theglossary

thejayfather believes in education. let me share some of mine with you, in the form of some of the Chinese i've been learning. below is a table that consists of some of the characters I have learned simply by their being commonly used or highly useful. in the left column is the character itself, the middle is the Pinyin, or Romanization of that character (not always done the standard way, many are my version of what the character should sound like) and the final column gives a rough translation. if your computer is having a hard time rendering the characters, and just gives little boxes or symbols, you will need to download Chinese text display support.

some Chinese characters i've learned to decipher

character	Pinyin	meaning
台	tai	Taiwan
中	zhong	middle
北	bei	North
東	dong	East
南	nan	South
西	hsi	West
市	suh	city
心	shin	heart
水	shuei	water
國	gwo	country
好	hao	good
不	boo	not/no
大	da	big
小	syao	small
人	ren	people
元	yuen	currency unit
分	fun	point (also minute--time)
可	cuh	allow
山	shan	mountain
口	ko	mouth
林	ling	forest (a common surname)
時	hsiuh	time
合	huh	joins things together
亞	ya	Asia
門	mun	gate
一	ee	one
二	er	two
三	san	three
四	tsu	four
五	oo	five
六	lyo	six
七	chee	seven
八	ba	eight
九	jyo	nine
十	shir	ten

after these basics, i think we're ready for some more involved words, which are often composed of more than one character. most of the following are compounds of the above characters, though some are just for the sake of curiosity. the way that characters go together to form words has a bizarre sort of intuitiveness about it; it's quite interesting. behold:

some words made from more than one character

characters	pronunciations	meanings	translation
台湾	Tai-wan	Taiwan wan	name of the country
台中	Tai-zhong	Taiwan middle	central city of Taiwan
台北	Tai-bei	Taiwan North	Northern and capital city of Taiwan
台東	Tai-dong	Taiwan East	Eastern city of Taiwan
台南	Tai-nan	Taiwan South	Southern city of Taiwan
台北市	Tai-bei-suh	Taiwan North city	Northern city of Taiwan
中心	zhong-shin	middle heart	center
台北市中心	Tai-bei-suh-zhong-shin	Taiwan North city middle heart	Taipei city center
豐原	Feng-Yuen	fertile plain	the city in which i live
高雄	Kao-Hsiung	high (name)	the major city of the South
中國	Zhong-gwo	middle country	China
中國人	Zhong-gwo-ren	middle country people	Chinese person
美國	Mei-gwo	beautiful country	America
美國人	Mei-gwo-ren	beautiful country people	American
英國	Ing-gwo	England country	England
英國人	Ing-gwo-ren	England country people	English person
中文	Zhong-wen	middle language	Chinese
英文	Ing-wen	England language	English
入口	roo-ko	to go in mouth	entrance
出口	tsuh-ko	to go out mouth	exit
小時	syao-hsiuh	small time	hour
公尺	gong-tsuh	(measurement word) (likewise)	meter
公分	gong-fun	(measurement word) point	centimeter
公司	gong-hsuh	(measurement word) (unknown)	office
大小	da-syao	big small	size
東西	dong-hsi	East West	thing
可口可樂	cuh-ko-cuh-le	allow mouth allow happy	Coca-Cola (a transliteration)
摩門	mor-mun	friction gate	Mormon (a transliteration)

most of the Romanizations and translations here are mine, so please forgive any mistakes. also let me know if you have persistent trouble viewing the characters, and i'll see what i can recommend. the main thing is to download a Chinese character font and save it in your Windows font file. if the one i linked to doesn't work for you, see if Microsoft can help you figure it out, or go to the Fonts folder in your Windows Control Panel and choose "Install New Font" from the File menu.