Lesson 1 - Greeting in different time

 Greeting in different time :

Morning ( zaoshang 早上 )

• zaoshanghao 早上好 - good morning (early  morning)
• zaoan 早安 - good morning (morning peace)
• shangwuhao 上午好 - good morning (late in the morning)

At noon (zhongwu 中午)

• zhongwuhao 中午好 - good afternoon (zhongwu-middle)

 Afternoon (xiawu 下午)

• xiawuhao 下午好 - good afternoon
• wu an 午安 - good afternoon

Evening ( wanshang 晚上)

• wanshanghao 晚上好 - good evening
• wanan 晚安- good night 

New words :

老师  Lǎoshī (teacher)

同学  Tóngxué (classmate)

再见  Zàijiàn (goodbye)

爸爸  Bàba (father)

妈妈  Māma(mother)

父母  Fumu (parents)

我  Wǒ (I)

你  Nǐ (you)

他/ 她  Tā (he)

我们  Wǒmen (we)

你们  Nǐmen (you guys)

他们/她们 Tāmen (they)

早上

Lesson 3-Nationality (Ta shi na guo ren)

Ta shi na guo ren (asking nationality)

•医生奶奶 Nǎinai (grandmother)

•外婆 wàipó (grandmother)

•医生 yīshēng (doctor)

•老师 lǎoshī  (teacher)

•外语老师 wàiyǔ lǎoshī (foreign language teacher)

 记者 jizhe (reporter)

1)zhe shi shui 这是谁 - who is this?

   zhe shi 这是 ........ - this is ........ (to introduce people)

2) Na shi shui 那是谁? - who is that?

   Na shi  那是....。- that is ....

3)na guo ren 哪国人? (which country)

4) ta shi na guo ren 他是哪国人 - what is his nationality? (eg : Malaysia)
         : 中国Zhōngguó (China)
         : 马来西亚Mǎláixīyà (Malaysia)

Lesson 2 -ni yao...ma?

ni hao /Hello

句子juzi

1.  ....吗？.... ma?

2.  你好吗？Nǐ hǎo ma? (hen hao, 不bu shi hen hao)

3.  Ni shi Siti ma? (shi, bu shi)

4.  Zhe shi ni de ma? (shi, bu shi)

5.  Chi le ma? (have you eaten) (chi le, 还没有hai meiyou )

6.  Ta shuai ma? (is he handsome)  (hen shuai, bu shuai)

7.  Ta piaoliang ma (is she beautiful)?      (hen piaoliang, bu piaoliang)

8.  Ta ke’ai ma? (is she cute)   

 你要.....吗？( ni yao ..... ma?)(do you want)

你要不要.....? (ni yao bu yao....?)

Verb

吃chi (eat)	喝he (drink)	去qu(go)	来lai (come)
睡觉shuijiao (sleep)	走 zou (walk)	跑 pao (run)	买 mai (buy)
看kan (watch)	听ting (listen)	玩wan (play)	跳tiao (jump)
讲Jiang3 (speak)	学习xuexi (learn)	读 du (read)	唱 Chang4 (sing)
跳舞 tioawu (dance)	跟gen (follow)	用 Yong4 (use)	研究 yanjiu (research)

f     你要咖Kā啡fēi吗？(ni yao kafei ma?)

       我要咖啡。(wo yao kafei) - I want coffee

       我要喝hē咖啡 (wo yao he kafei) I want to drink coffee.

        我要喝hē 茶chá (wo yao he cha) - cha: teh tarik

         我要吃chī饭fàn (wo yao chi fan) - chi fan: to eat

          我要来lái。(wo yao lai)- lai: to come

   我要去qu (wo yao qu) - qu: go

Lesson 1-Greetings (Ni/Nin Hao)

你好/Hello,

Last week I learnt about greetings and what are the common reply to our greetings. 

