ChinEASE Ebook Sample

chinEASE
Start Reading Chinese Characters TODAY!

Aaron Posehn

Oak House
Vancouver, Canada

- 2 - chinEASE Start reading Chinese characters TODAY!

www.chinease-ebook.com

Copyright Aaron Posehn, 2014
All Rights Reserved

chinEASE
First edition released January 2013 from Vancouver, Canada
Second edition released February 2014 from Vancouver, Canada

Web: www.chinease-ebook.com
Email: contact@chinease-ebook.com

Cover art by Frank Fradella
Austin, Texas





A SPECIAL THANKS to the people who helped make this book
appreciably better with their editing, research, suggestions,
criticisms, and enthusiasm.



If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to
his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his
heart.
Nelson Mandela

To have another language is to possess a second soul.
Charlemagne

The journey of a thousand miles starts from beneath ones feet.
Laozi

Is it not a pleasure after all to put into practice in due time what
one has learned?
Confucius





Table of Contents

A Note About Character Pronunciation 10

About the Author 11

Introduction 12

Chapter 1: Your First Twelve Chinese Characters 14 12

Chapter 2: The Origins of Chinese Characters 21
Mythical Beginnings 22
The Actual Formation of the First Characters 23

Chapter 3: Modern Characters 26
How Basic Chinese Characters are Formed 27
What About Even More Complicated Characters? 29
Chinese Radicals 34

Chapter 4: The Six Character Structure Types 38

Chapter 5: The Five Major Chinese Scripts 42

Chapter 6: Character Simplification 46
Traditional vs. Simplified Characters 47


Second-Round Simplified Characters 50

Chapter 7: Character Spacing and Stroke Order 52
Character Stroke Order 54
Names of Individual Strokes 55

Chapter 8: Outside Influences and Influencers 60
Using Chinese Characters to Translate Foreign Ideas 61
Substituting in English Vocabulary 65
Using Characters to Write Other Asian Languages 69
i. Japanese 69
ii. Korean 73

Chapter 9: Other Types of Markings 75
Chinese Punctuation 76
Numbers 82

Chapter 10: Learn to Read a Chinese Menu 88
Common Meats 89
Intestines, Brains, and Tongues 94
Fruits and Vegetables 96
Other Common Foods and Spices 98
Methods of Preparation 99
Methods of Cooking 100
Chinese Dishes: Characters in Context 102
Drinks 109



Chapter 11: Learn to Read a Chinese Business Card 112
Names 114
Contact Numbers and Addresses 116
Common Chinese Surnames 120
Positions within a Company 123

Chapter 12: Take the Long Road to Learning Chinese 127

Chapter 13: How to Get Good at Mandarin in 4 Steps 133
Step 1 Repetition 132
Step 2 Utilize Your Time 136
Step 3 Dont Stress! 138
Step 4 Read as Much as You Can 139

Afterword 141

Appendix A: An Introduction to Pinyin 146

Appendix B: A Chart of All Sounds in Mandarin 148

Appendix C: How to type in Chinese 149

Appendix D: Chinese Character Practice Grids 150

Bonus!: 36 Resources for Further Study 153



A Note About Character Pronunciation

This book makes use of the pinyin romanization system that is
used to read the Mandarin Chinese pronunciation of Chinese
characters. Other romanization and pronunciation methods for
Mandarin have been devised in the past, such as the Wade-Giles,
Zhuyin, Yale, or Legge romanization systems. There have even
been those devised so as to write Mandarin with the Cyrillic
(Russian) or Arabic alphabets (see picture below).
Additional systems also exist for other Chinese languages such as
Jyutping for Cantonese or the long-short romanization system for
Shanghainese. However, pinyin is the most widely used at present
for transcribing Mandarin and has been fully utilized in this book.
For more on pinyin, please see Appendices A and B.

