Hello welcome back to the YoYo 300 series. This is lesson 4 of level 1. We've got 3 new
characters to learn. So let's get started.
All of the characters in this lesson contain
the same building block. Here's our first one. This is the character for the sentence
particle le. In some cases this character is also pronounced liǎo. You can find more
details about this in the review worksheet. But for now, just think of this as le. It's
a very simple character. There's a hook on top and hanging from it, is a straight leg
with the foot at the bottom.
This is how it's written stroke by stroke.
Let's take a look at how le is used. One way is in the phrase tài adjective le. Now read this with me.
Tài dà le.
Good job. You know all those characters now.
Another way to use le is to demonstrate completed action like in the sentence wǒ chī le.
I ate.
Got it ?
Tài hǎo le.
Great, that's our first character.
This is out next character. It's pronounced zǐ
It's basically just a le with a line through it as if someone has tried to strike it out.
This is how it's written stroke by stroke.
Originally this character meant baby or young
child or son. Does it look like a baby stretching his or her arms out?
This character is part
of the word for son, ér zi.
This character isn't really used on it's own anymore in modern
chinese but you often find it used as a suffix. Especially in nouns. And in those cases it
usually takes a neutral tone. Like in the words bēi zi
cup.
And xiāng zi
box
Our last character for this lesson looks like this. It's pronounced zì, it's the character
that means character. Remember how to say chinese character? Right, it's hàn zì.
This hàn zì is a zi under it's roof component. The roof is a common component that we will
see again in more characters. Often it's a clue that character has something to do with
a shelter of some sort. In this case, you can think of the roof component as being a
school, inside the school there's a kid represented by zi, who is learning how to write hàn zì.
Here's how zì is written stroke by stroke.
Let's practice, read this with me.
Sān ge zi.
Great, you just read the phrase 3 characters. Actually you now know shí èr ge zì,
12 characters
Le
Zǐ
Zì
Great, keep up the good work and xià cì jiàn. Zài jiàn.