General Literary Chinese from Scratch/Tilling the Fields with 有

thumb|350px|A rice paddy (zh 田) in Laos. Irrigated fields date back over 5,000 years in ancient China. The yellow river (黃河) can be credited for some of the earliest periods of this, where millet zh 稷 was among the first crops domesticated. This would allow for one of the largest civilisations in history to form. where one of the most common punishments was to have to work fields for up to 5 years! In this lesson, I want to give you some very basic vocabulary that can be used to handwrite some rudimentary sentences. Above all else, we want to get you writing. Grammar Let's learn one of the most important words in any language: zh 有 to have. This word is used in myriad contexts beyond how it works in English: It can be used to describe the environment, for example, which allows for very flexible writing when starting out. It is as straightforward as this: 人有手 People have hands. Vocabulary There are two words from the Cangjie Input Method that I want you to know and write with: zh 田 - Field; originally, this referred to a rice paddy, which has been cultivated in East Asia for thousands of years. zh 山 - Mountain(s) We will be looking at some agrarian vocabulary here: zh 耕 - to plow zh 種 - Seeds; usually used with the above. zh 犁 - a plow. The handle is zh 耒, a pictogram similar to zh 木 and zh 本, which should be relatively easy for you to write! zh 井 - A well, usually groundwater. Remember when we talked about the Five Elements? We also have the Five Grains (zh 五穀), which have existed since at least the Zhou dynasty of China. Literary Chinese is full of these, and they will often be referred to offhandedly. They are a good source of vocabulary, so let's look at these to describe your field. zh 稻 - Rice (Oryza sativa) zh 黍 - Broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum) zh 稷 - Foxtail millet (Setaria italica), also written as zh 粟. zh 麥 - Wheat or barley. zh 菽 - Legumes, pulse, soybeans (Glycine max). These grains were extremely important to the ancient Han Chinese who made this script. The remains of the plants would be used to thatch their rooves, especially wheat, millet, and rice. Knowing the five grains was considered extremely basic knowledge for the Zhou writers: Not knowing them was often used as an insult! Exercises You can now define the Five Grains. I want you to try doing it using a verb you learned from a previous lesson. Now that you can do that, how about describing a field with the characters you know? Cangjie codes 有: 大月 (KB) 黃: 廿一田金 (TMWC) 河: 水一弓口 (EMNR) 耕: 手木廿廿 (QDTT) 種: 竹木竹十土 (HDHJG) 犁: 竹弓竹手 (HNHQ) 耒: 手木 (QD) 井: 廿廿 (TT) 五: 一木一 (MDM) 穀: 土木竹弓水 (GDHNE) 稻: 竹木月竹難 (HDBHX) 黍: 竹木人水 (HDOE) 稷: 竹木田金水 (HDWCE) 粟: 一田火木 (MWFD) 麥: 十人弓戈 (JONI) 菽: 廿卜火水 (TYFE) References Ch'ien, Ssu-ma (2016). The Grand Scribe's Records, Volume X: Volume X: The Memoirs of Han China, Part 3. Indiana University Press. p. 171. ISBN 978-0253020697.