Lesson 02 Vertical and crossed strokes 十
Lesson 02 Vertical and crossed strokes 十
We have already learned the horizontal strokes ㄧ, 二, 三 from Lesson 01, now it’s time to learn the vertical strokes and the 十 crossed strokes.
Vertical bars
The first symbol we are going to study is the Chinese symbol 川 with three vertical strokes. It’s the ancient Chinese hieroglyph for “river” and symbolized with three curved or semi-vertical lines like river flows.
It also the abbreviated name of Sichuan 四川, where comes a famous spicy hot Chinese cuisine style.
川
river, Sichuan
pronunciation: Chuān
Look at the structure of the symbol 川, there are three vertical bars. When there are more than one part in a symbol, in this case, three parts (bars) are arranged at left, middle, right position. The process for writing parts of this symbol 川 is: left bar first, then middle bar, and right bar will be the last one.
The second symbol is the Chinese word 十, the number 10. This is the crossed strokes 十 of one horizontal bar and one vertical bar.
十
ten, number 10
pronunciation: Shí
The pronunciation is “Shí”, which is a retroflex consonant in speaking Mandarin. I will add a reference link for practicing all 4 tones about Shī, Shí, Shǐ, Shì on the end of this article.
To write a cross form in Chinese, you can either start from drawing the horizontal bar from left to right first, or start from drawing the vertical bar from top to bottom.
The following example is a classic Chinese symbol 卉, which means “plants, grass.” It’s a popular words for Taiwanese female given names.
卉
plants, grass
pronunciation: Huì
You can see there are three crosses within this symbol, but the bottom two crosses are linked with the same horizontal bar.
The procedure to write this symbol is, since it contains a cross form at upper position, and two joined crosses at the lower position, let’s start from the upper part, then finish the lower part, as shown in the animation.
By the way, please help me revise the English typos and grammar to make this article much readable. Any suggestion is welcome and I do appreciate your input. I create these GIF animation with Adobe Flash, too bad I don't want to create any interactive Flash SWF format since it not compatible with some mobile systems (I only have a very old iPhone 4s), that’s why I could not develop many interactive function in this blogger so far, including a pronunciation play button of each symbol. Sorry about the inconvenience.
If you have any suggestion or other Chinese symbols needed to be created as handwriting strokes GIF animation for your study, please just let me know and help me to improve this blogger.
Thank you and see you next lesson!
Review and further study
川
river, Sichuan
pronunciation: Chuān
with pronunciation play button, calligraphic strokes animation, related Chinese words, and more…
十
ten, number 10
pronunciation: Shí
with pronunciation play button, calligraphic strokes animation, related Chinese words, and more…
pronouncing all tones of Shī, Shí, Shǐ, Shì
retroflex consonant in Mandarin
卉
plants, grass
pronunciation: Huì
with pronunciation play button, calligraphic strokes animation, related Chinese words, and more…
Learn to count Chinese number from 1 to 100
Comments
Post a Comment