Hello! Welcome to ChineseFor.Us Hands-on Writing: I’m Lili.
And I’m Chuck. Today we’ll start with the basic strokes.
All Chinese characters are constructed by strokes, there are only a handful of them,
and once you know how to write them, the logic in their construction, and the order you’re
supposed to write them in, you will be able to write every single Chinese character no
problem. That’s right. Chinese characters may look
confusing but once you learn the basics, it’s not as difficult as you might think. There
are only 5 or 6 basic strokes, the rest are just different combinations or ways to write
them. But in our series, we’ll discuss 11 basic
strokes, that way you’ll be even more prepared for writing those seemingly complicated characters.
And today we’ll start with the first 3. I’m sure you’ve already printed out the
practice sheet from our website, if not there’s a link to download it below, and you’ll
need to have a pen or pencil ready.
Also, there’s homework for each video as well. Each practice sheet will cover all the
characters discussed in the video, and you’ll be able to practice as many times as you want
simply by following the tracing guides! This is héng横, or “horizontal”. It’s
written from left to the right. Like this. Easy, right? Be careful that for each stroke,
you write it in one single stroke, without going back and forth like this. And also,
don’t write it backwards like this.
Try practicing it a few times.
Now can you find our héng 横 in this particular character?
Here it is. This character is pronounced shí, meaning ten. How about this one? It means
son and its pronounced “zǐ” and here is our héng.
Here’s one more. It means three, it’s pronounced sān 三. Did you notice that there
are three héng 横or horizontals in this character? Great!
After héng横, is our second stroke: shù竖, or vertical. It’s written from top to bottom.
Once Again, you don’t want to go back and forth like this, and don’t write it backwards,
or there’s a good chance the character won’t look right. Try practicing it a few times.
Awesome! Again, we’ve picked three characters for
you. The first one, means earth or dirt, it’s pronounced tǔ土. can you find shù竖in
this character? Excellent! 非常好！ Let’s try another one. Right there! This
character is pronounced gōng, it means to work.
OK, for the last one, there are two verticals, shù竖. Let’s see if you can find them?
Great! This one means ear, and is pronounced ěr耳.
And our last stroke for today is called diǎn 点 or dot. This is what it looks like, and
here’s how you write it. Try it on the practice sheet a few times!
OK. Now that you know how to write diǎn点. Here’s one of the most commonly used Chinese
characters, it’s pronounced mén, and it means “door”. [3 second pause] were you
able to find diǎn in this character? （门） Easy, right? Now how about this one? xiǎo小,
it means small or little. Did you notice this stroke here? It kind of looks like a diǎn点,
but it’s a different stroke. You can see that diǎn点 is a small dot that
falls from top left to bottom right whereas this one falls from top right bottom left.
Here’s our diǎn点. OK, one more. There it is, this character is cùn, it’s
a unit of length in China that’s similar to an Inch.
Now you’re probably wondering how you can make use of these basic strokes. Well, we’ve
picked two characters for you. They’re all constructed by the 3 basic strokes that we
learned today. You can find them on your practice sheet as well.
The first one is shàng上, it means “up”. Follow my stroke order and trace it on your
paper. The guides are there to help you identify which stroke goes first. But when you write
the character by yourself, here’s how you’ll be writing it. One, two, three, that’s three
strokes. I remember practicing writing characters a
bunch of times to memorize them. It helps a lot for recognizing and being able to read
a character if you actually write them down a few times.
Right! Writing is the best way to understand the structure.
And if you understand the structure, memorizing the shape or look of the characters comes
easy. here’s the second one. It looks like an upside down shàng上 , right?
对！Correct! It is xià下 and it means “down”.
So it’s the exact opposite of shàng上 or up. That’s easy to remember. Here, we’ll
show you how to write it. It’s really easy. Just like this. Follow
the stroke order, one, two, three. Congratulations! You just wrote two Chinese characters!
If you want to practice some more later, we’ve prepared some homework for you, you can download
the printable file from our website. Just click the link below to download it. And next
time we’ll discuss three more strokes: piě撇, nà捺, and tí提! See you next time!
xièxie nǐmen zàijiàn谢谢你们！再见！