Stepping Stones Lesson Two

Existing Vocabulary

Dates

Instead of having unique names for the months of the year, Chinese simply numbers the months 1-12.  The name of the month, therefore, is just the character for that month’s number followed by the character 月, which means month or moon.  So, in the passage above, “九月” means “September.”  The day of the month is indicated by the character for that day’s number followed by the character 日, which means day or sun (Note: In Chinese, the month is always indicated before the day.).  Therefore, the full date in the passage above, “九月九日”, means “September 9th.”  The character 号 (hào) is also commonly used in place of 日. [Additional Reading]

Names

In English we sometimes see surnames that are also ordinary words in the English vocabulary.  In Chinese this is much more common, and, with the absence of capital letters, it is critical to be able to use context to determine when a character is a surname and when it is simply a word.  For example, in the passage above the character 方 is a surname, but in other cases it can act as the character for “square.”  In this case we know it is a surname because it would not make sense for an “old square” to accompany the narrator in climbing the mountain. [Additional Reading]

Once you've studied the vocabulary and can read each line of the story with comprehension, you are ready to go on to the next step.