An entry from an old Chinese-Arabic-Xiaoerjing dictionary.
Xiaoerjing script is written with Arabic letters in order to transcribe Mandarin Chinese sounds.
Chinese is on the first row, then Arabic, then Xiaoerjing.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Xiao-Er-Jin.jpg



About the Author

Aaron Posehn is a graduate of the
University of British Columbia in
Vancouver, Canada, majoring in
Asian Area Studies and specializing in
China, Taiwan, and India. He
additionally has an Associate of Arts
degree from Capilano University,
having studied philosophy, history,
English, and mathematics.
Aaron has had an interest in Asian cultures and languages since in
his early teens, first learning Mandarin and Chinese characters
through self-study and then continuing formally in extra-curricular
classes and at university.
In addition to Mandarin, he has a love for foreign languages and
cultures in general and is keen to spend the rest of his life
bridging cultures so as to better understand the world in which he
lives.

(Aaron Posehn)



Introduction

Learning how to write Chinese characters is not difficult. Really!
Although they may appear daunting at first, this is just because
you probably dont have enough experience with them yet.
However, by reading this eBook, you will see that not only are
Chinese characters very accessible, but that they are also very
systematic in their formations. You could liken this to how you
may be able to understand individual root words making up a
larger word in English, even if the new word itself is as yet
unfamiliar to you. You just have to take the smaller parts and put
them together to make the larger whole more meaningful.
As an added bonus, Chinese characters are used across all of the
many languages and dialects that comprise the umbrella-term
Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, Hokkien, Hakka,
Teochew, etc.). Therefore, if you are studying Mandarin, for
example, you will already have a hand up when it comes to
understanding the written thoughts of Chinese speakers from
different parts of China and the Chinese-speaking world.
Essentially, this book has been specifically created to explore the
above topics and those apparent complexities of Chinese writing
to the beginning and/or struggling student, and ultimately
attempts to get you started on your road to gaining an impressive
understanding of Chinese characters.
After reading, you will understand in much greater depth how to
read, write, and recognize this language, as well as how to space
characters properly, how new characters can be created, and why
unknown words in Chinese might even be simpler to understand
at first glance than unknown vocabulary in English.


To teach these things successfully, the author demonstrates how
characters can often be broken down into smaller components
that are more manageable and provide for methods of easy
recognition. He shows how many of the original characters
actually once looked like pictures of what they were supposed to
represent, today just having been adapted over time into more
abstract formations. An introduction to the history and evolution
of Chinese characters is also included so as to shed light on how
they have formed over time, and thereby an attempt is made to
explain the straightforward nature in which Chinese writing has
evolved and can be learned today.
Towards the end of this book, you will use all of the knowledge
you have gained so far to understand some of the most
widespread and useful characters used on Chinese menus and
business cards, some of the everyday things that youll be
required to read when in China on business or for travel.
It is recommended that you have a good Chinese-English
dictionary by your side while reading this eBook. Although much
effort has been made to explain in detail the individual Chinese
characters that you will encounter, some are covered in more
detail than others. However, most characters in this book are
paired with their pinyin (see Appendix A) equivalents and it is by
using this pronunciation system that you should be able to find in
a dictionary any character written within this book. If you prefer
using online dictionaries, I suggest www.nciku.com or a wonderful
dictionary app downloadable at www.pleco.com.
Hopefully you enjoy this eBook. But remember, it has been
written specifically with the goal to provide its readers with the
understanding that Chinese characters are more than simply just
too hard to learn. So lets start!



Chapter 1:
Your First 12 Characters


As stated in the Introduction, I claimed that Chinese characters
are fairly straightforward. Still dont believe me yet? Then here is
your first example:

What does this look like to you? The top of an arrow? A circumflex
like the kind found on the top of some letters in French ()?
Obviously, its neither of these.
It is in fact the Chinese character for person.
How you might ask? Well, you can think of it like this:

The character for person

Can you see it now? Just by adding a little improvised head to the
top of the character, you can see how it transforms into a
representation of two legs and a torso.
With this in mind, try to figure out what the next two characters
might mean:


The character for big

The character for small

By adding one more horizontal stroke on the character for person,
you can see that this guy now has outstretched arms, and from
this, you may be able to guess that this Chinese character means
big.

If you think about the next character in a similar way, you might
see how this man is crouching with his legs together and covering
his body with his hands. He is certainly not big, but small.



How about the next three characters?
One obviously has one line, the next one has two lines, and the
last one has three lines. Simply, these characters are the way to
write one, two, and three in Chinese. Easy, right? What about
these next three?

