General Literary Chinese from Scratch/An Introduction to the Han Script

Hello! If you're here, you want to learn Literary Chinese. You have probably heard tales of how "hard" this writing system is, and this unit is designed to make it easier so you can get up and use it. Lesson thumb|300px|An Oracle bone written by Zheng (爭). thumb|300px|A good few characters come from some sort of picture! The Han script is built on pictures drawn by ancient people around 5,000 years ago, around the time of the Shang dynasty when it was just a tribe. It is truly ancient, and that means lots of writing for you to access here. A good bunch of the most basic words are still abstract versions of the pictures those ancient people drew. Here's three: 木 - Tree 一 - One 二 - Two What do you think "three" would be? With that knowledge in mind, look at these sentences: 一物曰木。二木曰林。三木曰森。 You can probably guess what this means based on context. Gloss: One thing (is) called (a) tree. Two trees (are) called (a) forest. Three trees (are) called (a) heavy forest. You now know several things: You know where numbers go. You know how the words in basic sentences are ordered. You know how to say something is called something. You know what 林 and 森 are in Chinese. You know that we don't need "is/are" or "a/the" in this language! Good luck in the next few lessons! Try looking for more characters like this (like 火 and 人!) via Wiktionary. Cangjie codes If you are not yet familiar with the Cangjie input method, this will come later. 一 - 一 (M) 二 - 一一 (MM) 三 - 一一一 (MMM) 木 - 木 (D) 林 - 木木 (D) 森 - 木木木 (D) 曰 - 曰 (A) 物 - 竹手心竹竹 (HQPHH) Notice something consistent here? Category:Book:General Literary Chinese from Scratch