Class Notes: Understanding Three Chinese Time-related Characters

Objective

To learn how three Chinese characters are used to describe times of day related to meals and general time concepts.

Key Points

1. Three Characters for Early, Midday, and Late

• These characters denote time phases:
  • Early (morning, breakfast)
  • Midday (lunch)
  • Late (evening, dinner)
• This provides an easy way to refer to breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

2. Vocabulary for Meals

• "fan" (饭): Generally refers to meal.
  • zao fan (早饭) = breakfast (early meal)
  • wu fan (午饭) = lunch (midday meal)
  • wan fan (晚饭) = dinner (late meal)
• "can" (餐): Another, more formal word for meal.
  • zao can (早餐), wu can (午餐), wan can (晚餐)

3. Using the Time Characters for Day Parts

• zao shang (早上): Early - morning
  • Means "on the early," literally morning.
• shang wu (上午): Before noon
  • Late morning
• zhong wu (中午): Center of midday
  • Noon
• xia wu (下午): Afternoon
  • Direct translation: "after noon"
• wan shang (晚上): On the late
  • Evening

4. Learning Tips

• Learning character by character makes Chinese easier to understand than memorizing entire words at once.

Summary Table

| Time | Character | Meal | Formal Term | |-|--|-|-| | Early | 早 | 早餐/早饭 | 早餐 | | Mid | 午 | 午餐/午饭 | 午餐 | | Late | 晚 | 晚餐/晚饭 | 晚餐 |

• Each time character can be combined with "fan" or "can" to indicate the specific meal or time.

Conclusion

• The three time-related characters help you naturally parse Chinese words for meals and times of day.
• This character-based approach is more intuitive and efficient for learning Chinese.