One: Introduction

In order to master Chinese language as a second language while without living in that language environment, it must be learned as a knowledge, not as a living habit. That is, only if the Chinese language is a logic system, it can, then, be learned as a knowledge.

There are two major differences between Chinese and English words. Some English words are having root words, such as:

• cad-, cid-, cas-; happen
  • accident, casual, decadent, incident, Occident,...
• fus-, fund-, found-; flow
  • confuse, foundry, fusion, refund, diffuse, effusion,...
• plic-, plicit, plex-, ply-; to fold, twist, tangle, connect
  • complex, complexion, complicate, explicit, implicate, ...
• ......

However, the majority of English words are stand alone words, such as, book and love. Although most of them do have an origin of some sort (Latin, Greek, etc.), their meanings cannot be read out loud from their faces.

Thus, the followings are the two major differences between English and Chinese words.

1. While some of English words have root words, 100% (not a single exception) of Chinese words is composed of word roots.
2. The original meaning of every Chinese word can be read out loud from its face, such as:
   • 書 (book) is 聿 (things made by hand) + 曰 (intelligent speaks). Thus, book is that some intelligent speaks have been transformed into a thing by hand.
   • 愛 (love) is the composite of
     1. Top part of 受 (receiving) which means holding hands,
     2. 心 (hearts)
     3. Bottom part of 夏 (Summer) which means walking slowly.
     So, love is that hearts hold hands and walk slowly together.

Yet, no one ever learns Chinese written words in this way for the past 5,000 years. Chinese words were always learned as stand-alone words which must be learned one at a time. Of course, for native Chinese, they have a life-time to learn them. Seemingly, this is a great strategy to prevent any foreigner to master Chinese written language before he is Sinicized.

For the past two thousand years, there were only six sentences describing the Chinese Etymology. For the following reasons, they did not provide a foundation for a word root Etymology.

• There were only titles ( 六 書 , six ways of constructing Chinese written words) without a detailed explanation text.
• These six titles do give an external-view outline about Chinese written word system. They do not give a detailed view about their internal dynamics. In short, they are not complete.
• For the past two thousand years, no one was able to elaborate those six titles further and to construct a system.

Now, I will give a scientific description of Chinese Etymology here. As ideographs, every Chinese written word can be viewed as a kind of birds. Thus, the following description (the genealogy and the internal dynamics of those birds) can be understood by someone who knows not a single Chinese word. There are four steps to construct the Chinese word system.

1. 字 根 (Word roots) -- word root is the rock bottom building block for Chinese written words. It cannot be reduced any further as a composite of some constituent parts. There are a total of 220 Chinese word roots, and there are two kinds of word root.
   • Root type A (RTA) -- it is also a stand-alone word. There are about 75 such word roots.
     Note: A word can often have more than one meaning. However, when it acts as a word root, it has only one meaning, its original meaning.
   • Root type B (RTB) -- about 145 word roots are not stand-alone words.
     Note: As not stand-alone words, they are often not implemented in the computer, and there is no way to print them out as a character. They are printed out in this book as jpg-graph files.
   Note: The definition of word root here is similar to atom in chemistry, which is the rock bottom building block to build up molecules and the higher structures. Of course, every atom is still having a sub-structure. However, it is a subject of physics, not chemistry. Similarly, these 220 word roots also have substructures which will be discussed in lesson three. Before then, these 220 word roots are viewed as rock bottom units for dissecting Chinese words anatomically and syntactically.
   
2. 字 符 (Modules) -- module is composed of, at least, two word roots. There are about 300 important modules, and there are two types of them.
   • Module type A (MTA) -- compound roots, they are not stand alone words. Again, they are often not implemented in the computer and cannot be printed out as characters.
   • Module type B (MTB) -- they are stand alone words.
     Note: Again, as a stand alone word, it can often have more than one meaning. However, when it acts as a module (a part of other words), it returns to its original meaning.
   By definition, a module always can be a part of other words. In this book, I have chosen 300 modules which are also sound roots.

   Note: 部 首 (leading radical) -- While word roots and modules are not explicitly described in the ancient Chinese Etymology, the 部 首 (leading radical) is the central pillar of it. In 康 熙 字 典 (dictionary), it lists 214 leading radicals. It consists of two groups:

   • 43 RTB (roots not as stand alone words)
   • 171 stand alone words (RTA or MTB)
   Obviously, 部 首 alone cannot construct a word root Etymology, as word roots (220) + modules (300) is much larger than leading radicals (214).
   
