A Chinese character a day, keeps the doctor away

[linguaholic]

From now on, I would like to introduce a new chinese character every day.

Today is day 1, so I would like to start with one of the most frequent Chinese characters.

This is the chinese character 的 (de). The traditional character looks the same (also 的). The meaning is "possessive article"

Some sample sentences for you and yours:

我的妈妈四十八岁。 //  My mother is 48 years old.

她的哥哥很聪明。  //  My brother is very intelligent

我的书在哪儿？    //  Where is my book?

.

Feel free to provide more definitions and sample sentences for the character 的。

[linguaholic]

Today, I will introduce two new characters, as I did not have time to upload a new one yesterday. Let us start with the character 是, which stands for the verb "to be" in English. (Click on the "second" sequence picture and you will see the sequence in "zoom mode".)

Sample sentences:

他是我的朋友。        //  He is my friend.

你是不是德国人？      //  You are from Germany, right? // Are you German?

今天是母亲66岁生日。//  Today it is my mother's 66

Lionel Messi 是世界上最好的足球运动员。  // Lionel Messi is the best football player in the world.

[cinderr]

Thank you but I am not up to this quite now! It is very complicated!

[Hedonologist]

Nice idea! Maybe you could do a common one and a less common one, as I've already studied Chinese for a short while I was already acquainted with those two characters. I'm looking forward to more though.

[linguaholic]

I might do more difficult ones in another thread though as this should be a help for beginners. Would that be ok then for you?

[Daimashin]

This is a great idea but may I also suggest that you should first complete the beginner section before moving on to intermediate or expert so that learners can get to the basics.

[linguaholic]

You are right Daimashin. Anyway, I do not have time for this at the moment, but after my exams I might add a character or too a day and provide some sample sentences for each character. I will most probably stick with easy (high frequency) characters first, that's a good idea.

[Sly14Cat]

You haven't posted on this in a while, does that mean it's not happening anymore?

[linguaholic]

It does not mean that it is not happening anymore at all, however I have been very busy recently so I stopped doing it. Still, if you have a question about Chinese/Chinese Characters, feel free to ask me about it at any given time! :grin:

[XiaoXing]

I don't know how to find good images of stroke order, but

I can post  a new word for beginners until this picks up again.

今天

jin1tian1

今天是我的生日。 Today is my birthday

今天太热了。 Today is too hot.

今天你想做什么? What do you want to do today?

[XiaoXing]

吃

chi1

to eat

你想吃什么？ What do you want to eat?

ni3xiang3chi1shen2me?

我想吃三明治。 Want to eat a sandwich.

wo3xiang3chi1san1ming2zhi

我没吃。 I haven't eaten.

wo3mei2chi1

[linguaholic]

Hey XiaoXing

Thank you for those posts! I should probably provide some new material here in this thread.

I am studying Chinese at the University of Zurich, so I got lots of characters to present :=)

Best wishes

Lingua

[Zhenni]

去 qù
This means to go, leave or depart. It is a verb.

Example sentences:

你去哪儿？Nǐ qù nǎr? [Pinyin] which means Where are you going?