dog and cat

shadow22
 October 13, 2012, 01:51 PM posted in General Discussion

我们有两狗和一猫.

can someone explain the characters for dog and cat. that will help me with my studies.

women you liang ge gou bing yi mao.

thankyou, cody

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toianw
 October 13, 2012, 03:53 PM

Hi Shadow - both these characters have the same meaning element  (犭- the "dog" radical) on the left, and a (different) phonetic element (representing the pronunciation) on the right.

dog = 狗 =  犭+ 句 (gou1)
cat = 猫 = 犭+ 苗 (miao2)

In traditional characters cat is written as 貓, which uses a different "animal" radical 豸- but in the mainland it was simplified to 猫。

Also, your sentence needs a measure word. For dogs and cats (and indeed many different kinds of animals) you can use 只 (zhi1), so your sentence should read 我们家有两只狗和一只猫。    

Do you also have a 马？

 

 

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shadow22

we have 2 dogs and 1 cat. that is what I was trying to say. This helps alot what you have explained here. it is a slow process, but I do find that if I know the meaning behind the characters, it really sticks with me! thanks again, xie xie!