Learn Chinese Words

The HSK is the ultimate measure of a person’s Chinese language ability. How can you make sure you’re ready? Studying the vocabulary used in the test is a big help. The newest resource on LCW will help you do that: Our HSK vocabulary pages. The words are listed under the four levels of the test.

The vocabulary list pages each contain up to 100 words, listed in order by the official numbers assigned to each vocabulary item. Under the Traditional Character column most characters are hyperlinked to entries on our sister site Chinese-Characters.org. Click to get comprehensive information about the character including alternate forms, components, etymology, and links to other sources.

The Usage column shows graphic (favorite icon) links to useful online dictionary sites which may contain usage examples for the word.

Feedback is invited, and would be much appreciated. Please leave a guest comment on the forum.

Wow, a whole year since my last post. This site has sadly become a neglected one. So many plans, so little implementation.

The LCW dictionary has suffered a temporary setback. Originally each word had its own page, but the host complained about too many inodes (I wish I had seen that coming). Later I will update the dictionary as an entirely script-based resource, but sadly time is lacking these days. In the meantime, you can still use the annotator which works as before, as well as our pointers to other online resources.

We also have a new feature which may be a big help to serious students of Chinese who would like to have a useful measurement of their progress, that is, the HSK. More in the next post.

It was time. Wordpress has come a long way since I started using it a couple years ago. I needed to upgrade. Sadly, my old theme didn’t support the new features I wanted, so I moved to a new one. It’s bolder, but I’m not thrilled with it. What do you think?

When I upgraded Wordpress it messed up all my Chinese characters. Happily, it was easily fixed. I found the answer here. Thanks so much Selina for sharing your solution.

It’s about time for an update to Learn Chinese Words! For all you five people out there who were following along with the weekly measure words, my apologies. I’ve put that on hold for now. I hope the new features I’ve added will more than make up for my lack of blog content:

First, LCW finally has its own dictionary. Not exactly original content, but a respectable dictionary nonetheless. I’ve taken every available Chinese-English dictionary I can get ahold of on the web (starting with CEDict) and put them together in one searchable database. The result is a dictionary with 300,000 Chinese words and phrases, about 200,000 of which have pinyin and English definitions. This means you’re very likely to find any word you’re looking for. There are other features that make this dictionary unique, which I will go into in a later post, but feel free to explore for yourself.

The other new feature is the “metasearch” feature. If you go to the Chinese-English or English-Chinese pages (which have been on this site for a while), you will find a new search box accompanied by checkboxes. Type or paste the word you are looking for, and select as many dictionaries as you want to search. When you press the Search button, all of the searches will appear at once, each in a separate window. Use this to compare different dictionary sites, or when searching for that hard-to-find vocabulary item. I hope you become as excited about this new feature as I am.

I hope these new features are helpful to you, and as always, I would love to get feedback.

包明光

What do a meal and a beating have in common? A measure word, of course.

This strange creature, 顿 dun4, is most commonly happily seen in company with words for meals. We know it has a darker side, however, as it has been caught with words having to do with administering scoldings, and worse. Keep an eye out for it, and beware!

三顿饭 three meals
挨了一顿骂 to get a scolding

This measure word, 匹 pi3, is used for horses, mules, and bolts of cloth. I’d like to know where that last one fits in.

一匹马 a horse

Next time: 顿

I promised you some simple classifiers, so here’s another one: 辆 liang4 is the measure word for cars and other land vehicles. That’s all it’s used for. Simple, didn’t I tell you? In fact the character itself is simple. 車 che1 is the radical and 兩 liang3 is the phonetic. Got it? Now be sure and buckle up and drive your 辆汽车 safely.

一辆汽车 a car

一辆自行车 a bicycle

Next week: 匹

Here’s one we’ve covered already, sort of. However, let’s put the spotlight on 块 kuai4 this week. I already mentioned that it can be used for a specific quantity of money, and I’m sure you’ve heard it used this way.

五块钱 five dollars

In addition, 块 kuai4 can be used to refer to a piece or lump of just about anything:

一块石头 a rock
一块木头 a piece of wood

Next week: 辆

Let’s do some more simple measure words for a while. Here’s one that’s (as far as I know) used for only one thing: plants. In fact, the character doesn’t really have any other uses, except as a measure word. Let’s take a closer look at this character, 棵 ke1. Notice the tree radical on the left. That one should be pretty familiar for you. The right side is 果 guo3, which is a pictograph of fruit on top a tree.

一棵树 a tree

Next week: 块

This week’s measure word, 根 gen1, by itself means “root” or “base”. As a classifier, it implies something is long in one dimension, like a stem. It is the classifier of long, slender objects, stick-shaped objects, and hair.

一根棍子 a stick

一根香煙 ; a cigarette

Next week: 棵