If you think about the first as a flower sprouting up and out of the
horizontal ground, you might wonder if this character could mean
up or on.

The character for up
Similarly, if you think of the second one as a root reaching down
below the horizontal ground, you might think that this character
means down or under. And in fact it does!

The character for down


The third character above is similar to the first, except for the
addition of another horizontal line segment. You can continue to
think of this third character as a flower sprouting up and out of
the horizontal ground, but this time, try and remember that this
one means earth or ground instead of up.

The character for ground
How about this next one? What does it look like to you?

The character for rain

As you can see from the drawing on the right, this character
suggests rainfall from a cloud and means rain.
Now that you have a basic understanding of how Chinese
characters can look like those items or ideas that they are trying
to represent, what do you think this next one could be?


Heres a hint its an abstract representation of an open cavity on
the human body. By looking at the picture below, you are sure to
know immediately what it is.

The character for mouth

Lastly, we have another body part, the ear.

However, it may not appear like much until we give it some
context with a picture:

The character for ear



Just from this short introduction, you have already learned twelve
Chinese characters that you can remember by thinking back to
how they relate to the pictures that they are supposed to
represent. Although the forms of these characters at present are
somewhat abstract representations of what they are intended to
mean, you are still easily able to understand why they are formed
the way they are.
So, that wasnt so hard! Next, lets look at some history behind
how Chinese characters formed over time, as well as a few more
characters in general.



Chapter 2:
The Origins of
Chinese Characters


Mythical Beginnings
The Chinese writing system has been around for over five
thousand years. Although its various forms have evolved greatly
through time, Chinese continues to hold its place in the world as
the only pictorial writing system to still be in common use today.
One ancient legend tells of a time before written history when
people used ropes and knots to record daily events a big event
deserved a big knot and a small event deserved a small knot.
However, it is easy to guess that this might not have been the
best method for remembering specific activities and a better
system was badly needed.
This story goes on to tell of a man
named Cang Jie (Cng Ji), a
minister during reign of the Yellow
Emperor ( Hung D). He had the
attentive habit of noticing various
shapes that were formed in nature by
the animals and objects around him
the footprints of birds, the form of the
human body, the shapes of tree
branches and he started to draw
pictures of these things.
Noticing the roundness of the sun in
the sky, Cang Jie drew a round circle
with a line in the middle. This
eventually came to form the modern
character for sun ( r). He then saw
the pointing mountains that stood
around him and drew three mountain
peaks.
Cang Jie, the fabled inventor of Chinese characters
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cangjie2.jpg
{{PD-1923}}


This picture eventually came to form the modern character for
mountain ( shn). Then Cang Jie saw the form of the crescent
moon in the night sky with wisps of clouds passing by; this also
contributed to the modern form of the character for moon (
yu).

Cang Jies sun, mountain, and moon drawings

The Actual Formation of the First Characters
Being that the Yellow Emperor and Cang Jie are only fictional
actors in ancient Chinese mythology, a much more plausible
explanation for the creation of Chinese characters is that of the
ancient carvings on oracle bones ( ji g wn).
During Chinas second dynasty, the Shang Dynasty (c. 1600 BCE-
1046 BCE), emperors would consult shamans for a forecast of
their kingdoms future. The shaman would engrave small pictorial
symbols into animal bones or tortoise shells and then place them
in fire, basing his predictions on the ways in which the bones
cracked and split from being given to the heat.
These cracks were regarded as answers from the gods and the
shaman would then tell the emperor of, for example, the
inevitable drought in store for the nation or of the coming victory
in battle.


Over thousands of years, these symbols were used more and
more frequently and their original forms were altered many times.
This was the beginning of the long process that brought the
Chinese script to where it is today.
The images below, from left to right, illustrate some of the oracle
bone writings that would have been used during ancient times.
Look specifically at the characters for rat, horse, tiger, and
elephant, and especially at the character for turtle. You are sure
to see the direct resemblances.

Horse Tiger Pig Dog Rat Elephant Beast Turtle Bed To be like Illness
Oracle bone characters
Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oracle_bone_graphs_rotated_90_degrees.gif



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