Let us learn a Chinese word Yang2 in 2015

Hello and welcome to our happy hanbridge mandarin online study center. This is our head teacher liu2 juan1 who is going to share you with the related culture of today key character 羊(yang2) because of an important fact that 2015 is the year of the goat in Chinese lunar calendar. As far as the Chinese old written language concerned, the word does not look like what it is nowadays.

1 How this word evolves into today’s look?

What you can learn from our hanbridge Chinese lesson is that the word Yang2 was a pictographic character in oracle bone script, which looked more like the front head of a goat. At that time, the strokes of it had various forms and went through from the period of Warring State to Han dynasty, the form of Yang2 was basically regulated. So what you think when it comes to the word yang2? Maybe it is the mutton.

2 In China, what does the word Yang2 symbolize?

Originally, the animal goat was served a kind of sacrifice. Why so? Because this kind of animal is rather docile animal and easy to domesticated. Offering sacrifice is a very auspicious ceremony in China, so the phonetic of yang2 is very close to another Chinese hanbridge word xiang2 (auspicious). It is no wonder that the character 羊yang2 is a part of the word祥(xiang2). And many Chinese people in ancient times write the phrase as 吉羊(Ji2 Yang2)，but they always read it as ji2 xiang2. In Chinese culture, the word yang2 symbolizes something good, kind, and beautiful. Therefore, this was always regarded as the auspicious animal.  

3 what kind of phrases can you make with the word yang2?

First of all, for example, we can say 羊年（yang2 nian2）. It refers to the year of the goat. Besides, there has been a custom for those whose animal zodiac is in this year. In Chinese we say ben3 ming4 nian2 (one’s year of fate). People always wear red clothes, socks, paints and even tie a red string on the waist to seek fortunes and avoid the audacious things. Another example of phrase is called yang2 xie1 zi, which is kind of delicious food that is the bone of the goat.

4 what does the yang2 play the role in ancient times?

At that time, ancient people would use goat and wine on the occasion of engagement. Goats serve another symbol in the wedding. Yang (goat) and yang (raise) are homophones. Chinese people all hope that they will have more offspring after they get married. Yang (raise) embraces a good wish to give birth to a good baby who will be a dutiful son because of a fact that a new born goat would kneel to suck its mother’s breast.  However, another old saying about yang2 is that shi2 yang2 jiu3 bu4 quan2 (a person’s fate of year of the goat is not auspicious). Actually, it is not scientific. There are also many outstanding people who was born in the year of the goat, such as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates.

All right, today’s mandarin hanbridge lesson online comes to a end. We hope you will learn a fresh and practical Chinese language in your life. 

Source: 

http://00000000.over-blog.com/2015/03/let-us-learn-a-chinese-word-yang2-in-2015.html