Chinese lesson 1.1

Now that I have been studying Chinese for a while, I feel it is my duty to share this knowledge with you all. Don't worry, I will go slow. Actually, I just want to teach some of our favorite words and phrases. Most of these are now so part of our lingo that even when we are speaking English sometimes we use one of these because it just says it so perfectly. So let the lessons commence.

But first, I feel like I need to give you a little background. Each Chinese character has a reading (the way you pronounce it) and meaning. Put various combinations of the 1000s of characters together and you form words. But unlike English, each character is usually a word on its own. But when combined with another character(s), it forms more complex words. Are you tracking with me so far? During the 1950s, someone came up with a way to transcribe these characters in order to teach. This pronunciation method is called pinyin. Nowadays, people also use pinyin to input Chinese into computers and when sending texts. But where it gets complicated is that while pinyin uses the English alphabet, most of the letters are not pronounced the same way. Are you still with me? 

Because it would be too complicated to teach you how to say each thing in pinyin, I will show you the character and the pinyin, but then in parenthesis I will write it out phonetically the way it sounds. Okay, we have all of that out of the way. Oh, wait. I forgot about the tones. Hmm, maybe we will leave that for another day. Just know that the marks above the letters mean something and we will get there.

One of our favorite and a very useful phrase/word is: 差不多 pinyin: chàbuduō (cha-boo-dwoe). The meaning:

1. Similar or about the same. e.g. You and I are about the same height. 差不多

2. Approximately or just about. This is my favorite usage. For example: Is the part for the machine the right size? 差不多. 

Do you know the way to go (when asking a taxi driver)? 差不多. Ah, the uses are endless.

Alright, that is the lesson for the day. Astound your friends and neighbors with your knowledge. Or at least, impress us when we come back this summer.