Wow, feels like I’m turning a corner with Chinese.  Even though I don’t regularly “study” now, I do still talk to lots of folks in Chinese and pay attention to new words and phrases.  Here’s a sign that I’m turning a corner.  I’m starting to recognize parts of different words appearing in other words.

Here’s what I mean:  In Chinese, all characters in the written language are just one syllable.  In fact, there is no basic word that’s more than one syllable, hence mono-syllabic language.  More complex words are just combinations of these basic words.  I’ve never encountered a more complex word that’s beyond three characters.  In fact, the longest words I know are just for modern objects, something like “hair conditioner” or “wireless network”.

So here’s my recent example of words that I learned and how they fit in with other words:

can (tone 1) jia (tone 1):  means to attend something, like a meeting or a class.  The “c”, by the way, is pronounced like a “ts” together.

can (tone 1) guan (tone 1):  means to go on a tour of some place, like when you’re traveling.

guan (tone 1) ling (tone 3):  is part of the bigger phrase that I know:  “huan ying guan ling”, which is what you hear every time you go to a restaurant.  It’s basically “You’re welcome to visit this place”.

See the correlation of all the basic words.  I learned “can jia” when learning how to ask about attending yoga classes.  I knew “huan ying guan ling” from a long time ago, and I knew that “huan ying” was “welcome” and “guan ling” was “visiting place”.  So, when I learned “can guan” it was easy to understand the derivation of the word, something like “attending visit”.  Pretty neat, huh?