And,here is some of the commonly use answers for greetings:

• 你好！Nǐhǎo ( how are you - commonly use)
• 您好nin hao ( how are you - formally use when greet someone older and meet new people)

Xiǎojie， Nin hǎo ！( how are you for female)

Nin hǎo，xiānsheng ( how are you for male)

What can we use to reply the greetings:

1. 我很好，谢谢，你呢 ? Wǒ hěn hǎo, Xièxie，nǐ ne?

         ( I'm fine, thank you, how about you? ) 

*when the people we greet ask us on how are we doing, we can reply this:

•         也很好。Yě hěn hǎo. ( I'm also fine)

     2. 马马虎虎。Mǎma hūhu. ( so-so)

    3.不是很好。Bú shì hěn hǎo ( not very good) 

*in this case, we can ask "why"/ 为什么？Wèi shénme?

# the usual answer is because of headache :

我头疼。Wǒ tou téng/tong

* and we can reply this:

好好照顾自己hao hao zhaogu ziji (Take good care of yourself)

Chinese Character Stroke Practice Sheets

你好/hello,
 
    Last week we have to do some exercises on stroke order. So, here is some of my exercises:

Chinese Characters (video 3 and video 4)

你好/Hello,

   This is the continuation from last blog that I wrote since I think it will be too lengthy to combine all of 4 videos' summary together. So, here is the review for the video 3 and 4:

Video 3 :

Video 4:

• There are 4 method of Chinese characters:

1. pictographic characters - earliest Chinese characters, based on picture.(4%)
2. indicative character - is made of stroke.

     3.associative characters - combine existing characters to give new meaning. (14% of indicative +                                                  associative)

     4.pictophonetic method - make sense of characters, adding few radicals. (80%)

• Finding the radical -left, top, outside,right, bottom, inside.
• Best way to learn Chinese characters :

1. learn to differentiate basic components
2. use the pictophonetic method to learn series of related characters.
3. study easily confused characters together.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFfX1V6DMYM (video 1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEZD1EpHguY (video 2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5FNvW19GbA (video 3)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvebdr0sNao (video 4)

Chinese Characters (video 1 and video 2)

你好/Hello,

   Last week laoshi asked us to study the video about Chinese Characters. There are 4 videos in total. The videos provide me with the basic understanding and knowledge on how to form words by combining the characters. Thanks to the videos, I can increase my vocabulary because learning by watching the video is actually fun for me. I can pause the video anytime when I need more time to understand the video or when I want to jot down the information contains in the video. And here is the review on what I have learnt on the videos:

Video 1 :

• Chinese characters evolved from earlier forms of hieroglyphs.
• Today, we can still find some Chinese characters look like their ancestor.

• There are tens of thousands characters in Chinese. Only 3000 to 4000 are needed in daily life.
• Chinese characters have meanings but most of them are not words.
• All Chinese characters are monosyllabic.
• Only about 1200 possible syllable in modern Chinese.
• So many homophones cause a lot of confusion in spoken Chinese. 

Video 2 :

New vocabulary week 3

Week 3 (di san ge xingqi) 

• ·       Xuexi 学习 - learn
• ·       Lizi 例子 - example
• ·       Xia yi ge 下一个 - next
• ·       Mei youti 没问题 - no problem
• ·       Wei shenme 为什么 - why
• ·       Cheng ren 成人 - adult
• ·       Fu zeren 负责任 - take responsibility
• ·       Bu zhi dao 不知道 - don't know
• ·       普滕Puteng - Proton
• ·       宝腾 Bao teng - Proton
• ·       宝贝baobei  - baby ( my love one)

Class activity week 3

你好/Hello,
    Yesterday 老师/laoshi ask us to have a conversation with our class partner. We need to type what were instructed by our 老师/laoshi. However, we need to type it in Chinese characters so that we can be familiarize with the Chinese characters. For me, it is a fun class activity because we could learn/  学习 it in an interactive way.

Pinyin Practice

你好/Hello,

     During the first week, we learnt about Pinyin during the lecture. Pinyin consist of three elements which are initial,tone and finals. We learnt it in the lecture and my laoshi /老师 also upload some videos for us so that we can improve our understanding when we watch the video. Apart from that, laoshi /老师 also instructed us to do some exercise about Pinyin on the initial,tone and finals so that we can practice more.

