Chin 1115 Introduction

1. Chin 1115 Introduction Pinyin 拼音 Chinese Characters 汉字 Daily Expression 日常用语

2. Chin 1115 IntroductionPinyin 拼音 What is Pinyin? (拼音是什么） 汉语拼音, or Han language Pinyin, is often shortened to Pinyin (Chinese: 拼 音, pīnyīn), which literally means “spell sounds" Less literal translation: "phoneticize", "spell" or "transcription“ a Romanization system for Standard Mandarin.

3. Chin 1115 IntroductionPinyin 拼音 What is Pinyin? (拼音是什么）contd. Use 26 English letters, Vv is Üü consist of 23 initials and 36 finals Four tone marks (ˉˊˇˋ) plus a neutral tone Pronounced Differently from English

4. Chin 1115 IntroductionPinyin 拼音 What is Pinyin? (拼音是什么）contd. 23 initials: b p m f d t n l g k h j q x zh ch sh r z c s

5. Chin 1115 IntroductionPinyin 拼音 What is Pinyin? (拼音是什么）contd. 36 finals a o e i u ü ai ei ao ou an en ang eng ong ia iao ie iu ian in iang ing iong ua uo uai ui uan un uang ueng üe üan ün er

6. Chin 1115 IntroductionPinyin 拼音 What is Pinyin? (拼音是什么）contd. Pinyin record and transliterate the pronunciation of Chinese characters using Latin alphabet 1 Initial+ 1 final + tone mark =Majority of Chinese characters’ pronunciation xué xí zhōng guó hàn zì 学习(study) 中国 (China) 汉字(character)

7. Chin 1115 IntroductionPinyin 拼音 What is Pinyin? (拼音是什么）contd. Around 400-500 legitimate Pinyin spellings in Mandarin Chinese in total. Times four tones, (but not every spelling has four tones), less than 1,400 different sounds Around 3,500 common characters used in Chinese Some spellings only correspond to one common character, e.g., 佛 (fó, Budda). Some have handful of corresponding characters: zhì制, 质, 治, 至, 志, 致, 智, 秩, 滞, 挚…

8. Chin 1115 IntroductionPinyin 拼音 What is Pinyin? (拼音是什么）contd. Pinyin only records the sound, doesn’t mean anything Widely seen China, including the signboards, street names, book covers, etc

9. Chin 1115 IntroductionPinyin 拼音 What is Pinyin? (拼音是什么）contd. Accepted and used in Singapore, Malaysia, and Chinese communities across the world Developed in the first half of 20th century, finalized in 1958 Different from the one used in Taiwan (Tongyong Pinyin) Different from the one used in Hong Kong (Cantonese Pinyin) Different from other phonetic note systems made by western scholars, such as Wade-Giles Many Hong Kong actors/actresses’ names are in Hong Kong Pinyin: Jackie Chan (成龙) instead of Jackie Chen While those from mainland China use Hanyu Pinyin, the Pinyin we are to learn: Ziyi Zhang (章子怡), Yao Ming (姚明)

10. Chin 1115 IntroductionPinyin 拼音 What is Pinyin? (拼音是什么）contd. Chinese has no alphabet Before Pinyin people used Chinese characters as phonetic notes for Chinese characters first character’s initial+ second character’s final+ tone mark Roughly compare: Tease + Picture= Teacher So a person has to know Chinese characters first before they can learn Chinese characters Catch-22

11. Chin 1115 IntroductionPinyin 拼音 What is Pinyin? (拼音是什么）contd. In history Only native Chinese needed to study Chinese Pinyin was only useful to the non-native learners Another Catch-22 So there was no Pinyin for thousands of years

12. Chin 1115 IntroductionPinyin 拼音 What is Pinyin? (拼音是什么）contd. The first attempted was made by Chinese Muslim in 14 century. Western missionaries and Western universities created a few, such as Yale Pinyin), All died out now Hanyu Pinyin was first invented by Chinese scholars studying in France and other European Countries, so it uses Latin alphabet Other Pinyin invented by Chinese scholars studying in Japan, so it uses katakana. Soviet Union once tried to persuade Mao to adopt Slavic alphabet

13. Chin 1115 IntroductionPinyin 拼音 What is Pinyin? (拼音是什么）contd. Fortunately we didn’t Latin alphabet makes typing Chinese much more convenient and easier Simply type the pinyin of a character, then you get that character! Chinese keyboard is not popular in China mainland.