   
3. 文 字 (Chinese written words):
   • Generation zero (G0) word -- RTA words (word roots, yet as stand alone words) .
   • Generation one (G1) word -- MTB words (modules, yet as stand alone words) or all stand alone words of leading radical are G1 words. Any stand alone word which is composed of only from word roots (no modules) is also a G1 word, such as, 左 、 右 、 友 、 反 、 祭 … .
   • Generation two (G2) word -- G1 word + something (root, module or leading radical). Or, module + something.
   • Generation three (G3) word -- G2 word + something
   • Higher generation words -- G3 + ...+ ...
   Thus, theoretically, every Chinese written word can be as a module.

   The above generating procedure can be described in a different way.

   • The word roots have two different growing paths.
     1. Vertical growth -- they grow vertically, from root to trunk, to branches, then to leaves. That is, they have a deep vertical genealogy line. The vertical genealogy line is regulated or controlled by logic inference. The vertical roots are silent in their descendant words. That is, the sound of those descendant words must come from a different source. Often, they, themselves, are the sound roots (sound modules).
     2. Horizontal growth -- they grow horizontally, begetting a lot of brothers and sisters with very few grand kids. In general, the horizontal growth is accomplished by phonetic loaning. That is, the sound and the meaning of the new word is coming from the borrowed phonetic tag. The horizontal growth generates a category of new word group without the vertical depth of genealogy. A horizontal root or module is also silent in the composite words. The sound of the word in its group is provided by the borrowed phonetic module (sound module) which is the sound tag of that word.
   • The meaning of each word can be derived from one of the two processes.
     1. Logic inference from the word roots -- the meaning of this type words is the result of 100% logic inference from its composing word roots. The sound (the pronunciation) of those word roots does not make any contribution to their meaning. In fact, many those words become sound roots (sound modules) for higher generation words.
     2. Logic inference from the word roots together with the sound modules -- the phonetic component does make a significant contribution to the meaning of this type words, and there are two ways to make such contribution.
        • 形 聲 (a pure phonetic loan word) -- this type words is normally the descendants of a horizontal word root or module, and it forms a category of word group. The word root or the module defines the category while the sound tag acts as differentiator to distinguish one word from the others in the group, such as, 鰱 pronounces as 連 , 鱔 as 善 , 鯉 as 里 . They are all 魚 (fish), and their differences are pointed out with the sound tags. For phonetic loan words, they pronounce exactly the same as their sound tag.
        • 會 意 (a sense determinator word) -- this type words also has sound tag. Besides the default pronunciation, this type of sound tags can have a span of sounds. The issue of the span of a sound tag will be discussed in lesson two. The words with the same sound tag in this construction pathway do not form a category of word group while they are related logically, such as :
          • 君 (jiun, king)
            Note: jiun is its Taiwan pinying (the pronunciation), king its meaning.
          • 群 (chyun, a group) is 君 beside 羊 (sheep). King shepherding sheep forms a group.
          • 郡 (jiunn, a county) is 君 beside (land). King managing a land forms a county.
          The sound tag 君 of these words is pronounced slightly different in each word. This is the span of sound tag 君 .
          Note: While phonetic loan words are always (100%) having a sound tag, some sense determinator words do not have an explicit sound tag. Yet, they do always have a sound tag, some of them being implicit sound tags. The issue of implicit sound tag will be discussed later.
        
        For a single word which stands alone, it is not easy to know whether it is a phonetic loan word or is a sense determinator word. Yet, it becomes very easy if we check the word group of that word belonging to. The followings are the simple rules:
        • If the shared radical of a group words is silent, that group is a phonetic loan word group.
        • If the shared radical of a group words is not silent, that group is a sense determinator word group.
4. 詞 彙 (word phrase);
   For thousands years, we all see that Chinese language is not a phonetic alphabetical language. In terms of English-like alphabets, Chinese language is, indeed, not an alphabetical language. However, according to the above discussion, each and every Chinese written word is spelled out with word roots. As all those word roots (220 of them) are silent in their composed words, they do not spell out Chinese written words phonetically directly. They, however, do spell out the meaning of each and every Chinese written word. They also create some sound modules (sound roots) which provide the sound for each and every Chinese written word.

