I created some new flashcards using a program called Wenlin (although I am also looking into Anki). The words we are using for today’s vocabulary are:
- 旅行社 (Lvxingshe=travel agency)
- 影本 yingben photocopy
- 送 (song)to send; to deliver; to give something as a gift; give a ride **tons of definitions
- 傳真 (chuanzhen) to fax
- 傳真機 (chuanzhenji) fax macine **the word “ji” is their word for machine (e.g. airplane= feiji, flight machine)
- 哎呀 (ai ya) A sort of “oh no!” phrase following surprise or dismay
- 壞了(huaile) something is broken or if huai is by itself can mean bad, to be broken “This student is really bad”
- 沒關係 (mei guanxi) “It doesn’t matter” typical phrase used when someone says they are sorry.
- 郵局 (youjv) post office “you” can be combined with other words to create a word dealing with mailing etc.
- 費用 (feiyong) is a noun meaning fee. we can take off the yong and put any other word to create bill (dianfei=electric bill
- 市區 (shiqv) urban district or city proper. “shi” can also be found in the word “chengshi” which just straight up means city
- 別的 (biede) Noun giving the idea of others “biede ren” other people
- 台（臺）中 (taizhong) Tai can be written two ways the first form is an easy short hand. This is a city name in Taipei
So those were all the vocab words from Far East Everyday Chinese (hereon called FEEC). The “v” I use to represent the weird German “u” with the two dots on top of it. V is just an easier symbol to type (considering Chinese has no “v” sound) The second set of vocabulary I have for the night comes out of Practical Audio-Visual Chinese Book 2. There is some overlap between the words, I pulled out those words.
- 然後 (ranhou) works as a conjunction using the word “then” or “afterwords”
- 先 (xian) is an adverb meaning first, in advance, seen in grammar structure indicating first one action then another.
- 離開 (likai) “to leave” in the example PAVC gives it means to leave a place.
- 起飛 (qifei) a more nuanced verb meaning “to take off ” the fei let’s us know it is related to planes (re: feiji)
- 不客氣 (bukeqi) If someone tells you thank you (xiexie) you tell them “bukeqi” your welcome
- 南 (nan) a directional word meaning south, can be coupled with words like region or side
- 海 (hai) deals with the larger bodies of water like seas and oceans
- 高 (gao) adjective (actually a State Verb) to be tall, or to be high (height, not drugs!)
- 河 (he) this noun is the word for river
- 條 (tiao) Measure word–word required between a number and noun–for objs such as: roads, pants, and fish (long and narrow objects
- 左(zuo) left
- 右 (you) right –I’ve been getting this flip flopped a lot recently.
- 街 (jie) word for street as defined as being smaller than a road (lu)
- 吧 (ba) a suggestion particle, indicates a request or suggestion such as: “Let’s go!”
The grammar for the most part today was really straight forward. The lessons in PAVC give very straightforward definitions for grammatical constructs in Chinese. So for instance we have this thing called a coverb which works with the main verb of a sentence. This isn’t exactly the equivalent of a helping verb though. So the coverb we are working with is “往” which translates to “to go toward” The toward is the key part of the definition and we need something else to complete the action, toward what? how? etc. So the structure looks like this: (from (從） Place Word (PW) 往 PW/Direction V) 從 我 家 往 左 傳，我 就 到 師大 路 了。”From my house take a left turn and I’ll be at Shida Road.” **Please Note I’m still learning and if this wrong feel free to write a comment correcting it!!** The next piece of grammar (fawen or 法文）is a discussion of the difference between similar words 部 和(he, the word for “and”) 邊. 邊 represents a side or border, a line not an area. 部 on the other hand deals with parts, sections, and areas. So the word for center is “zhong” we cannot say “中邊“ because there is no such thing as a middle side. The book also gives a description of the difference between the American way of telling direction (North, South, West, East NW NE SW SE) Instead of N or S being the main components, Chinese focuses on whether it is west (西）or east (東). So when trying to say something is north east, we have to say 東北. That second character is bei and means north. The last big piece for PAVC from tonight is the idea of an adverb being used as a correlative connector. I, like the book, hesitate to use conjunction to frequently since Chinese doesn’t connect sentences like that. You won’t see S v OBJ AND (S) v OBJ. It just doesn’t happen. This piece of grammar creates an “if-then” statement. You state the potential conditions and then continue talking about the consequence of that condition. You can often start these sentences (word for sentence is juzi or 句子) with the word “if” 要是 but it isn’t always necessary however, the other part of this structure “就“ very rarely gets dropped from the sentence. The structure looks like so: (要是) S1 V1 S2 就 V2. It’s pretty straight forward as compared to some other constructs. So an example would be: 要是 他 生病 了，他 就 去 看 醫生。If he gets sick, he should go see the doctor. The final grammar for tonight comes from the same section but deals with creating a “First…..Then….” scenario. 我 媽媽 先 給 我 錢，我 在 去 台灣。“先。。。在。。”
The big thing I am struggling with is maintaining my cool in class. I get very nervous, but I’m sure it will fade. For now I am tired and need to get some rest for tomorrow’s ventures into Chinese!