General Literary Chinese from Scratch/The Sun, the Moon, and the Five Elements

This vocabulary lesson will teach you some of the most fundamental characters of Literary Chinese to prepare you for using the Cangjie Input Method. The characters we will be studying today are the following, almost all of which you have seen before: 日月金木水火土 And their glosses: zh 日 - Sun, day zh 月 - Moon, month zh 金 - Metal zh 木 - Tree, wood zh 水 - Water zh 火 - Fire zh 土 - Earth These form the "philosophical" branch of characters, consisting of the sun, moon, and Five Elements (or Agents), also known as Wuxing (zh 五行 lit. "five movements"). The Five Elements are heavily associated with Daoism and frequently shown in movies, anime (zh 動畫!), and other fantasy settings. The idea is that these elements counteract each other and create a balanced world. If you want to read Daoist texts, this will come up. 500px The sun and moon are included here because they form common components in compound characters. For example, when put together, they form zh 明 "bright." Used individually along with numbers, they can be used to form dates. For example... 五月三日 3rd of May Exercises Now that you know how to form dates, try to interpret the following sentences made using only characters from the previous lessons: 大火。 象在土上。 人來日本。 三旬曰月。 What do you think? Do you think you can handwrite some sentences using what you have learned so far? Maybe you can write some dates, too! Cangjie codes 五: 一木一 (MDM) 行: 竹人一一弓 (HOMMN) 動: 竹土大尸 (HGKS) 畫: 中土田一 (LGWM) 明: 日月 (AB) 三: 一一一 (MMM) 大: 大 (K) 象: 弓日心人 (NAPO) 在: 大中土 (KLG) 上: 卜一 (YM) 人: 人 (O) 來: 木人人 (DOO) 本: 木一 (DM) 旬: 心日 (PA) Category:Book:General Literary Chinese from Scratch