chinese Characters 2 hàn
zì
汉 字 by
Adelina Ke
For Chinese class, please contact : adelina@discover-mandarin.com (Email)
Some Chinese characters contain several parts, and from certain parts, one can understand the character easily.
Let’s see some examples.
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nǐ
你
(you)
This character contains two parts, 亻 and
尔
The left part 亻looks like one character we have already talked about last time. That is 人 (rén )。So of course, this part 亻is related to “ people, person”. This part is very important, you will see it a lot later.
The right part
尔 means “you” in ancient Chinese.
These two parts are put together as one character to indicate “you” in morden Chinese。
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nǚ
女
(woman, female, daughter )
Let’s look at the history of this character and see how it changes.
The original symbol of “女”, is like a woman kneeling , which is also indicate in the ancient time, women are inferior. And gradually, we simplify the character into 女.
nǚ rén
女 人 (woman) For Chinese class, please contact : adelina@discover-mandarin.com (Email)
zǐ
子
(son, boy)
The ancient character of 子 is written as the one on the right. It looks like a baby.
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hǎo
好
(good, fine,well)
This character contains two parts, 女 which means female and daughter, and 子 which means boy, son. In China, even today, people still believe a family has one daughter and one son is the perfect and ideal family.
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We all know that in Chinese, the word “he” and “she” share the same pronunciation “tā” . However, when we write these two characters are not the same. The following two characters are “tā” . Based on what we have talked before, can you guess which is “he” and which is “ she” ?
她
他
For Chinese class, please contact : adelina@discover-mandarin.com (Email)
tā
她
(she)
tā
他 (he)
The one with “女” which means female is the word “she”
The one with “亻” which means people is the word “he”
For Chinese class, please contact : adelina@discover-mandarin.com (Email)
Thank you!
For Chinese class, please contact : adelina@discover-mandarin.com (Email)