Monday, October 5, 2009

Something New

Today I did something new, I saw a sign for Free Chinese Classes every Monday evening, and I went! I learned how to count (and write #'s) in Chinese!

It was actually quite simple, there are really only 11 main numbers to remember (0-10)

Chinese -- # --> Pinyin - (Pronounciation)
零 ------ 0 --> ling - ("Ling")
一 ------ 1 --> yi - ("ee")
二 ------ 2 --> er - ("rrr")
三 ------ 3 --> san - ("sahn")
四 ------ 4 --> si - ("Ssuh")
五 ------ 5 --> wu - ("woo")
六 ------ 6 --> liu - ("le-OH")
七 ------ 7 --> qi - ("chee" [like cheese lol])
八 ------ 8 --> ba - ("bah")
九 ------ 9 --> jiu - ("g-OH")
十 ------ 10 --> shi - ("shUH")

Pronunciation can be a little tricky, but once you get the hang of it, you can say all the numbers 0-99!

It's kind of like in the French language (for those of you who have taken French), for example, the number 20 would be 2 x 10 (2 tens), so:
20 -->
二 十
er shi
(2 + 10)
for 11-19 you say ten + (#), so:
11 -->
十 一
shi yi
(ten + 1)
12 -->
十 二
shi er
(ten + 2)
13 -->
十 三
shi san
(ten + 3)
and so forth.
Pretty simple, right? :)

And also important, further on:
Hundred --> bai ("bYE")

Same concept as before, 200 would be 2 x 100 (2 hundreds), so:
200 would be-->
二 百
er bai
201 would be -->
二 百 零 一
er bai ling yi
(2 hundreds, zero, 1)
315 would be -->
一 百 十 五
san bai yi shi wu
(3 hundreds, 1 ten, five)
Get it? :)

Also important,
Thousand --> qian ("chee-on")
Same concept, 4000 would be
四 千
si qian
(4 + thousand)
2009 would be
二 千 零 九
er qian ling jiu
(2 + thousand + zero + nine)

(zero/"ling" is only said once, since you already specified that it is thousand)
"Er qian ling jiu" is also the current year - 2009. (now you can say the year in Chinese!)

There, now you learned something new!

TRY THESE ON YOUR OWN:
(leave your solutions (in Pinyin is fine) in a comment)
1. 16
2. 22
3. 99
4. 500
5. 5001
BONUS: 888

GOOD LUCK!

2 remarks:

Katie Marie said...

dude. you are CRAZY. but also awesome! haha. I sang in a Chinese Madrigal last spring and it was really cool learning the language. Are you going to the class again?

Amy Lauren said...

What can I say? I love to learn & try new things lol, such a nerd. and yeah, I'll probably keep going to the classes! Why not? it's free :)