A Brief Introduction of Chinese Language.

Our family climbed the Great Wall (July 2007). One of my dreams is to take groups of my American students to have a picture taken right here.

Chinese language is a character- based language made up of strokes instead of letters/alphabet. Chinese cannot be sounded out like letter-based languages, such as English, Spanish or French. 我登上了长城！ Wo deng shang le chang cheng! (I climbed the Great Wall.)

To learn Chinese, we start with Pinyin (Chinese phonetics), four tones, and strokes. These can be briefly learned at first. We will get the hang of it as we learn more texts. We learn phrases, sentences, expressions, idioms, grammar, usage, Chinese culture, history and philosophy along the way. We eventually grasp the language.

Pinyin: Chinese phonetics Initial Consonant: b p m f d t n l g k h j q x zh ch sh r z c s y w Ending Vowels (singles or combinations) aa o e i u üoeiü aiai ei ui ao ou iu ieeiuiaoou anan en in un ün üe ereninünüeer angang eng ing ong engingong

Chinese Four Tones First tone: This tone is pronounced with a steady pitch. Second tone: Rising pitch from low to high. Third tone: First sinking pitch at the same time as the voice is lowered, followed by a rising pitch and stronger voice. Forth tone: fast sinking pitch with a sharp end. Toneless: Relax in your mouth and let the tone fall where it is natural (for mood purpose)

Basic Chinese Strokes

 There are about 14,245 Chinese characters in all, but most are rarely used.  The Chinese government requires a high school graduate to reach a vocabulary of 3500 characters, which make up of 99.5% of Chinese usage.

--The first 152 most frequently used Chinese characters make up of 50% of Chinese usage. --The first 1,000 make up of 89% of Chinese usage.

If we learn 2 characters a day, = 10 per week, = 360 per school year (36 weeks) = 1,000 in 3 years, or 1440 in 4 years. = 89%-93% of Chinese language during High school years.

We can definitely learn more than 10 characters a week. It is a little hard at first, but things do get easier and easier and therefore we learn faster and faster.

If we learn 5-7 years of Chinese on a regular basis, we can learn 2,500 characters easily and that’s about 98% of Chinese usage.

Think of Chinese characters as a person, or a stranger. To remember him, we just need to visit “him” often and call “him” by his name until we remember “him” by sight and sound (i.e., our listening, speaking and reading vocabulary). As we know “him” more, he will become our friend. We’ll be able to describe “him” without even looking at him (i.e., writing vocabulary). The goal is to get the characters/words into our long term memory, like the faces of our friends. Do we forget what our close friends look like?

My goal is to help students get these characters/words from their short-term memory into their long term memory by providing various tools to reach their goal.

A Chinese Poem by the famous ancient Chinese poet, Li Bai We can sing it to “Row, row, row your boat” tune

Thoughts on a Tranquil Night The moonlight shines upon my bed like hoarfrost to my wondering eyes Watching the bright moon I raise my head Then head down the thoughts of home arise

Chinese numbers etc. yi er san si wuliu qi ba jiu shi 一二 三 四 五 六 七 八 九 十 one, two,three,four, five, six, seven,eight,nine,ten shanshui riyue 山 水 日 月 Mountainwatersunmoon