14. Chin 1115 IntroductionPinyin 拼音 Chinese keyboard

15. Chin 1115 IntroductionPinyin 拼音 What is Pinyin? (拼音是什么）contd. Learning Pinyin well helps you learn Chinese pronunciation A survival solution But Don’t over-rely on it. It is just phonetic notes No books, newspaper, or texts printed in China in pinyin only. Nothing printed here using only phonetic notes, either. So to be able to read Chinese, you still need to learn characters!

16. Chin 1115 IntroductionPinyin 拼音 16 ways to say Yahoo!

17. Chin 1115 IntroductionChinese characters 汉字 Chinese characters are written symbols of Chinese language. No alphabet Use strokes (丶,ㄧ,ー,ノ,etc.) Textbook gives 11 basic strokes. (p25).

18. Chin 1115 IntroductionChinese characters 汉字 Characters are not made by “piled-up” strokes. Strokes must be “organically jointed” to make a readable character. It means, stroke orders must be followed. Which come first, which come later, this is not a problem! The software shows it explicitly

19. Chin 1115 IntroductionChinese characters 汉字 Stroke order make writing more beautiful More importantly, it formalizes the consequences of the strokes, so it greatly help you memorize how to write a character. Imagine when you learn how write the word “English”: E-l-g-n-h-s-i. Can you make it right?

20. Chin 1115 IntroductionChinese characters 汉字 Characters have radicals, textbook gives 40 radicals The radicals are the basic components of a character comparatively, like “-ture” in “picture”, “culture”, “structure”, “adventure”, future”, etc. 江 (river), 河(river), 海(sea), 湖(lake), 溪(creek), 流(flow) 波(wave), 浪(wave), 法 (law) Radicals sometimes suggest the meaning Some times not

21. Chin 1115 IntroductionChinese characters 汉字 Learning radical helps learn Chinese More than that, radicals provide a way to look up dictionary What are they? 坐, 吃, 树, 好, 美, 练, 财 Identify the radical first, for example, 坐’s radical is 土, then turn to the radical 土’s index. Then count how many strokes the character has EXCLUDING the radical, 4 strokes, then look underneath 4 strokes, the page number of character 坐 should be there. Then turn to that page, find the target.

22. Chin 1115 IntroductionChinese characters 汉字 It is slow, clumsy, labor-consuming… But it was the only way to look up a Chinese dictionary, before Pinyin. If you know the character’s Pinyin spelling, just follow the alphabetic order (a-b-c…), turn to the right page However, in most of the cases when you need to look up a Chinese dictionary, you wouldn’t know the pinyin first.

23. Chin 1115 IntroductionChinese characters 汉字 Lab has digital Chinese dictionary You may also find some online ones. But how are you going to type in what you are looking for? Let’s talk about this later

24. Chin 1115 IntroductionChinese characters 汉字 Chinese characters were first seen more then 6,000 years ago The ones inscribed on bones and bronzes are the oldest, systematic recordings. Developed for more than 3,000 years. From complex to simple, from pictographic to pictophonetic Picture-->sound element + meaning element)

25. Chin 1115 IntroductionChinese characters 汉字 Characters on Oracle bones

26. Chin 1115 IntroductionChinese characters 汉字 Characters on Oracle bones

27. Chin 1115 IntroductionChinese characters 汉字 Six categories of characters based on the way they were created. (p20-21) Some are very interesting, 田, 井, 石, 龟, 鸟(picture) 尖, 刃, 本, 末, 未, 一, 二, 三, 凶, 凼 (meaning) 林, 看, 家, 男(meaning)

43. Chin 1115 IntroductionChinese characters 汉字 The characters used in mainland China is called “simplified characters, which are simpler than the traditional characters used in Taiwan. 么 vs. 麽, 乐 vs.樂 Characters were once used by Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and other nations in history 1500 most basic characters, 3,500 common characters, around 100,000 total.

44. Chin 1115 IntroductionChinese characters 汉字 Disconnection between written symbols and pronunciation give Chinese language two distinctive features: The Bad one: Chinese language is hard to learn Overwhelming number of dialects and accents Twenty-mile is long enough to make you orally illiterate East-town and west town talk somewhat differently.

45. Chin 1115 IntroductionChinese characters 汉字 The good one: Language remain unchanged across the time and space Easy to read ancient texts Keep the kingdom united A candidate language for the space age

46. Chin 1115 Introduction日常用语 survival expression 一, 二, 三, 四, 五, 六, 七, 八, 九, 十, 零(O) 绕口令 四是四, 十是十, 十四是十四, 四十是四十 十四不是四十, 四十不是十四