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Time

Posted By: Kelly9 Kelly9 | Posted On: 2009-06-14 | Article ID: 206001

Today we are going to talk about some time expressions:
Dian-o’clock
7:00 – qi dian
9:00 – jiu dian
Please try: 11:00, 5:00, 12:00
Fen – minute
7:10 – qi dian shí fen
9:25 – jiu dian èr shí wu fen
Please try: 10:20, 3:40, 12:55
Bàn – half
7: 30—qi dian bàn or qi dian san shí fen
Kè – quarter
7:15 – qi dian yi kè (one quarter)
How about 7:45 then?...... Yes, qi dian san kè (three quarters)
Note: Bàn for half you can use anywhere, while kè for quarter is only used for time expressions
2:00, you can say “èr dian”, it is understandable, but not accurate, we’d better say “liang dian”. As before all measure words, 2 will be pronounced as “liang”. (Please refer to the next blog for more about measure words).

Days of the week
Xing qi (shing chee)-- week
We consider Monday as the first day of the week, so Monday is “ xing qi yi”, so:
Tuesday – xing qi èr
Wednesday – xing qi san
Thursday – xing qi sì
Friday – xing qi wu
Saturday – xing qi liù
Sunday – xing qi qi ?? Sorry, we have some change here, as you can see if we keep counting till the seventh day of the week, it would be “xing qi qi”, but there are two “qi” together, doesn’t sound good, so we change “qi” to “tian”, so Sunday is “xing qi tian” . “tian” means “sky; heaven”.
I believe that most of people know “ xin tian dì”, “tian” means “sky”; “dì” means “earth”, so between the sky and earth, is the world, and “xin” means “new”, so “xin tian dì” means “new world”.

Nián – year
And you just need to read the digits of the year, for example, this year 2008 is read “èr líng líng ba nián”.

Yuè – month
Similar like the days of the week, January is the first month of the year, so:
Yi yuè – January
Èr yuè – Feburary
San yuè – March
Sì yuè – April
……
So keep counting till shí èr yuè – December
Logic and easy, isn’t it, I still remember that it took me a lot of time remember the twelve English words for these 12 month.

Hào – literally means “number”
Yi hào, means “the number 1 day of the month”
October 1st, is “shí yuè yi hào”

In Chinese the time expression follows the rule: from big to small, or from general to specific. It will be year-month- day. For instance, October 3, 2008, is “ 2 0 0 8 nián 10 yuè 3 hào”
You may notice that all the time expressions we talked about above are related to numbers, so it is very important to add “nián, yuè, or hào’’ after the numbers to show what time you are talking about.

Also, similar as time expression, the address in Chinese follows the same rule: from big to small, so the address should be: China, Shanghai, ** district, **Road, No. **, Building **, Room**.

 

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About The Author
Kelly9 Kelly9

Kelly Wang is author of this article on Learning Mandarin. Find more information about Studying Mandarin Online here.





 


 
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