识字（二） Learning Characters

识字(一) Learning Characters-1

Tones 调号

Mandarin, like all Chinese dialects, is a tonal language. This means that tones, just like consonants and vowels, are used to distinguish words from each other. Many foreigners have difficulties mastering the tones of each character, but correct tonal pronunciation is essential for intelligibility because of the vast number of words in the language that only differ by tone (i.e. are minimal pairs with respect to tone).
The following are the 4 tones of Standard Mandarin:
1. First tone, or high-level tone (阴平 yīnpíng, literal meaning: yin-level): a steady high sound,
as if it were being sung instead of spoken.
2. Second tone, or rising tone (阳平 yángpíng, literal meaning: yang-level), or linguistically,
high-rising: is a sound that rises from mid-level tone to high (e.g., What?!)
3. Third tone (low or dipping tone, 上声 shǎngshēng or shàngshēng, literal meaning: "up tone"):
has a mid-low to low descent; if at the end of a sentence or before a pause, it is then followed
by a rising pitch. Between other tones it may simply be low.
4. Fourth tone, falling tone (去声 qùshēng, literal meaning: "away tone"), or high-falling:
features a sharp fall from high to low, and is a shorter tone, similar to curt commands.
-------From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Chinese Numerals 中国数字

Chinese Numerals 中国数字（zhōng guó shù zì ）
Chinese Numerals are Chinese characters for writing numbers. Today, Chinese people uses 3 ways to write numbers:
1、Write numbers in Arabic numerals, like 0 1 2 3...
2、Two types of Chinese Numerals.
One is for writing commercial or financial contexts (eg.on cheques) known as daxie(simplified Chinese:大写 Pronunciation：dàxiě) ，like 零(zero) 壹(one) 贰(two) 叁(three)...
The Other is for everyday writing knows as xiaoxie(simplified Chinese：小写；P:xiǎoxiě), like 〇 or 零(zero) 一(one) 二(two) 三(three)...

dàxiě 大写	xiǎoxiě小写	pīn yīn 拼音	Arabic Number 阿拉伯数字(ā lā bó shù zì)
零	零 / 〇	líng	0
壹	一	yī	1
贰	二	èr	2
叁	三	sān	3
肆	四	sì	4
伍	五	wǔ	5
陆	六	lìu	6
柒	七	qī	7
捌	八	bā	8
玖	九	jǐu	9
拾	十	shí	10
拾壹	十一	shí yī	11
拾贰	十二	shí èr	12
廿(niàn)	二十	èr shí	20
卅（sà）	三十	sān shí	30
肆拾壹	四十一	sì shí yī	41
伍拾贰	五十二	wǔ shí èr	52
(壹) 佰	（一）百	(yì) bǎi	100
(两)仟	(两)千	(liǎng) qiān	2,000
(壹) 万	（一）万	(yì) wàn	10,000
拾万	十万	shí wàn	100,000
(壹)佰万	（一）百万	(yì) bǎi wàn	1,000,000
(壹)仟万	（一）千万	(yì)qiān wàn	10,000,000
(壹) 亿	（一）亿	(yí) yì	100,000,000
(壹)兆	（一）兆	(yí) zhào	1,000,000,000,000
京	京	jīng	10,000,000,000,000,000,000
顺	顺	shùn	100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Introduction：han zi 汉字介绍

A Chinese character, also known as a Han character (simplified Chinese: 汉字; pinyin: hàn zì), is a logogram used in writing Chinese (hanzi), Japanese (kanji), less frequently Korean (hanja), and formerly Vietnamese (hán tự), and other languages.

The number of Chinese characters contained in the Kangxi dictionary is approximately 47,035, although a large number of these are rarely used variants accumulated throughout history. Studies carried out in China have shown that full literacy in the Chinese language requires a knowledge of only between three and four thousand characters.

In the Chinese writing system, the characters are morphosyllabic, each usually corresponding to a spoken syllable with a basic meaning. However, although Chinese words may be formed by characters with basic meanings, a majority of words in Mandarin Chinese require two or more characters to write (thus are poly-syllabic) but have meaning that is distinct from the characters they are made from. Cognates in the various Chinese languages/dialects which have the same or similar meaning but different pronunciations can be written with the same character. Chinese characters are also the world's longest continuously used writing system.[citation needed]

Chinese characters have also been used and in some cases continue to be used in other languages, most significantly Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. Chinese characters are used both by meaning to represent native words, ignoring the Chinese pronunciation, and by meaning and sound, to represent Chinese loanwords. These foreign pronunciations of Chinese characters are known as Sinoxenic pronunciations, and have been useful in the reconstruction of Ancient Chinese.

Chinese characters are also known as sinographs, and the Chinese writing system as sinography.

------From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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