Man2toe, I think it's a great idea. I think this is exactly the purpose of the 88groups and I welcome anything that'll make the characters stick. As Ken always reminds us: explore the words in different contexts. :-)

Thanks teacher and facilitator John B. Your work is priceless.

To all: There are two ways that I am thinking about utilizing this group to supplement my studies. First, occasionally I would like to take each character and try to create a sentence with it. Some of my efforts won't be correct, but, the process of trying to create sentences is very useful, and, I have thick skin on my face, so I would welcome any corrections, thoughts, constructive criticism that any fellow student would like to offer.

The second item is, as many of you already know about Man2Toe, is that I like to use traditional characters but am also trying to learn the simplified form. When I get the chance, I would like to write two lines, like below, that compares traditional with the simplified form.

廖, 扣, 裂, 愤, and 汤 廖, 扣, 裂, 憤, and 湯

I short, I am asking if this would be helpful for others to experience and to make sure that all are amenable to this contribution?

John, thanks for the heads-up about Markdown. Cool stuff.

I'm with Rich. I think that varying approaches and contributions from the community will provide great insight and help us each find out how we learn best. If John agrees to be merciless and keep us on the straight and narrow with 5 new ones each day, this could be really awesome.

You just lead us Johny B...:) give us the characters (I liked the order plan you had for the week on your Chinesepod.com discussion) and it looks like we all have different ways we can contribute, from not only seeing individual characters, but small radicals (heck, we could even talk about stroke order if peope have questions on that) to some people's desires to only memorize characters as words (2+ more characters). I would even like to see 成语(idioms) or other sayings that use one or a few of the characters for the day...whatever we can dig up. Just as long as we stay in the frame work of the lessons 5 characters, I'm sure we can learn a lot without getting overwhelmed.

On another note, Can anyone recommend a way to get EMAILED new posts through RSS feeds or something? I really stay in touch better if I get emails. I really feel out of touch with the ChinesePod community these days, due to always being at different places, on different computers studying for my Masters in Chiense studies. Ugh.

I think what I'm going to do is to leave the actual breakdowns to you guys. I'll post the basic components, and then as an exercise for you guys you can post the breakdowns, more related vocab, etc. That way both myself and the community get involved and get more out of the lessons, and I don't have to spend forever writing them (they already take a pretty long time!).

Hehe, I didn't realize that 扣球 was in today's lesson either.

RE: formatting, all of the content, including the lesson comments, are formatted using the Markdown text markup format, so you can use any of that stuff to make your comments (and lessons) pretty. Beyond that, we're looking at integrating TinyMCE or something of the sort into the system, but that will probably wait until the next version.

I hadn't listened to today's lesson before I posted 扣好，quite a coincidence.

It seems that after an edit, one needs to refresh in order to see the changes. Also, are there plans for a built in html or formatting editor?

Some more 扣's:

head word:

扣押 kòuyā - detain; keep someone in custody

扣缴 kòujiǎo - withholding

扣除 kòuchú - deduct; subtract

扣留 kòuliú - detain; hold in custody

tail word:

回扣 huíkòu - rebate

折扣 zhékòu - discount

钮扣 niǔkòu - fastener

鞋扣 xiékòu - shoe-buckle

A few starting with 汤:
汤汤 shāngshāng - turbulently flowing water
汤匙 tāngchí - tablespoon/soup spoon
汤池 tāngchí - hot spring/hot pool
汤壶 tānghú - hot-water bottle

Another one with 扣: 扣球 koù qiú - to spike the ball in volleyball

http://chinesepod.com/lessons/volleyball/discussion

A few words starting with 扣:
扣扳机 kòu bānjī - pull the trigger
扣好 kòuhăo - button up
扣篮 kòulán - dunk shot in basketball
扣针 kòuzhēn - safety pin

Looks good though Rich. ;)

Why in the world did bold some of those lines? Weird... I didn't add any HTML tags.

First post on 88Groups! :) Of course I finally came because I saw the topic I love the most, characters!

Here are a few others I looked up:

3: 裂(liè split, crack)

1: 歹(dǎi bone) +刂(刀 dāo knife) = 列(liè line up) 2: 列(liè line up [phonetic]) + 衣(yī clothes) = 裂 (liè split, crack) --- Interestingly it is the phonetical part of 裂 that actually seems to have the most meaning with it, a bone with a knife.

4 愤(fèn angry):

1: 屮(chè sprout) + 屮 + 屮 = 卉(huì grass) 2: 卉(huì grass) + 贝(bèi shell) = 贲(bēn rush, hasten / bì beautifully adorned [most likely the origin of this character, as grass with a shell can be an adornment]) 3: 忄(心xīn heart) + 贲(bēn rush, hasten) = 偾(fèn angry) --- rushing or jumping to conclusions can cause unnecessary anger

RJBerki mentioned in a comment on Cpod that 3000 characters can be combined into a heck of a lot of different words. Once we begin to get more of them I suggest that we start trying to combine them into words here in the comments. I think it'll be a good way to make them stick. E.g. I learned the characters 钱 and 包 months ago both just recently learned that together they mean wallet(钱包).

扣 = 扌side-hand radical (手) + 口 mouth radical (kou - sound)

汤 = 氵side-water radical (水) + common sound component usually: chang, yang, tang

Jenny,

Seeing the word 怒 made me think of 满江红。 I only remember the first line of that poem:怒发冲冠，凭栏处潇潇雨歇. Perhaps you and Connie can talk about this poem in a future advanced lesson.

Art

Go for it, Bazza :)

I could have a go this time unless someone else beats me to it. :)

Bazza, if I were a genie, I'd rub my hands together and do something special, but since I'm not, all I can say is "no problem, I'll add them starting next lesson" :)

Maybe you could include radical/component breakdowns of the characters as well. I find that really helps with remembering them.

That's awesome, Jenny!

One of my favorite 成语 contains 愤 as well: 愤世嫉俗 [fènshìjísú], which means "misanthropic." It's such a vivid image, hating the world and being jealous of its customs.

came across a good translation of road rage yesterday: 路怒／ｌｕ４ｎｕ４．　路上的愤怒。