Lesson 06 The human symbol 人

I think we have enough for the straight lines, all about the horizontal and vertical strokes in the pervious lessons. This lesson we will learn the human symbol 人, and other additions like 大, 天, and 夫.

To write the human symbol 人, the first stroke is 丿, which is a falling left stroke and it’s drew from top to bottom, with a little curvature bending left and ended with a pointed end, what we don’t do this kind of calligraphic style (pointed end of a stroke) because we are focusing on the handwriting strokes so far with normal pen or pencil, the structure of the Chinese characters we demonstrated is in plain style font.

人

human

pronunciation: Rén

Please look at the animation carefully. The first stroke (red color) is the falling curved stroke bending left 丿, draw it from top to bottom with a little curvature bending left.

The second stroke (blue color), from somewhere about the shoulder part of this human symbol 人, you start drawing the second stroke (blue color) which is also a curved stroke but bending right.

This human symbol 人 looks like a standing man with two legs wide opened and the head is facing toward the right-hand side. You know what? This is the basic kung fu standing posture while you holding both hands behind the back. (that’s why there is no hand in this human symbol 人)

The pronunciation is “Rén”, which is a retroflex consonant in speaking Mandarin. I will add a reference link for practicing 3 available tones about Rén, Rěn, Rèn on the end of this article.

大

big

pronunciation: Dà

Now we are adding a horizontal bar on the human symbol 人, as like a man opens both his arms and says, “look the size I show you, it’s so BIG!” This is the Chinese symbol 大, big, great.

The procedure to write this 大 symbol is, draw a horizontal bar from left to right first, then just complete the writing of the 人 part.

Now we can combine the 2 new symbol we have just learned in this lesson: 大 (big) and 人 (human), here is a 2-character Chinese word, 大人, it can be an adult, a grownup in modern Chinese, or big shot as in Chinese slang. In ancient times, people used this word 大人 to address the high class bureaucrat, aristocrat in this 大人 title as like “my lord, Your Excellency.”

天

sky, heaven, day

pronunciation: Tiān

This symbol is the combination of two horizontal bars 二 with the human symbol 人. As shown in the animation, draw the 2 horizontal bars first, the upper one is a little bit shorter than the lower one. Then keep writing the human symbol 人, remember the top bar (the shorter one) should be just on the top of the head of the human symbol 人.

Actually this word 天 (sky, heaven) could be decomposed as a horizontal bar ㄧ just on the head of the symbol 大 (big). Remember how we imagine the symbol 大 (big)? It’s like a man opening both arms to emphasis how big something (or himself) is, no matter what, the vault of heaven (the horizontal bar) is always on the top of his head.

Now let's create some new words with the symbols we have just learned. For example, 天 (sky, heaven) plus 人 (human) we have this 2-character word 天人, 天人 means a supreme being from heaven, or an astonishingly beautiful woman.

The symbol 天 can be used as day or the unit of day. When you put two 天 symbols together, you got a modern Chinese idiom 天天, that means “天天 everyday,” pronounced Tiān-Tiān. When Chinese people asking how are you doing something, like 你說中文嗎？ (do you speak Chinese?) and you can just reply shortly as “天天 Tiān-Tiān” (天天 everyday).

note: the phrase 你說中文嗎(do you speak Chinese?) contains five characters, and so far we have only learned the symbol 中 (middle, or China, Chinese in abbreviation, see Lesson 05), there are still 4 characters we don’t know yet: 你 (you), 說 (speak), 文 (words, language), and 嗎 (a phrase-final particle used in questions).

Just keep in faith, let’s start from the handwriting of the elements of Chinese characters, then one by one we will learn more interesting words after all,

夫

man, husband

pronunciation: Fū

The last symbol 夫 is the combination of two horizontal bars 二 with the human symbol 人. It’s like the writing of 天, but this time the head of the man 人 shows up above the two bars. You can imagine this is a man carrying a heavy wooden bar (the upper bar, and the lower bar represents his open arms), 夫 a working man, that’s why this is the symbol 夫 for husband in ancient times while most men must do laborious work to support their families.

Let’s create a new word, with 夫 (man, husband) plus 人 (human), we have the 2-character Chinese word 夫人, 夫人 is used to address a married woman respectfully, as Madam. For example, Madama Butterfly 蝴蝶夫人, 夫人 is Madam, and 蝴蝶 is butterfly, which I will add a link on the end of the article.

Thanks for your reading and practicing, any feedback is welcome.

Review and further study

人

human

pronunciation: Rén

click to view more details about this symbol:

with pronunciation play button, calligraphic strokes animation, different calligraphic styles, related Chinese words, and more…

pronouncing all tones of Rén, Rěn, Rèn

retroflex consonant in Mandarin

http://www.chinese-word.com/voice/00ren.html

大

big