Word of the Day

It has been suggested that I use my fledgling grasp on Chinese to do a word of the day post every once in a while. I have wanted to do this for sometime, but I have never gotten around to writing it. Teaching Chinese through a blog is not the easiest endeavor but I will give it a try. Instead of just teaching a single word, however, I will introduce you to several words each time. Before we begin lets lay some ground work. There are a couple rules that I need to explain to help you understand pronunciation.
The thing that sets Chinese apart from Western languages is that it uses tones. We use tones, to a limited degree, in English. For instance, if you want to ask a question, just raise your inflection or tone at the end of the sentence. (You using that?) In Mandarin, however, if you use the wrong tone, it changes the meaning of the word. This is the thing I often struggle with. I actually have a pretty good storehouse of vocabulary words, but the tones remain my nemesis. How often they thwart my attempts at communicating effectively even when I know the right words!

Tones: There are five tones in Mandarin.

1st tone - A high level tone

2nd tone - A rising tone

3rd tone - A falling and then rising tone

4th tone - A sharply falling tone

5th tone - Neutral

When I give the Pinyin (literally write sound) spelling, after each syllable I will put a number 1 - 5 to indicate which tone to use. As for the phonetic pronunciation of letter combinations, use this link: http://www.chineselearner.com/pinyin/pinyinchart.htm . It is very helpful in learning the correct way of pronouncing words. Think of it as a Chinese version of Hooked on Phonic.
The word of the day is：明天 míngtiān (ming2 tian1) which means tomorrow. 天 means sky， combine it with 明 and you have literally "clear sky". That is an optimistic view of tomorrow. If you combine 天with 昨or今 you have zuótiān (zuo2) or jīntiān (jin1), which means yesterday and today.

Try to practice saying these words. I will give you more in the future that we will combine to make sentences. - 付伟国

A different language is a different vision of life.
Federico Fellini (1920 - 1993)

PS - Another nice site for translating Chinese is http://www.nciku.com/ . Check it out!