Hi 你们好. This is ChineseFor.Us Hands-on Writing – Stroke by Stroke. 我是Lili.
Hi I’m Chuck. Thanks for joining us again!
We finished all the strokes in the last video and today we’ll talk about how they combine
to make thousands of amazing Chinese characters.
Before we start, make sure you print out your practice sheet. You can find the link below,
that way you can practice along with the video.
We’ve mentioned before that all Chinese characters are constructed by strokes, and
the character that has the least amount of strokes is 一, it only has
one stroke, 横.
And according to some linguists, the character that has the most strokes is [龖]. It’s
pronounced dá, and it means “the flight of a dragon”.
What’s interesting about this character, is that it is actually constructed from 3
龍(lóng), which means “dragon”. 龘(dá) has 48 strokes.
But, don’t worry, most characters don’t have that many strokes.
And even though there are some characters that are more complicated than others, the
way they are constructed is the same.
There are some basic rules that we need to be aware of. No.1 is that One stroke can be
used multiple times.
And here’re some examples: like 三 has multiple 横 in it, 耳 has multiple 竖 in
it。
And this one 众(zhòng). It means “crowd” or “a lot of people”. Can you find the
duplicate strokes in there?
Right! There are multiple 撇, and multiple捺.
And this is why we have rule No.2. When the same stroke is used multiple times, the size,
or length of the stroke doesn’t necessarily have to be the same.
And here’s how you write it.
Like in 三, the 3 横s are all different lengths, and in 耳, the 2 竖 are also not
the same size.
And in 后, there is a shorter 撇, and a longer one.
But how are the strokes put together then? It may seem difficult, but there are only
3 types of rules.
Construction Rule No.1. is that Strokes can be separated from each other.
Here’s one example. In the character小(xiǎo), each stroke is separated from each other.
Again in this character, 工(gōng), the 2 横 are away from each other as well.
And here’s another one, 心(xīn), it means “heart”. You can see that each stroke
is separate from the other ones.
And when you write it, they don’t touch at all.
And Construction Rule No. 2, is that strokes can also be connected to each other.
This is when two strokes are touching but without crossing each other.
Let’s see some examples.
In this character, 人(rén), 撇 and 捺 are connected.
In上(shàng) the 2 横 are connected to the 竖.
And in this character, 弓(gōng), which means “bow”, 横折 is connected to 横, and
the 横 is also connected 竖折折勾.
Here’s how we write the character.
OK. Our last Construction Rule, Rule No.3, describes the situation when strokes cross
each other.
Here’s our first character 十, this is a perfect example of two strokes crossing
each other.
And another one, 中(zhōng), the longer 竖 is crossing 横折 and 横.
OK last one, it’s pronounced 女(nǚ), meaning “female”. We can easily see the two crossing
strokes.
And here’s the how you write it.
And that’s all. Just 3 rules of construction. separate from each other, connected to each
other, and crossing each other. They apply to all characters.
No matter how complicated one character may seem, the way you write it is by simply putting
together the strokes.
And that’s what we call “Stroke By Stroke!”
Thanks for joining us again. We hope this video helps.
And don’t forget we have homework prepared for you.
This time we’ve made it more interesting, apart from the regular tracing, we’ve also
prepared some example characters in which you can spot where the strokes are separated,
connected or crossing each other!
And don’t worry, the answer key is also provided. You can find the link below the
video.
In our next couple of videos, we’ll be talking about the stroke order rules.
There are 8 of them and next time we’ll start with the first 2. Thanks for watching and we’ll see you next time!
谢谢你们！再见！