Learn Chinese characters series-Can’t be hurt anymore

We will continue with our series of “learn Chinese characters”. In recent years, the appearance of Chinese popular words not only enriches our internet life but makes the Chinese language more touching and interesting. Most of these trendy words come from the Internet, because most of the netizens are youngsters. Those who are learning mandarin online should also notice what new is popular concerning Chinese learning.

Today, we will talk about "伤不起 (shāngbùqǐ)" which is a new popular expression in China. It means someone has already been hurt so badly that he or she cannot take any more. At first, "伤不起 (shāngbùqǐ)" was only popular in schools and on the internet, but now "伤不起 (shāngbùqǐ)" is widely used in daily life. Some television programs are using this phrase to create dramas. It has even been used as a song titled by popular singers. It’s a pretty musical song and you can take a listen. Using the normal sentence order, the sentence should be "你伤不起… (nǐ shāngbùqǐ…)", but it is now much more common to say "…你伤不起 (…nǐ shāngbùqǐ).”We put the object in the front of the sentence to emphasis our feelings. So students are exposed to many online Chinese words in their life.

They make new words or give new meaning to old words. It’s them who make the internet lively and interesting. If you are bated by many mosquito，they will say that is “new mosquito gave you continuous kisses”. All of these imply their desire for creating. In learning Chinese characters, we should continually stick to what’s new about Chinese language.

With the continuous development of society，lots of new words are created on the internet. These interesting and touching ideas deeply enrich our vocabulary and at the same time. Make your Chinese more fashionable by learning mandarin online!

A good way to master Chinese characters

For those who are learning online Chinese, they can get a lot of speaking and listening practice, which is a big advantage learning mandarin online, but they also need to do a lot of practice of writing the Chinese characters.

According to statistics by Chinese Education Bureau, a growing number of people across the world are making efforts in learning Chinese characters. Why? Because you can see Chinese characters everywhere! Sometimes, it may cause big trouble if one cannot recognize the seemingly weird Chinese characters.

To learn Chinese characters is not as difficult as most Chinese learners say. The Chinese characters do not consist of many weird irregular strokes which trouble many Chinese learners. Actually, each Chinese character can be divided into several parts, called radicals and each character has its own meaning. For example, 喝(drink) is a common Chinese character, the first time you see it, you may think it is too complicated and there is no regular patterns to follow, thus having difficulty in learning Chinese characters. However, the upper part of it was a日, which is the sun. And the lower part of it is a “人” who stands under the eave, being surrounded by something so that he can get water and drink it. Under the burning sun, people naturally get thirsty and drinking is done by mouth, thus 喝(drink)’s components include both "口" and "日", and the remaining part is a vivid picture of people drinking water. So, learning the meaning of each character is a must because it helps better understand and remember the character.

Learning mandarin online requires associative memory. Chinese characters are fairly similar to the image of the objects they represent. If the Chinese learners are able to create link between the characters and the objects, it will be much easier to learn Chinese online.

Polyphones in Mandarin Chinese

For those who want to learn Chinese characters, I think the difficult lies not in the writing part, because Chinese characters are imaginary and will be very easy to remember if you divide a certain character into parts. What really troubles the Chinese learners who learn mandarin online is the polyphone of certain characters.

The most common polyphones in Chinese for beginners are: “乐” in音乐(yīn yuè) and 快乐(kuài lè), “干” in 干净(gān jìng) and 干部(gàn bù), “似” in 似乎(sì hū) and 似的(shì de).

Once there was a foreigner who was taking Chinese for beginners, he considered Chinese people to be very arrogant after his trip to China. However, others disagreed in that Chinese people were generally famous for their modesty and humility. When asked why he thought so. He replied: “In China you can see sentences like ‘中国人民很行’, ‘中国建设很行’, ‘中国工商很行’, ‘中国农业很行’ and ‘中国很行’ everywhere in the streets, that is too pompous, don't you think so?” Actually, he has actually mistaken “银行(bank)” for “很行(very good)”. “银”resembles“很” and“行”is a polyphone，when pronounced “xíng” , it means good or okay; When pronounced “hang” in the phrase “银行”, it means bank. No wonder the foreigner misunderstood the names of the banks, polyphone is so puzzling and deceptive.

In order to learn mandarin online well, it is necessary to understand the usage of the Chinese characters with more than one pronunciation. There is no doubt polyphone is a barrier if you intend to learn Chinese well. So if you want to learn pinyin or Chinese characters, never ignore the polyphones or jokes like the one above may often happen.

Enjoy your process of learning Chinese!