CONTENT QUESTION WORDS: Please see Pleco for the Chinese characters of the questions.

1. Shei2 who – WHO ex., -Wei1, ni3 shi4 shei2? Hello, who are you?
2. Shen2 me – WHAT ex ., Zhe4 shi4 shen me? What is this?
3. Zen3 me – HOW/WHAT ex., Ni zen me le? What happened to you?
4. Zen3 me yang – HOW is it ex., Ni shenti zenmeyang? How is your health?
5. Ji3 – HOW MANY (few number) ex. Ni you jige haizi? How many children do you have?
6. Wei4shenme -WHY ex. Ni weishenme chuan2dao4? Why do you preach?
7. Duo1shao3 -HOW MANY? HOW MUCH? (for any number) ex., Zhege duo shao qian? How much
is this?
8. Shen2me shi2hou4 -WHEN ex., Ta shenme shihou lai? When does he come?
9. Nar3 / na3li -WHERE – ex., Ni zhu zai nar/nali? Where do you live?
10. Na3xie1 WHICH ones – Naxie shi nide shu? Which ones are your books?

RADICALS

A Chinese radical is a graphical component of a Chinese character under which the character is
traditionally listed in a Chinese dictionary. They are used to index the characters for Chinese dictionaries.

Radicals can have one of the following functions, or both:

1. Semantics- providing part or whole of the meaning;

2. Phonetics- giving the sound to the character or something close to it.

Some radicals are complete characters in their own right. Some have more than one form like ren2
(person).

CONCEPT OF KEY

Every character has one and only one radical with the function of “key” which allows to find the
character in a dictionary . In many cases, the radical on the left or on the top of a character is the KEY.

Please look at your respective GC for some radicals.