   For each and every Chinese sound, it has four tones (四 聲 ). The issue of four tones is discussed in Lesson two. In the entire Chinese verbal language, there are only about 250 四 聲 (four tones). That is, the bandwidth of the entire Chinese verbal language has only about 1,000 tones. This is one of the reason that Chinese verbal language is very easy to learn. However, this also causes some confusions as every tone carries an average of 60 words (varying from 20 to 100), that is, they all have the identical sound and tone without one bit difference between them, such as, 妻 、 悽 、 棲 、 淒 、 萋 are all having exact identical pronunciation. The words in the parenthesis are all having identical sound, (志 、 誌 、 痣 ), (貽 、 怡 、 詒 ), and (撤 、 澈 、 徹 … ). One way to resolve this kind of confusion is by adding a differentiator to form a 詞 彙 (word phrase). Thus, 淒 浪 (desolation) 、 悽 慘 (in deep predicament) 、 棲 息 (resting at...somewhere) can never be confused.

   By definition, a word of any language must consist of three elements,

   • word form, such as, book or 書 ,
   • word sound (pronunciation), such as, (book) or (shu),
   • word meaning, such as, book is a set of written or printed pages.
     Note: one word can often have more than one meaning.
   For a Chinese 詞 彙 (word phrase), it meets not only the definition of word above but with a much narrower definition. It has one and only one meaning. That is, it is more of a word than any single word which can have more than one meaning. In fact, the Chinese 詞 彙 (word phrase) is a kind of spelling word with all Chinese written word as it alphabets.

Thus, Chinese written words have three different types of alphabets.

• 220 word roots spell out the meaning of each and every Chinese written word.
• 250 四 聲 (four tones) provide the sound (pronunciation) for each and every Chinese written word.
• 60,000 Chinese written words spell out over 10 million Chinese 詞 彙 (word phrase).

The entire Chinese written word system is constructed with the above procedure regardless of what kind of words, the phonetic loan words or the sense determinator words. Furthermore, the above discussion is not a theory. In this book,

• More than 600 actual examples are given for reading out their meaning from their spelling word roots.
• About 250 four-tones are given. Reader can check them out with all known Chinese words (60,000 of them) to see how many pronunciations of words are not encompassed by those 250 four-tones.
• The genealogy of more than 8,000 most commonly used Chinese written words are mapped out. Both their meaning and their sound can be read out loud directly from this map of genealogy after reader have mastered those 220 word roots and 250 four-tones.
  Note: Most of native Chinese high school graduates know about 4,000 written words. Most of native Chinese college graduates know about (or less than) 6,000 written words.

Example one:

1. Word root (king's seal), [ 卬 、 卯 、 危 、 怨 、 令 、 命 、 卷 、 卻 …]. In this list, we can see that this word root has three different variants, such as ( 卯 、 危 、 令 ).
   Note: This word root itself might not be implemented in some computers, and it cannot be printed out. In this case, it is the right radical of the word 卯 or the bottom radical of the word 危 .
   
   
2. Module:
   • 卬 , as a stand alone word, it is also a G1 word.
     • G2 (second generation) words: 迎 、 仰 、 抑 、 昂
     
     
   • 卯 , also a G1 word.
     • G2 words: 卵 、 柳 、 貿 、 昴 、 鉚 、 泖 、 珋 、 茆 、 奅 、 窌 、 卿 、聊 、 留 、 劉
       • G3 words: 留 、 劉 have a module 卯 , not a radical 刀 .
         1. 留 ： 嵧 、 遛 、 廇 、 瘤 、 餾 、 飀 、 塯 、 溜 、 榴 、 霤 、 媹 …
            • G4 words: 籀 …
         2. 劉 ： 嬼 、 懰 、 瀏 .
     
     
   • The shared radical of ( 怨 、 鴛 、 宛 ), this module is not implemented as a stand alone word in many computer systems. Thus, there is no stand alone G1 word for this module.
     • G2 words: 宛 、 妴 、 怨 、 苑 、 駌 、 鴛 …
       • G3 words: 宛 ： 碗 、 捥 、 菀 、 蜿 、 豌 、 琬 、 涴 、 倇 、 婉 、 腕 、 睕 、 晼 、 鋺 、 綩、 剜 、 惋 、…