6.2: Set 1, with notes

 

是	男	的	女	第	小
4+5 shì be	nán 2+5 male	de 5+3 's ~ s'	nǚ 3+0 female	dì 6+5 ordinal	xiǎo 3+0 small; young

 

馬	陳	張	誰	這	都
9~10+0	3+8	3+8	7+8	3+7	8+3
马	陈	张	谁	这
3+0	2+5	3+4	2+8	3+4	8+2
mǎ	Chén	Zhāng	shéi ~ shuí	zhè ~ zhèi	dōu
surname; horse	surname	surname	who; whom	this	all; none

Notes:

a) 是 ‘be the case’, like 明 and 昨, assigns 日‘sun’ as radical (in this case combined vertically with 疋). One [nonsense] account of the graph goes: ‘the sun, over the horizon (the horizontal stroke) feeding sustenance (‘being’) through the vertical pipe – with a valve – to mankind (人)’.

b) The graph 女, said to originate as a drawing of a woman, appears as ‘radical’ in 姓 xìng ‘surname’ , 她 tā ‘she; her’, and 好 hǎo ‘good’. 男 ‘man; male’ is a compound graph, with the elements 田 tián ‘field’ and 力 lì ‘strength’ arranged vertically (looking vaguely like a ‘man working in the fields’). In colloquial speech, nán and nǚ appear in compounds such as nánde and nǚde, with de representing the possessive and attributive marker (ie, ‘the male one’ and ‘the female one’).

c) 第 dì introduces the ‘bamboo’ radical, which when appearing on top is called zhúzìtóu ‘bamboo-character-on top’. The radical appears in graphs associated with bamboo (eg 筷子 kuàizi ‘chopsticks’) or with properties of bamboo such as segmentation (節/节 jié ‘segment; program’) or splitting (笑 xiào ‘laugh’). The ‘body’ of 第 contains 弓 gōng ‘a bow’, which appears as the assigned radical of 張/张 zhāng.

d) 小 xiǎo ‘small’ is to be distinguished from 少 shǎo ‘few’. The stroke order is dominant (the gōu-stroke), followed by left and right diǎn – as in the body of 你 nǐ.

e) The surnames: 馬 ‘horse’, originating as a drawing of the animal, is used for its sound value in 嗎 and 媽, but is assigned as radical in graphs used for words connected with horses, such as 馳 chí ‘to speed; gallop’ or 騎 qí ‘to straddle; ride’ (cf §2.5.5 below). The graph 陳/陈, also a surname, contains 東/东 dōng ‘east’ (use for its sound value) and a radical called ‘left ear’ in Chinese: zuǒ’ěrduō. Its right hand counterpart, seen in 都 dōu, is called yòu’ěrduō ‘right ear’ and is considered a different radical (and in fact, has a different source character historically). 張/张, the last of the three surnames introduced in this set, contains 弓 gōng ‘a bow’ (seen in 第), and 長/长 cháng ‘long’, used for its sound value.

f) The right hand element of 誰, 隹 (pronounced zhuī on it own), which occurs in a family of characters that includes 推 tuī ‘push’ (cf §2.7), should be noted as ‘8 strokes’ in order to distinguish it from another commonly occurring element in compound characters, 住 zhù ‘live’, with only 7.

g) The element on the left of 這 (sometimes printed with two dots instead of one) is a left-side version of a more complex graph, 辵, whose core meaning is ‘stopping and starting’. As a radical, it goes under the name of zǒuzhīr, and appears in graphs such as 迎 yíng ‘welcome’ and 近 jìn ‘near’. 言, which is given radical status when it appears on the left of the graph (or at the bottom), forms the core in this case. Notice that when it is a core element, 言 does not simplify to 讠 as it would if it were the radical; instead, the graph 文 wén ‘language’ (see §2.2 below) is used (这 ), presumably because its first two strokes match those of 言.

h) 者 zhě is the root element of a set that includes 都 dōu, 煮 zhǔ ‘to boil’ and 堵 dǔ ‘to obstruct’. (Can you identify the radicals of each?) Though there is no simplified version of 都, the element on the right (yòu’ěrduō) which is assigned as its radical, is written with three strokes in the traditional set, but only two in the simplified. A [nonsense] account of the graph, 都, goes: ‘土 ‘earth’ over 日 ‘sun’, connected by a line (丿) to suggest ‘all; everything’, with the ‘3’ at the right indicating ‘all’ 3 states of matter.’

Phrases

是不是	男的	女的	第一	第三	很小
shì bu shì	nánde	nǚde	dì-yī	dì-sān	hěn xiǎo
小李	姓马	姓张	姓陈	谁的	这是
xiǎo Lǐ	xìng Mǎ	xìng Zhāng	xìng Chén	shéi de	zhè shi…
都是	不都是	男女	我的	你们的	也是
dōu shì	bù dōu shì	nánnǚ	wǒ de	nǐmen de	yě shì

Exercise 1

Refer to the table to answer the questions below:

第—x ge	姓？	男/女 ?	？
第四 个	姓马	是男的	很饿，还没吃饭呢。
第七 个	姓毛	是女的	不饿，已经吃饭了。
第一 个	姓王	是女的	还没上课呢。
第九 个	姓张	是男的	吃饭了，但是还没上班。
第二 个	姓周	是女的	很忙，也很累。
第五 个	小马	是女的	很累，还没上课。
第三 个	小陈	是男的	昨天很累，今天好了。
第六 个	姓白	是男的	今天没有课。
第八 个	姓林	是女的	还没下班。
第十 个	姓李	是女的	已经吃了，不饿了。

Questions:

1。	谁是第一个？	第一个是男的吗？
2。	第二个是不是姓李？	第二个忙不忙？
3。	第三个姓陈吗？	他今天很累吗？
4。	第四个是男的吗？	他吃饭了没有？
5。	第五个是不是小白？	她上班了吗？
6。	第六个是男的吗？	他今天忙不忙？
7。	第七个姓马吗？	她吃了没有？
8。	第八个是女的吗？	她下班了没有？
9。	第九个已经上班了吗？	他吃了吗？
10。	第十个也吃了吗？	她姓陈吗？