Lesson 4 of Integrated Chinese takes a big bite out of that juicy piece of linguistic meat we like to call “talking about hobbies.” It’s time to learn that in China “watching movies,” “reading,” and “listening to music” are considered real hobbies (not just something everyone does), and more importantly, to talk about it!

One of the important lessons you should be gathering from this lesson is the amazing versatility of the word 打 (dǎ). As IC tells you, its basic meaning is “to hit; to strike.” This is all well and good, and it seems to make sense to extend it to most sports, where it means “to play [a sport].” Before long, though, you’ll be learning to apply the verb 打 to all kinds of things where it doesn’t make much sense. (To strike a telephone? To hit playing cards?? To beat a discount???) Don’t worry, though… for now you’re getting cozy with the idea of striking various balls. This is fine.

I’d also like to briefly mention the word 电视 (diànshì). It means “television.” The Chinese characters literally mean something like “electric vision.” Makes sense. When I first started learning Chinese, I never had problems memorizing the character 电 (diàn). Maybe it’s because it’s used commonly, or maybe the character has some kind of logic that just “clicked” in my brain. But the 视 (shì) of 电视 (diànshì) I found easy to forget. That is, until I started paying attention to the two component parts that make up the character. The right side is easy. It’s the basic character 见 (jiàn) meaning “to see” which we just encountered in IC Chapter 3 (turn to page 74 if you don’t believe me!). You might not be familiar with the left side, though. Turn to page 23 of your IC textbook and look at #27 in the list of radicals. There it is. It has two forms: 礻 when it appears on the left side, and 示 for other cases. What a character dictionary will tell you, however, is that the 示 character was originally a depiction of an altar! (I think you can probably see it.) So in this light, 视 (shì) is made up of ” 礻 + 见.” What better way to think of TV than “electric altar of seeing?” Awesome. Little discoveries like this are the joy of studying Chinese characters.

It’s important not to get too caught up with this kind of method… That is not the real origin of the character 视 (shì). But if you thought that Chinese people’s minds are filled with correct character etymologies from childhood you’d be wrong. Memorize these characters by whatever tricks work for you! If you ever need to seriously study Chinese character etymology, it gets waaayyy easier once you have enough characters under your belt.

Finally, I have to warn you about the word 睡觉 (shuìjiào). As your book tells you, 觉 has both the readings “jiào” — as in 睡觉 (shuìjiào) — and “jué” — as in 觉得 (juéde). You’ve been warned early, though. You know to look out for it. If you’re at all like me, this won’t be a big problem. The problem that I had was after I came to China. I knew 睡 (shuì) meant “to sleep,” and I knew that 睡觉 (shuìjiào) meant “to sleep.” No problem. But there’s actually a very similar word which means “to fall asleep” that my untrained ears confused with 睡觉 (shuìjiào) for a really long time. So, at the small cost of an extra vocabulary word for your weary brain to take in, I’d like to share this word with you now to spare you the confusion I went through. It’s 睡着 (shuìzháo), “to fall asleep.” (Cruelly, the character 着 (zháo) also has multiple pronunciations, but we won’t worry about this right now.) Just compare these two words:

• 睡觉 (shuìjiào), to sleep
• 睡着 (shuìzháo), to fall asleep

Note the readings for the second characters. Pay attention to the differing initial consonants (j vs. zh), the differing vowel sounds (-iao vs. -ao), and the differing tones (4th vs. 2nd). Unless you’re a language genius, these differences will be a bit of a challenge to get the hang of, but at least now you know these very similar words with very similar meanings will be coming at you, and as a wise cartoon once said, “knowing is half the battle.”

OK now, if you haven’t 睡着ed on me yet, it’s time for the Lesson 4 vocabulary list in PDF form!

• IC Level 1, Lesson 4 Vocabulary

I have not been overwhelmed by your vocabulary questions in the past, but once again… if you ask, they will be answered.

-John Pasden