Hello welcome to the first video of the YoYo 300 series. This is the first lesson of level 1.
In this lesson, you will learn your first 3 characters. Very exciting. Before we begin,
I want to teach you how to say chinese characters in chinese. The word is hàn zì, hàn refers
to the hàn people or the ethic group that the majority of chinese people belong to.
Zì just means character. So now you can tell people , wǒ zài xué hàn zì. I'm
learning chinese characters. Ok, let's get started.
Do you remember how to say person
or people in chinese? Right, it's rén. That's your first hàn zì. This hàn zì is an example
of what you see is what you get character. Doesn't it look like a person walking? This
is how it's written stroke by stroke.
Let's take a look at the other words that contain
the character rén. The chinese word for man contains this character, it's nán rén. Notice
that we've given the pinyin for nán but not for rén. From now on, we will be mixing pinyin
and hàn zì all the time depending on whether we've taught the character or not. So does
the word for woman, nǚ rén.
Great, that's your first character.
For our next character,
I want you to think about how to say the word 'from' as from here to there. The word is
cóng, cóng is your second character. Can you see that it's basically just two rén
squeeze together into one character? So now you know that rén can be a character on it's
own and it can also be a component of another character. As you can see, when a character
becomes part of a new character, often it's gotta change it's shape to accommodate. In
this case, rén has to narrow itself to squeeze into the new character. This is how cóng
is written stroke by stroke.
It's pretty easy to come up with a way to remember this character.
For example, you can think of two people walking all the way from Beijing to Shanghai. Learning
hàn zì is a highly individualized process. Everybody has a different method that works
best for them. Some people like to make up little stories, if that works for you then
it's best if you can come up with these stories yourself. The more embarrassing the more observe
it is, the better it is. Because strong emotions help things stick. Alright, before we move
on let me quickly teach you a few bonus characters. I said you are going to learn 3 characters
in this lesson but in reality, it's going to be 6. But you'll see it's not extra effort.
Take a look at these 3 characters. one line, two lines and three lines. Those are the characters
for one, two and three. yī èr sān.
So easy right? Let's read this together.
cóng yī dào sān,
from one to three.
Now tell me what's the most generic measure word in chinese,
the one that's used the most with almost with any noun? Yep, it's gè. This is your last
character for this lesson. You can see that this one is just a rén on the top with one
vertical line underneath. It looks like an arrow pointing up doesn't it? Here's how
it is written stroke by stroke.
Now let's read this together.
sān gè rén,
what does that mean? Yes, three people.
Rén
Cóng,
Gè
Hey look! You are reading chinese characters,
now you know all of these hàn zì. Congratulations, you are on your way to becoming literate in
chinese. And don't forget to download the review worksheet and quiz sheet. In our next
lesson, we will learn three more characters. Alright, xià cì jiàn.