Chinese lesson. Simple Chinese Characters person and mountain

Character 人 (ren) ， human being, person, man, people

In today's lesson we try to trace the character that means person, man to its original pictogram. As you can see it was a person who bend and bow. If you see the modern version of the character you may think that the 2 strokes represent the 2 legs, while head is missing. But actually, there's never been a head. One stroke was for hands and the other one was for legs. According to ancient Chinese philosophy the human being was the most valuable creature in nature. The people back then and now probably believe that the human being has the most noble qualities.

The human being was considered the most noble as you can see from pictogram, the person is bowing, his body is like a curve. For example, when you use character 人(ren) in compound characters, then the character looks like this 亻, which is a key that means person. As in character 你 ， that means "you". 亻in this case points that the character represents human being. I give you another example the character that means "rest" is 休。 It consists of two parts one is 亻- person, 木- tree. Basically it says the person close by the tree, which means rest.

Character 山 ( shan)- mountain, hill, grave

It's another simple character, in the past for chinese people mountains play a big role in a daily life.

This is one of the most ancient pictograms that is still used in Chinese language. As you can see there are three tops that stand on the ground.

Home assignment

Try to write this characters and send me pictures or videos.

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