Level 29 Complete

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Phase 4 Paragraphs

说实话，你的家人会觉得太好了!

How are you finding the longer texts that have come up in Phase 4? Do you find that they are expanding your *feeling* for grammar? Are there any texts that you particularly liked? If so, have you tried to shadow them?

事儿！

The character/word 事 is one of the essential characters in the language. After all, it means “thing” or “matter,” so it’s not that difficult to imagine that you’ll hear it all the time.

一件事 - 事件 - 事情

The measure word for 事 is 件 (it’s also weirdly the measure word for clothes 衣服, but that’s for another time). 这件事 would, therefore, mean “this thing” or “this matter.” 事 by itself and 事情 are similar in meaning, but 事件 is larger. What’s up with that?

Swapping the Measure Word & Noun

事件 is an example of a type of word that puts the measure word *after* the noun. Whenever this happens, it means “all of [insert noun].”

In Chinese, the measure word is always placed in front of the noun when referring to a specific amount of that noun. However, one way to refer to all of a particular noun in Chinese is to place the measure word after the noun. Therefore 人口 has the meaning of “all people within a city or country.”

So how does this help? Well, understanding rules like this allows you to leverage the power of your brain’s “language module” and apply this to other words which follow the same rule:

一本书 (yīběnshū)＝ one/a book
书本 (shūběn)＝ books in general

一匹马 (yìpímǎ) ＝ one/a horse
马匹 (mápǐ) = horses in general

一张纸 (yìzhāngzhǐ) = one/a piece of paper
纸张 (zhǐzhāng) = Paper in general

As long as you know the character meanings and that you can use them in this way, there’s no need to study them individually. This makes the learning process far more efficient in the long run.

The Returns Are Starting to Come In

We’ve talked many times about how learning word-by-word is less efficient than learning character-by-character. Take a look at the following words and see if you can guess the meaning:

实在
真实
现实
实习
实体

(Answers below).

Although none of the above words are high-frequency enough to learn in the first 36 levels, you can still learn them quickly. Knowing the characters means that mastering these higher level words won’t be challenging. That’s not to say they’ll require 0% effort, but the lag between seeing the words for the first time and acquiring them is far shorter than those silly “word-by-word” learners. Their foundations in each character aren’t strong enough.

But wait, if you still aren’t too sure about what they mean simply by looking at the two characters, don’t forget that you’re also at the level where you can derive context from full sentences (like a hero).

你为什么那么生我的气？当时我实在不知道情况！

我对你的感情是真实的。

你还在想她吗？她不想和你在一起，你应该面对现实！

我在Google公司实习。

Mandarin Blueprint是一个网上学校。 Sichuan University是一个实体学校。

We bet you are close to understanding what these words mean already. Assuming you’ve been primarily using Mandarin Blueprint’s material, you haven’t seen these words before this email. See how simple Chinese is?

Keep Smashing It,

Luke & Phil

Answers:

实在 - (adv.) truly, genuinely
真实 - (adj.) true, real, authentic
现实 - (noun) reality, actuality
实习 - (verb) to intern (实习者 - intern)
实体 - thing that has a material existence (as opposed to a conceptual, virtual or online existence)

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