Heavenly stems

As a point of interest, the 12 earthly branches correspond to the 12 year cycle. ie: 子 zǐ Rat 丑 chǒu Ox 寅 yín Tiger 卯 mǎo Rabbit 辰 chén Dragon 巳 sì Snake 午 wǔ Horse 未 wèi Sheep 申 shēn Monkey 酉 yǒu Rooster 戌 xū Dog 亥 hài Pig

Thanks laorui. I attended an English-vernacular school, but I remember Chinese classes where the teacher divided us into 甲队 and 乙队 for class activities -- A-team and B-team. Curiously, when books are divided into volumes, in Chinese we would use 上 and 下 (up, down) rather and 甲 and 乙. Eg. Workbooks 1A and 1B become "一上" and "一下" rather than " 一甲" and "一乙". Volume I is 上册 (shang4ce4) and Volume II is 下册 (xia4ce4). Thanks again, laorui! I had no idea that these characters were "heavenly stems". Sounds so impressive...

我也同意。两天前我就写好“甲乙丙丁“。

John, No dissention so far. What does ChinesePod think about this proposal?

The Chinese Goverment has adopted the western standard of time, weight and measurement. Please let the Heavenly stems be a thing of the past.

Those are the heavenly stems?! Cool. I had no idea. To explain: in North America we might divide a class into "A" group and "B" group. However, in Taiwan the paperwork will indicate an "甲“ (jǐa) (A), "乙" (yǐ) (B), and ”丙" (bǐng) (C). So my schedule will indicate I'm teaching 英文202甲, for example. And I'll talk to whoever is teaching 英文202乙 so we coordinate a little. For reading, this would have much the same affect as when the conversations tell us 第一遍 and 第二遍. Not a big deal, but just another baby step towards an immersive environment. (And may I just add how difficult it is to find DVDs in Blockbuster when the local language has no alphabetization?!)

They are no letters. They are Heavenly Stems. And together with the Earthly Branches they preformed many functions in Classical Chinese and early Modedrn Chinese. If you want to know more of them thengo to the wikipedia article about them

I second dennisliehappo's suggestion. I admit that the subject holds interest from a cultural standpoint. However, from a modern standpoint, knowledge of these seems primarily useful for understanding character morphology/construction; though, as pointed out above, they do have modern applications.

rich, I'm not sure they actually use this system beyong A-D (甲乙丙丁) in practice, and why would we want to get rid of them I wonder. We still use roman numerals for much the same purpose (mainly for legal documents or book chapters, but still). I once showed a date on a monument in Switzerland to a Chinese friend. He had a puzzled look and asked why on earth would he want to learn *these*. Anyway, if they wanted to go above 10, they could combine those 10 Heavenly stems 天干 (tiāngān) with the 12 Earthly branches 地支 (dìzhī) making up the The 干支 (gānzhī) sexagenary cycle used for years, that starts with 甲子 (jiǎzǐ) and ends with 癸亥 (guǐhài). Apart from 甲乙丙丁 jiǎ-yǐ-bǐng-dīng ( A, B, C, D), there is also the expression 子丑寅卯 (zǐchǒuyínmǎo) underlying reasons 地支 子 zǐ 丑 chǒu 寅 yín 卯 mǎo 辰 chén 巳 sì 午 wǔ 未 wèi 申 shēn 酉 yǒu 戌 xū 亥 hài

Thank goulniky. Actually I knew about the Earthly branches, but long forgotten. I still remember getting taught about them in class and made sure I wrote them down, yet never memorized them.

So in Chinese, if there are 11+ items/groups, what do they use in place of K, L, M... etc? Double? 甲甲 甲乙 甲丙 …… ？？