AR&IO Chinese Course Episode 1: 習近平看一看

this is episode 1 in this episode and in
every episode I imagine we're gonna look at at least one simple sentence structure we're going to look at a short reading passage that will be of political interest all of the examples are of some political significance we're gonna look at one more difficult idiom and we're gonna take at least one character and break it down into its radicals which is to say break it down into its component parts thioester gen Dom shelling him and don't so ezel hi although I may not have much in common with the chairman politically I can certainly appreciate that he uses simple vocabulary and simple sentence structure in a sophisticated way however even with these short clauses the short simple phrases you find that understand what he's saying you encounter idiom after idiom after idiom so here Lula and woman we have to understand both Gulen and all and all so we kind of get to idioms for the price of one they're both very useful they're both very commonly used reading the examples to have the bottom in the stern of the screen here Buland one yen Ching ent Buland one yen Ching no matter how young you are no matter how youthful you may be now I'm using all examples that have taken from real current usage found in basically newspaper articles on the Internet you might be able to guess this is from a discussion of skincare you know moisturizers skin creams no matter how young you are you might want to spend a ton of money on skincare phocion woolen bone inching second example wouldn't or none right so Nan Goldin on no matter how hard no matter how difficult it is this is from a political statement which actually read in full was saying no matter how hard it is we still have to learn to embrace one another so interesting political sentiment Buland will none no matter how hard no matter how difficult this is all kind of level one vocabulary aside from this idiom huland wool and wool and wool gives us the sense of no matter how much notwithstanding how great the quantity the difficulty whatever it may be so our third example will induce young guy bien no matter how much I wanted to change no matter how much I wanted to change I guess I was still stuck being myself it's the sentiment of that sentence woollen without the dual we have here in this example on the bottom half of the screen woolen top it's a much wool all right no matter what he said woolen taught so much wool this is from a political context where the current leader of Taiwan is actually speaking about the man she faced off with in the elections so well no matter what he said Taiwan is nevertheless an independent country so as you can imagine this use of woolen it's adaptable to many sentiments and many circumstances and it is not always negative and tone it is not always castigating it is not always reproachful tone the actual example we have here from the chairman of the Communist Party of China from the leader of China Xi Jinping he's saying well woolen woman no matter how busy I may be no matter how busy I was right so it's actually in a positive or somewhat wistful sense that he's using it dogs horses and Dom why pretend that Chinese is easy even when Chinese is easy it's really pretty difficult and this is a great example of that Toshi kyun I did recognize this verb but I knew it from completely irrelevant words with completely irrelevant meanings you might know this from the verb meaning to smoke cigarettes you see it in signs telling you to smoke cigarettes I knew it from completely unrelated words related to abstract reasoning guess what the fundamental root meaning of this verb completely unknown to me is to pull something out to draw something out boom on toy horses Jen Dom so what he's saying is no matter how busy he may be he still has to find the time when Dom so you can also ask yourself the question would you prefer to just memorize this as a three character idiom or do you want to take the time to try to break down and understand the root meaning of this verb show tone one Joe do you want to take the time to try to memorize the range of meanings it has in combination because in this case there is a dizzying unbelievable array of meanings associated with this one simple character the first character here you need to know from the unrelated word T ASEAN well I suppose it's as related as any two words aren't Chinese the Chinese have a cultural conviction that each and every one of us has a special town a special City a special neighborhood somewhere in the world that we are indelibly and magically linked to from our birth forward and that is your Josh yang so you're Jesse on it is not the same as your hometown in English their idea of what your Jass yang is is quite different from any cultural concept we have so whether this is level one vocabulary or level 10 vocabulary if you actually talk to Chinese people you need to know this word in this concept Jesse on from a very early date in your practicing you're using the Chinese language I warned you at the start of the video that we take at least one character and break it down into its components discuss the rat holes that comprise the character and in this case interestingly the traditional character makes more sense than the simplified character you should be able to recognize the symbol for food right there at the center of the character of course the character we're talking about is young we might say Josh young this young Josh only saw meaning the characters young as in the word Josh young right in the middle we're looking at the food radical unfortunately it is a somewhat corrupted version of the food radical there's a difference between corruption and simplification just for no good reason it is not quite identical to the half-width form of the food radical that you would have seen in many different characters to the left and to the right of the food radical we have coherently enough the mirrored image of a person kneeling okay if you look this up in the dictionary you're gonna get some distracting information about the city wall we're attic one so on and so forth but without digressing into too many details you can see in the lower left corner of the screen here that we have within the historical record a much more symmetrical way of drawing this character it was two people sitting on opposite sides of a pot of cooking food and that was how we drew the character young now unfortunately if you look at the simplification of the character the modern simplification carried out with a communist party of china in the top right hand corner of the screen shown using white ink they have only kept one kneeling figure from the left-hand side of the character and of course in all versions of the character in modern use today it has been stylized to the point of in comprehensibility now you should be able to put the meaning of the phrase together even if you're unfamiliar with each and every one of the words comprising it this is tin as in Mouton Fujian and G 1414 since he it's also noteworthy that when you hear the leader of China speaking German don't there isn't anything terribly distinctive about the cue sound the consonant that we write in pinyin is Q in contrast to a CH sound that varies with dialect but it also varies depending on what bowel is paired with this consonant q 17 mojo someone might you know reproach you or correct you in the classroom if you just pronounce the letter Q as a regular CH sound but sometimes in practice that is what the Q really sounds like all right so you guys have probably guessed the meaning already right so we learned that C on is the same song that we know from Joseon and tin is the same chin that we know from Fujian muchi and sin Chi so therefore C on t man Jong amongst the town's folk when he's walking amongst the villagers him and also easel high so this is the fourth and final sentence pattern closing this short quotation so Edo Connie captain it's all easel high to have a walk around and have a look around this is a sentence pattern I use all the time in Chinese and that I've used for my first days as a beginner and I use it so frequently for the same reason that chairman C Jinping is using it here it is very easy for Chinese people to understand so if somebody asks you to do something you can say to them well I don't know if I can do it I'm not confident but I can have a try Ayesha for me as a teacher very often I would ask students in the classroom to try to do something to try to say something even though maybe they didn't know how to say it or they didn't want to do it so you'd say sure you should write so Zoe diesel candy cane shisha I don't know if anyone's ever made a list of all of the verbs that can fit into this idiom or sends better but that closes this kind of wistful reflection from chairman xi jinping what is he telling you no matter how busy he may be nevertheless he always finds the time so remember Cho the meaning of this the root like pulling the string out of a spinning top to draw something out to pull something out he manages to find the time he manages to pull out the the spare time in the gaps in between doing other things this kind of image he manages to find the time to walk around and have a look around amongst the villagers amongst the town's folk dogs hosted in Dom showing him and don't saw easel hi and I promised you there would be a reading passage here in episode 1 and indeed there is so if you would like to study this on your own we will return to it in Episode two and then you'll get analysis translation discussion similar to what you've seen here in episode one applied to this reading passage and more with the same pattern and again using examples taken from newspapers current political events of our time the first six characters are a Western name transcribed or you might say transliterated into Chinese so this is Norman by Joe on okay Norman Bethune Norman by Joanne Shahadah conch and onion Tasha Yong Ming the typhoon with a bunch of John who the Congress charged on a Joe San Shi en Lai Dow Chango see you next episode [Music]