Introduction to Chinese Symbols for Furniture

Series Summary

China is by far one of the oldest nations on the face of the Earth. They’ve had a long and illustrious history, with famous dynasties, kingdoms and empires, spanning eons of time. Today, China boasts the largest national population on the planet, with over 1.3 billion inhabitants—and it is currently ranked the fourth largest country in terms of total land area. Naturally then, a country so large is bound to have branches that extend throughout the lineage of mankind, from East to West.

The Chinese also have one of the oldest forms of writing, known as calligraphy. This system comprises a complex series of lines, dots and characters that make up the Chinese alphabet. This pictographic language also employs compound character forms that signify entire words, phrases, and concepts.

In these free Chinese language lessons, expert Xi Chen will show you how to write and pronounce words for furniture items you would find around the house. She walks you through the formation of each character and explains each aspect in the process. With a goldmine of etymological background and important detail for each part of the symbols described in these lessons, these videos are an invaluable resource for the serious Chinese language student!

Video Transcript

"This is part one of Chinese words for home supplies. In this series we are going to learn some Chinese furniture names. First of all, let's look at what is the Chinese word for furniture, jia ju. Jia is home and ju, here, it means the things we have at home. So ju is more like things. So home things, they are furniture. This is jia, next let's have this strike. You can see that here the two left forwarding strokes are shorter than this one. On the right, there are two separate strokes. We come to ju, let's see here, inside are three short horizontal strokes. This is ju. Jia ju, furniture."