Here are the result of my exercise.Honestly, I admit that it is not that easy to score 30 and to have only maximum of 10 errors. I have to do it for many times in order to success and also ask some help on it.

Pinyin

 What is Pinyin?

• Pinyin is the Romanization of Chinese characters based on their pronunciation.
• Pinyin literally translated into "spell sound".
• In other words,spelling out Chinese phrases with letters from English alphabet.
• Consist of three elements : initial,tone,final.

Initial

• Initial always put at the beginning of syllable.
• can use only one initial in a syllable.
• each initial is made up by 1 or 2 letters.
• there are 23 initials in total in Chinese. (23 + 2 ), 2 of 0 initials.

Final

• the final is put after the initial.
• we can only use one final in a syllable.
• a final can be a syllable by itself without the initial or the tone.
• each final is made up of one to four letters.
• there are 35 finals in Chinese.

Tone

• the tone notification mark is always added above final (to be specific,the vowel in the final)
• can only use one tone in a syllable.
• sometimes no tone is used.
• there are 4 tones in Chinese : first tone,second tone, third tone, fourth tone.
• refer to pitch in syllable : low pitch, mid-low pitch, middle pitch, middle high pitch, high pitch. 

New vocabulary week 2

Week 2

Dianming 点名 : name

Ming bai 明白 : understand

Bu ming bai 不明白 : do not understand

Ting hen duo 听很多 : Listen a lot

Qu 去 : go with

Wo 我 : me

Ni 你 : you

Ta 他 : He

he shui喝水 : drink water

he guo zhi 果汁 : drink juice

Qing shuo yi shuo 请说一说。: say something

Ni jiehun le ma? : are you married

Dui bu qi对不起 : I am sorry

wo hai meiyou ting 我还没有听。: I have not heard yet

Wo hen e我很饿。: I'm very hungry

Wo  hen bao我很饱。: I'm very full

...... ma? : to ask question

 Ni ne? : how about you

Ni e ma? : are you hungry?

Guge xiansheng 谷歌先生 : Google

Youdi xiaojie 优蒂小姐 : Youtube

Ni hao 你好 : Hello

Wo shi ....我是 : my name

Zhe shi 这是 : this is

 kaishi开始 : start

Zhe shi shui? : who is this?

Ni jiao shenme  mingzi? : what is your name?

ren : human

suibian : simply do

wangji :forget

New Vocabulary for week 1

Week 1 

New Word shengci

Qing jin 请进 : please enter

Shenme 什么 : what

Zenmeyang 怎么样 : How about it

Weishenme 为什么 : why

Hen men很闷 : very boring

Qin ai de 亲爱的 : Dear

Hen you yong很有用 : very useful

Tiaozhan 挑战 : challenge

 Hen nan 很难 : difficult

Dao到 : to

Meiyou lai 没有来 : Did not come

5 principles 7 actions

   5 Principles

1. Focus on language content that is relevant to us.
2. Use our new language as a Tool to communicate from Day 1.
3. When we understand the message, we will unconsciously acquire the language.
4. Physiological training.
5. Psycho-physiological state matters.

  7 Actions

1. Listen a lot
2. Focus on getting the meaning first.
3. Start mixing.
4. Focus on the core.
5. Get a language parent.
6. Copy the face.
7. Direct connect to mental images.

Comment: The video give me an early guide on how should I learn Chinese Language within a short period. 

A letter to myself

Dear me,

     The purpose that I take this subject is for my future benefits as many of the successful companies nowadays are own by Chinese. So, I need to know how to interact with them in Chinese Language and I think it will be an advantage for me if I can speak Chinese.

     My promise to learn Chinese is by keep updating my blog with new words or sentences as frequent as I can so that there will be an improvement in my understanding and I can learn a lot of new words.

    How could I learn Chinese language during this 3-4 months, first is to focus during the class session and tutorial. Other than that I can have an interactive way of learning by watching the short movie and videos available on the Internet.

Thank you.