Theres an App for that

Many of you out there have iPhones and iPod Touches assembled by suicidal Chinese workers. Although there are many to help learn Chinese, there are a few that I believe stand out and that I find particularly useful.

iCED
www.murage.ca/en/products/iced

iCED or iChinese-English Dictionary is a digital Chinese to English dictionary. It allows you to look up words in Pinyin, English or Hanzi characters. It gives the word in pinyin, traditional and simplified characters, the English translation, definition, as well as what each individual character means. It also allows you to view the characters in high resolution and perform searches for other phrases with the word. It lets you compile word lists for easy reference and download different dictionaries to use. The default dictionary has over 200,000 entries on everything built in so you dont need internet access. There has not been one thing I've looked up that didn't return any results, even my English first name. There is an ad supported free version as well as a 'plus' version with unlimited word lists and downloadable add-ons for $3.99.

Chinese Writer
http://popupchinese.com/chinese/download

An app by pop-up Chinese made to help you learn stroke order. It gives you an array of characters that you must draw in order. If you make a stroke out of order, it shows you the correct sequence. Its free.


iChinese
http://www.hubermat.com/iChinese/Home.html

If you're willing to spend a little more, you can get the iChinese Chinese Learner. It is an all in one portable app for learning Chinese. It has all of iCED's features as well as a tool for learning stroke order. It also has audio pronunciation playback, a flash card trainer and quizes. There are more lessons and plug-ins available for download. Its $9.99.

Lucky Numbers

Chinese can be very superstitious, even when it comes to things like numbers. Many buildings in China have missing floors. When numbering them, architects tend to skip floors with unlucky numbers. Below are some lucky and unlucky numbers. Note: the homophones are for Mandarin only, they may mean other things in other dialects.

2 (二 èr)
Two is a homophone for “Jade, Pearls, Luxuriant growth” symbolizing wealth. The phrase “good things come in pairs” is of Chinese origin. Two means a pair, meaning it is good.

3 (三 sān)
The character for the number three is similar to the one for birth (生 shēng), and is therefore associated with life.

4 (四 sì)
Four is the unluckiest of numbers, because it is associated with the word for death (sǐ). Many buildings in China don’t have any floors that contain the number 4 (4, 14, 24, 34 40–49).

5 (五 wŭ)
Five could be considered both lucky and unlucky. It is lucky because it is associated with the five elements in Chinese philosophy, but that’s a story for another day. It is unlucky because it is a homophone for “dirty, filthy, foul, insult, disobedient, disappoint, to hate, mistake”

6 (六 liù)
Six is quite lucky, as it is a homophone for “lovely, beautiful, gold, fluid”.

7 (七 qī)
Also considered the luckiest number in the west, seven can be considered lucky and unlucky. It is lucky because it can mean “peace, fine jade, neat, even, togetherness”. It is unlucky because the 7th month of the Chinese calendar is “Ghost Month”. Seven is also a homophone for “grief, mourning, coldness, ridicule, to abandon, to put to rest”

8 (八 bā)
Eight is perhaps the luckiest number in Chinese culture. It sounds similar to “prosper” (发 fā) and “wealth”. Two 8’s next to each other (88) bare a visual resemblance to the character for “double happiness” (囍). Some have gone to great lengths to use the number as much as possible for good luck.
• The United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Beijing is flight 888
• A man in Sichuan paid 元1.8 million for the phone number 888-8888
• A Hangzhou man offered to sell his license plate: A88888 for 元1.12 million
• The Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur have 88 floors
• TD Bank’s Chinatown branch auctioned off the safe deposit box 888

9 (九 jiŭ)
Being the highest single digit number, nine is associated with royalty (.i.e. the Emperor) and is a homophone for “long lasting”. It might be etymology of the Kowloon peninsula in Hong Kong. Kowloon is Cantonese for “Jǐulóng” meaning “Nine Dragons”.

Combinations of numbers can also form homophones with hidden meanings. Some are a real stretch though.


88 (八八 bā bā)
Beyond the fact that 8 is lucky, "bā bā" sounds like "bye-bye" and therefore is often used to say goodbye when logging out of internet chat rooms.


520 (五二 wǔ èr)
Its a real stretch but some Chinese believe the word for 520 sounds like "I love [you]" (wǒ ài).


510 (五一 wǔ yī)
Another homophone for "I love you"


There are probably hundreds of others out there. Virtually any number or number combination can have some abstract meaning.

Introduction to Pinyin

Before one can start to learn Chinese, it is critical that one learns Hanyu Pinyin. Pinyin is the standard Romanization system for Chinese. It is used to help students pronounce Chinese characters. It is mostly the same as phonetic English with some exceptions.

Below are the letters of the alphabet along with the way they are pronounced in Pinyin in bold inside a sample word.

• a       father
• c       its
• e       hen
• i        pin [and in some contexts] he
• o       go
• q       cheat
• r        urn
• u       July
• x       sea
• z       bits

Combinations of some letters can change the overall sound, they include:

• ao       how
• ch       church
• ei        hay
• ou       no
• sh       shit
• ui       wait

In some cases ‘i’ can be silent when coming after a “c” “q” “s” or “z”.

As in:

• ci       its
• qi       chip
• si       swing
• zi       bits

That’s mostly all there is to it, except for accent marks that are used for tones. If you’re a beginner, you shouldn’t worry about tones till later.

• ā       First tone
• á       Second tone
• ă       Third tone
• à       Fourth tone
• å or no mark Fifth (neutral) tone