Monday, 11 June 2007

Learning Chinese R/W way - Lesson 10

The first group of chinese radicals, according to the ChangJie Input method is "Philosophical group" consisting the words 日, 月, 金, 木, 水, 火, 土.

The first two: 日 and 月, being sun and moon respectively, represents the Yang 陽 and Yin 陰in the Chinese YinYang 陰陽 Etymology. Sun is also commonly known as 太陽 and moon is also occasionally refers to 太陰.

金木水火土 are the Five elements 五行 in Chinese philosophy.
金 literally means Gold and is generalized as metal [金屬]
木 is wood. 森林 means forest, lot of 木!
水 is water. But as a radical, it is usually appears as 3 dots on the left such as 海洋 [ocean].
火 means fire. 炒 is stir-fry and 炸 is deep fry when you talk about cooking.
Finally 土 is earth. 土地 means land.

Because YinYang and the 5 elements form the basis of a lot of Chinese concepts, they are radicals of many words. We shall look at some words with these radicals in the next lesson.

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