Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Chinese study update


My main New Year's Resolution is to study Chinese every day, including writing. So far I've kept on task (patting myself on back).

Last week I concentrated on memorizing "banker's numbers." These characters are more complicated than the everyday use ones, and are akin to spelling out the numbers in English when writing a check. For example:

The normal number 1 is written . This can easily be changed to 2 (二), 7 (七), etc.

The banker's number for 1, however, is , which is nearly impossible to alter.

Here's a list in case you're curious:

  1 一 壹 yī
  2 二 貳 èr
  3 三 參 sān
  4 四 肆 sì
  5 五 伍 wǔ
  6 六 陸 liù
  7 七 柒 qī
  8 八 捌 bā
  9 九 玖 jiǔ
10 十 拾 shí


During my last visit to the bank, I was quite proud to be able to fill out my deposit slip from memory. However, that pride slipped into embarrassment; having recently moved, I didn't know how to write my new address.

So, that's what I'm concentrating on this week.

桃園縣 Taoyuan County
蘆竹鄉 Luzhu Township
段,號,樓 Section, Number, Floor

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