Hello, welcome back to the YoYo 300 series. This is the third lesson of level one. We've
got 3 new characters to learn so let's get started. All of the characters in this lesson
have one thing in common. A straight vertical line right down the middle, which is important
to the meaning of these characters. These 3 characters are used in lots of different
words. But their basic meanings are top, middle and bottom. Let's take a look at them in details.
Do you remember how to say top in chinese? The word l'm looking for can also mean up,
above and over. Right the word is shàng, and you can think as a horizontal line as
being like the ground and all the important stuff here is on top of that line, or above
ground. This is how it's written stroke by stroke.
This is the same character that's
in the word, morning, zǎo shàng.
And the word for evening, wǎn shàng.
And this is also the same shàng that means last, as in last week. Shàng ge xīng qī
and last month shàng ge yuè.
Great, that's our first character.
This is our next character. This character
is the opposite of shàng. It's xià. Xià has lots of meanings, it can mean bottom or
down or under or below. This character is almost like a upside down version of shàng.
That lone vertical line stays in the middle, but the horizontal line is on the top and
as if all the important stuff is happening below ground or under that line. Here's how
it's written stroke by stroke.
This character is used in the word afternoon. Xià wǔ.
It's also used in the phrase yí xià that indicates a quick action. And it makes your words sound
softer and less stiff. You use it with the verb like kàn as in kàn yí xià, take a quick look.
And you can also find the character xià when talking about next week, xià ge xīng qī
and next month xià ge yuè.
Ok, that's for the character xià.
Now our last character means middle or center.
How do you say that in chinese? Right, it's zhōng,
with the character for zhōng, you will again got the lone straight line down the middle to
use as a reference point. Then you've got a rectangle in the middle, it's like somebody
says I'm gonna draw a circle around the middle of this line.
Here's how it's written stroke
This is a very important character in China, since it's part of the word for
China zhōng guó. Literally middle kingdom. And it's also part of the word for chinese
language, zhōng wén. Literally middle kingdom language.
This is also the character that you find in the word noon or mid-day.zhōng wǔ.
Shàng
Xià
Zhōng
So now you know the characters for top middle and bottom.
In our next lesson, we will take on 3 more
hàn zì. But first I should tell you xià cì jiàn. See you next time.