Tag: Chinese Language

Chinese language vocabulary 汉语词汇 拔山举鼎 Báshān-jǔdǐng

拔山举鼎 Báshān-jǔdǐngWords：
秦朝（qíncháo）： Qin Dynasty (BC 221—206)( PN. )
将领（jiànglǐng）： high-ranking military officer; general(n.)
勤奋（qínfèn）： diligent; assiduous; industrious; hardworking(adj.)
剑法（jiàn fǎ）： swordsmanship(n.)
强壮（qiángzhuàng）： strong(adj.)
据说（jùshuō）： it is said; they say(n.)
鼎（dǐng）： an ancient cooking vessel with two loop handles and three or four legs(n.)
立志（lìzhì）： resolve; be determined(adv.)
成就（chéngjiù）： achieve; accomplish; achievement(v/n.)
番（fān）： for a course/a turn/ time(MW.)
事业（shìyè）： cause; undertaking(n.)
推翻（tuīfān）： overthrow; overturn (v.)
统治（tǒngzhì）： rule; dominate(v/n.)

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Lesson 002 The Tones of Chinese Language

M: Welcome 欢迎to LCN. 我是ML I'm ML, woshi ML.
S: 欢迎大家, woshi S. Let's quickly revise what we did in lesson 1.
M: Well, first, Chinese has four tones. Stuart?
S: 1,2,3,4. You say it at home. 1,2,3,4. Remember, flat, rising, down and up, and down. And remember, different tone, different meaning
M: And Chinese has many classifiers, like tiao for long, thin things. So, for example, it's one tiao snake, two tiao snakes etc., or one ge person, three ge people.
S: There are lots of compound words, like fire chicken 火鸡 turkey, and fire mountain 火山volcano. And we use pinyin to write down the sounds with the abc.
M: One thing about writing Pinyin. To show what tone a word is, we put a small horizontal dash over the vowel part to show it's 1st tone, a small line going up 45 degrees from left to right for the second, one going down and then up for the 3rd, and one going down from left to right for the fourth.
S: Some sounds don't always have a tone. They are pronounced lightly, with no particular stress, like 了 or 吗.
M: Welcome back. Got a pencil and notebook ready? Write what you learn down – helps you to remember. Now for a quick tone practice, and we'll learn a bit of pinyin, don't worry about the meaning. First, your ears must get used to the sounds of Chinese.
S: Guess how XI is pronounced? XI. It's xi. So the X is not pronounced X, it's more like "she". Now for XI in the four tones. Don't forget, you must try to repeat everything we say in Chinese.
M: Xī xí xǐ xì. Again, all together. Xī xí xǐ xì.
S: Hear the difference? One more. XIAO. So it's XI, with AO on the end. The AO is pronounced /au/, so XIAO is pronounced xiao. In the four tones:
M: xiāo xiáo xiǎo xiào. All together now, xiāo xiáo xiǎo xiào , Again，xiāo xiáo xiǎo xiào. Very good, 很好。
S: As we said, it's important to hear the difference between the tones, so we'll practice a few more. Don't worry about meaning. Get used to the sounds of Chinese first. And you MUST repeat them with us. How about the sound /a:/, easy pinyin, it's spelt A. Ok, a in the four tones.
M: ā á ǎ à. All together, ā á ǎ à. Again, ā á ǎ à. Very good, hen hao.
S: And another sound. The pinyin is AO, and, remember, it's pronounced ao. So, here we go.
M: āo áo ǎo ào. All together. āo áo ǎo ào. ɑ
. Again āo áo ǎo ào.
S: 很好 very good finish to the lesson. We'll see you next time. Until then, 再见.
M: Zai jian.

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Lesson 001 the Features of Chinese Language

S: Brand new series, starting from scratch. Mostly myself, Stuart, and …

M: Me, ML.

S: Yes. First, a bit about learning a foreign language. Practice every day. Active listening and speaking – imagine what's happening. Eg, Angry!

No complicated grammatical explanations: learn good grammar by hearing and imitating good Chinese.

M: And try to record the programs, so you can listen to them at will. And write them down in pinyin. Pinyin is how we represent Chinese words using the English alphabet. You can also hear the lessons on CRI's website.

S: Now for a basic introduction to the features of Chinese. First, it's a tonal language. Standard Chinese, or Putonghua, has four tones – 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th.

M: For example, the sound ma , very easy pinyin, it's simply a MA. Now "ma" in the four tones: mā má mǎ mà. Now everyone say it, including you, Stuart. mā, má, mǎ, mà.

M: And we must point out that: different tone, different meaning. For example, 妈, first tone, ma1 means "mother", while 马, third tone, mǎ means horse. You don't want to call your mum a horse, so tones are quite important.

S: Actually another way to help you remember which tone is which is by listening to this: 1 2 3 4. It's not Chinese, but you try it ML.

M: 1234. Hmmm, never tried that before, but it should help beginners. Now everyone try it, including you guys at home.

S: 1234. Hear the difference? Starting with the first, they are flat, rising, down and up, and down.

M: Good. That's enough on tones for now. We'll practice them quite a lot.

M: Another feature of Putonghua is that we use a lot of compound words.

S: Right. What is one word in English, might be two, or even three or four words in Chinese. For example, fire vehicle, huoche, is a train. Guess what a fire mountain, huoshan is? Right, volcano. Here's one I really like – fire chicken huoji is a turkey. A couple more: steam vehicle chiche is motor car; electric vehicle dianche is trolleybus. Get the idea?

M: Another feature is that Chinese nouns have classifiers in front of them. Similar to head of cattle in English, where head is the classifier. But Chinese has many more of them. The commonest is "ge". We don't say ‘one person', we say ‘one ge person', or ‘two ge people'. Another is Tiao, used as the classifier of long thin things. So we say ‘one tiao snake, 2 tiao snakes, or one tiao road, or avenue'.

S: By the way, the classifier for cattle is the same as it is in English. Tou, meaning head. So we say, for example, ‘three tou cattle'. Well, that almost bring us to the end of our first lesson. We'll see you next time.

M: 再见！

S: 再见!

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