General Literary Chinese from Scratch/People, Big and Small

People create writing systems to share what they think. The ancients who made this script certainly loved to do that. So let's look at this: 一物曰人。 You can probably guess what the 物 is called this time. 人大。 It seems they are stretching themselves out. What might 大 mean, then? Looking back at Lesson 1, if we said a 木 (is) 大, what would it be? How about a 大木? 人夨。 大人夨。 Hopefully, you are not doing what they are doing here! But wait - what must this mean, then? As mentioned before, you do not need to have "is" in Literary Chinese, so to say "The person is big", you just say "Person big." Likewise, you need nothing to say someone is doing something either. "Person tilt head." Oops - maybe that gave something away! But now you know how to describe something as big or small, and how to say something is tilting their head. And before we move on - the opposite of 大 is 小! 大木，小火，火大，小木! What happened to the 木 there? First it was 大, then there was a 火, then it was 小. Here is what you've learned so far... 一 二 三 曰 物 木 林 森 人 火 夨 Plus, a few extras! 女 - Woman 子 - Child 母 - Mother 父 - Father Try using them! And use them plenty! Here's an example of what you can already do: 一物曰子。一物曰父。二人曰子父。 Cangjie Combinations 一: 一 (M) 物: 竹手心竹竹 (HQPHH) 曰: 日 (A) 人: 人 (O) 大: 大 (K) 木: 木 (D) 夨: 女大 (VK) 小: 弓金 (NC) 火: 火 (F) 二: 一一 (MM) 三: 一一一 (MMM) 林: 木木 (DD) 森: 木木木 (DDD) 女: 女 (V) 子: 弓木 (ND) 母: 田卜戈 (WYI) 父: 金大 (CK) Category:Book:General Literary Chinese from Scratch