General Literary Chinese from Scratch/The Heavenly Stems

thumb|200px|Di Xin 帝辛, the last Shang ruler. The Heavenly Stems 天干 are amongst the oldest characters in Chinese, dating back to the Shang dynasty, where they were used for days of the week. These days, they are used as ordinals and (sometimes) their lexical meanings. They are equivalent to phrases like Person A, Person B, Person C, and so on. Perhaps the easiest way to understand the concept is the temple name system for Shang dynasty rulers. Rulers would be named based on the day they died, which would be the day to worship them. This leads to names such as this: 帝辛 Di Xin Literally: Thearch to be Worshipped on Day 8 Di Xin 帝辛 was the last Shang dynasty ruler who lost to King Wu of Zhou 周武王. Fiercely religious but seen as a sign of decadence, he was maligned after his defeat. It is useful to remember the term 帝, especially in the compound 皇帝. It essentially translates to "Emperor" or "Thearch". But back to the Stems. As seen with Di Xin, 辛 essentially means VIII as opposed to 8 if we look at this from an English perspective. Lexically, it describes a sour taste! List of Heavenly Stems Ordinal Stem Relevant lexical meaning 1 / A 甲 Armour 2 / B 乙 None 3 / C 丙 None 4 / D 丁 Robust, able-bodied 5 / E 戊 None 6 / F 己 Post-verbal reflexive pronoun, used very often! 7 / G 庚 Below-average (considered inauspicious) 8 / H 辛 Sour, bitter, pungent taste (taste being 味; 悲辛 to be sad and bitter) 9 / I 壬 None 10 / J 癸 The lowest quality. Very inauspicious! You may also see 第 used prior to a numeral to produce an ordinal, which is common when numbering chapters even during early times. 第一 第二 第三 …… Uses As the Heavenly Stems are used as ordinals, they are extremely useful for discussing patterns. You will most commonly see them in mathematics documents, which are not uncommon! Moving on from this, we can review our ……者……也 pattern from the lesson on dictionaries using the Heavenly Stems. 甲者，乙也。 A is B. From this lesson forward, all sentence patterns will be outlined in this way, so to help you get used to using them. As 己 is a reflexive pronoun and extremely commonly used, we will discuss patterns involving it now. By reflexive, think "self." If you call yourself Steve, then "yourself" is what is "reflexive". Let's use 謂 "to be referred to" as an example here. 帝謂己辛 What do you think this means? It should be noted that 己 always goes after the verb. However, there is a pre-verbal equivalent in 自. 帝自謂辛 Both are suitable, as long as the placement is remembered. It is recommended to learn these together and practice with them a lot - they are extremely flexible! Exercise I have here a list of roman numerals. Convert them to Heavenly Stems. VII V III XI VI IV Cangjie codes 天: 一大 (MK) 干: 一十 (MJ) 帝: 卜月中月 (YBLB) 辛: 卜廿十 (YTJ) 周: 月土口 (BGR) 武: 一心卜中一 (MPYLM) 王: 一土 (MG) 皇: 竹日一土 (HAMG) 甲: 田中 (WL) 乙: 弓山 (NU) 丙: 一人月 (MOB) 丁: 一弓 (MN) 戊: 戈竹 (IH) 己: 尸山 (SU) 庚: 戈中人 (ILO) 味: 口十木 (RJD) 悲: 中卜心 (LYP) 壬: 竹土 (HG) 癸: 弓人一大 (NOMK) 第: 竹弓中竹 (HNLH) 二: 一一 (MM) 三: 一一一 (MMM) 者: 十大日 (JKA) 也: 心木 (PD) 謂: 卜口田月 (YRWB) 自: 竹月山 (HBU) References Kroll, P. W., Baxter, W. H., Boltz, W. G., Knechtges, D. R., Lien, Y. E., Richter, A., Richter, M. L., & Warner, D. X. (2017). A student’s dictionary of classical and medieval Chinese (S. F. Teiser, M. Kern, & T. Brook, Eds; Revised edition). Brill.