拦, 藻, 羽, 园, and 王
johnb
December 02, 2007, 07:33 AM posted in General DiscussionWe'll start the day with 拦 [lán], "to block (the way)." Though according to the dictionary it's used in a lot of compounds, none of them are very common. Instead 拦 is normally used as a verb all by itself, like: 你干嘛拦着我不让我过去？ Radical: 手 (64). Components: 扌兰. Stroke Count: 8.
Next, we'll get the day's difficult character out of the way. 藻 [zǎo], strangely enough, means both "algae" and "literary elegance." I'm not really sure how those two meanings got bundled into the same character, but thus are the joys of Chinese. Some words using the "algae" meaning of the character are 海藻 [hǎizǎo] -- "kelp" -- and 蓝藻 [lánzǎo] -- "blue green algae," the stuff that keeps breaking out in Lake Tai on the border of Zhejiang and Jiangsu Provinces. In the second meaning, there's 辞藻 [cízǎo], which means "ornate dictation" -- in English, I believe it's a matter of putting stuffing a lot of words into just a few ideas. Radical: 艸 (140). Components: 艹澡. Stroke Count: 19.
I promise the next three won't be that complex. Fourth we'll take on 羽 [yǔ], which means "feather." That word in modern Chinese is 羽毛 [yǔmáo]. By extension, my wife's favorite sport is literally "feather ball" -- 羽毛球 [yǔmáoqiú], "badminton." Radical: 羽 (124). Components: 习. Stroke Count: 6.
Where better to play "feather ball" than a 园 [yuán] -- "garden" or "park." This character is found in lots of words that, in English, end in either "garden" or "park" -- i.e., 公园 [gōngyuán] -- "public park" -- and 花园 [huāyuán]. In fact, even its less literal meanings follow the English word "park" pretty closely, i.e., 工业园 [gōngyèyuán] -- "industrial park." Radical: 囗 (31). Components: 囗元. Stroke Count: 7.
Finally, we have 王 [wáng] -- "king." In addition to this meaning, 王 is also one of the most common Chinese surnames. In compounds, it normally means some sort of ruler or leader, such as in 国王 [guówáng] -- "king" -- and 霸王 [bàwáng] -- "tyrant." Radical: 玉 (96). Components: 三丨. Stroke Count: 4.
Today's special mission is to figure out what's special about the character 王. There's something about it that's very rarely seen in Chinese characters.
bryan
December 03, 2007, 03:31 AMJohn, thanks for the nice changes in formatting to ease the accidental linking pain while cutting and pasting. I also like the way it makes the character stand out.
RonInDC
December 02, 2007, 10:17 PMRJ- In Firefox, I go to View/Text Size/Increase to enlarge text (including characters, of course). Not sure about Explorer, but would imagine something comparable.
johnb
December 02, 2007, 10:34 PMBob,
Yup, you guessed it. There aren't many characters that have radicals containing more strokes than the character itself. If only I had a prize to give... :)
As for studying, I use Supermemo for my cellphone, which lets me to flashcard repetitions wherever I'm at. It has worked wonders. As for the small size of the text and the easy to trigger link, I'll try to work something out.
RJ
December 02, 2007, 11:32 PMHi John, The prize for me will be to learn Chinese. The larger characters look great and are easier to paste. Thanks! I guess I have to buy a hand held for Xmas.
-Bob
RJ
December 02, 2007, 11:40 PMRon, you are right also. Dont know why, but it never occured to me. Thanks. -RJ
RJ
December 02, 2007, 08:26 PMJohn, the only thing I can see that is not common in regard to the character Wang is that it has less strokes than the main form of its radical. Im not sure why it is set up that way. I would think 王 would be the radical for itself and 玉. Im guessing this is not what you are referring to.
RonInDC
December 03, 2007, 01:38 AM每天五个生词我一定都跟得上!
johnb
December 03, 2007, 01:46 AMMan2Toe,
我觉得你说得对。每天都增加新的，是有点受不了。那好，我周六周日休息，给大家两天时间巩固一下该周学过的25个字。You're right, adding new characters every day is quite a bit. I'll take a break on Saturday and Sunday, then, and give everyone a chance to consolidate the week's characters in their heads. :)
bryan
December 03, 2007, 03:21 AMMan2Toe and John, 我也同意。We will all probably need a break on the weekend to rest or catch up or review or all of the above. As it is I'm already lagging a day behind.
bryan
December 03, 2007, 03:29 AMBob, for a shortcut you can zoom in (expand) by holding CTRL and striking the plus key (+). You can do this multiple times to enlarge as many times as needed. CTRL plus the minus key does the opposite. If at any time things get out of control, you can use CTRL and 0 (the zero key) to reset back to original size.
user4318
December 02, 2007, 11:51 PMon feather, I have to share a phrase I learned this summer "pluck a feather as the goose flies overhead" the practice of taking a little bit of a transaction for oneself.
RJ
December 02, 2007, 01:18 PMSo how is everyone doing? Are we keeping up? 5 characters a day doesnt sound like much until you realize how quickly it becomes 20 and you still dont feel as though any are committed to permanenet memory. I struggle to see these tiny characters. Is there someway to use a pdf or something we could print for study? Currently I transfer to excel by cut and paste which is tricky to do without triggering the link. Then I have created a ppt that when in presentation mode will show the character alone followed by the character with definition and pinyin but this is proving to be labor intensive. I would like to use the dictionary to add each to my vocab and then I will have flashcards but this is not working due to iceberg, and I realize that everyone does not subscribe to this level. Any suggestions? Hopefully I am missing something that makes this very easy. -Bob