Lesson 4 (Di4 四 Ke4) – Days of the Week

Our schedules are usually built around the week, which is the norm in modern day China as well as the rest of the world. How can I express days of the week in Chinese then? This is the focus of this lesson, and the word for “week” has two characters that are written as 星期 and pronounced Xing1 Qi1.

You might have already found two big challenges here. On the one hand, these two characters look much more complicated than the ones we learned so far, and they appear to have parts in them. On the other hand, how do we make the sounds represented by the phonetic symbols X and Q?

First off, let’s analyze the forms. Of the many thousands of Chinese characters in use today, most of them are built with two or more parts known as bu4 shou3, which is commonly translated as “radicals.” Each of the two new characters in this lesson has two radicals. It’s very important to understand and memorize the meaning and/or sound of several dozen frequently used radicals in learning Chinese characters.

Let’s first focus on 星, which literally means “star” (or any kind of heavenly body that twinkles in the night sky). This character uses 日 (introduced in Lesson 3) on the top and the radical 生 (sheng1) at the bottom. This method of forming a new word is referred to as picto-phonetic, since one radical (日 in this case) indicates the meaning (which is a heavenly body, a star) and the other indicates its sound (ing rhymes with eng). [Actually, its ancient bronze script form, as shown above, may more clearly illustrate this point: a sky full of stars.]

期 is also picto-phonetic, with 月 on the right indicating the meaning (period) and 其(also qi1) indicating the sound. Put together as 星期, “period of stars,” or, more accurately, “heavenly bodies,” is a perfect translation of the term “week,” a period of seven days that are named after the Sun, the Moon, and the five planets Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn, in that order.

Please check Appendix B for how to make the sounds X and Q.

Now, let’s see how to express the seven days in a week. Sunday through Saturday are expressed as 星期 日, 星期一 through 星期六.

[In daily conversation, 星期日 is also said 星期 tian1.]

生 means “to produce” or “to give birth to.” Guess what 生日 means? You are right! It actually means “birthday.”

What about 日期? It’s the generic term for “date.”