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Mandarin Pathways
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Lesson 11 of 15

What Time Is It?

Tell the time, talk about a plan for the movies, and say where you live

What you'll learn

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Lesson phases

New words in this lesson

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Writing characters

Where these characters come from

A sprout pushing through earth: to be there, to exist.

A pole through the centre of an enclosure: the middle.

A pestle; borrowed for the middle of the day.

One enclosure inside another, drawn as a spiral: to go back.

A weapon with a toothed edge; borrowed for the pronoun 'I'.

Lightning streaking out of a cloud — now electricity.

Sentence patterns

Telling the time

HourMinutes
十二
十二五分
十分

Hour then 点, then the minutes — biggest unit first, as always in Chinese.

Radicals in this lesson