Chinese Language Classes
中文課
Upcoming, 2022
Year of the Tiger (虎 hǔ) begins Feb. 1
Chinese Language II - “Pronouncing Chinese Characters in Mandarin”
November 9 - December 14, 2021 - Completed
Tuesdays 10:00-11:00 am Fridays 10:00-10:30 am-lab
Chinese Language I - “Reading and Writing Chinese Characters”
September 28 - November 2, 2021 - Completed
Tuesdays, 10:00-11:00 am; Fridays, 10:00-10:30 (via Zoom)
In this first course, students will be introduced to a total of 75 different Chinese characters over a period of six weeks. In learning these characters, we will focus on the three main aspects of any Chinese character, that is its FORM, SOUND, and MEANING. We will study the FORM and MEANING of these characters; the SOUND (Mandarin pronunciation) of these same characters will be the subject of the next course, which begins on Tuesday, November 9 (see below).
What’s the Chinese character for ‘character’?
zì 字 (= Wade-Giles tzu4)
The Chinese word 字 is defined as a graph consisting of 2 or more components, or what is known as a compound character; cf. wen 文, graph consisting of a single component. The Chinese term 文 字 is usually translated into English as “graphs and characters.”
The image to the left shows the Kangxi Dictionary (1716) definition of the word “character.” The seven different paragraphs show seven different definitions. We are interested in the third paragraph.
The Chinese character for “character.”
Radical 39 + 3 strokes (= 6 total strokes)
Question: Does this character appear in the group of 75 characters shown below?
The 75 Chinese Characters to Be Learned
Classes are taught by
Tony Fairbank, Ph.D.
Dr. Fairbank has been a student of Chinese language, history, and thought since 1974, when he first read Arthur Waley’s 1938 translation of the Analects of Confucius; and also began a prolonged tug of war with Zen Buddhist practice. See the “ABOUT US” section of this website for more info.
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