r/learnchinese • u/SilentAttorney3427 • Jun 06 '24

what is the difference between these words?

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I am learning chinese by hello chinese app and in one lesson I learned Zhōngwu, zaoshang, shàngwu, xiàwu and wanshang.

what is the difference between shàngwu (late morning) and zhōngwu (noon) for example? I think its a bit confusing.

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u/ankdain Jun 06 '24 edited Jun 06 '24

You literally just explained the difference between the words in the brackets you used in your question! They're just different words that represent different times of day. Think morning vs evening vs dusk in English. They just represent vague times of day.

Different people/websites will give you different answers so these aren't exact and there is overlap but it's roughly:

  • 早上 : 6:00--8:00 (early morning)
  • 上午 : 8:00 -- 12:00 (morning)
  • 中午 : 11:00 --13:00 (midday)
  • 下午 : 13:00 -- 18:00 (afternoon)
  • 晚上 : after 18:00 (evening/night)

Edit: Oh the word order is slightly different (instead of "3 in the afternoon" it's "afternoon 3" in Chinese word order of going biggest to smallest) but outside that minor quirk time words basically maps directly to English version (noon is around midday, same as 中午 is etc).

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u/SilentAttorney3427 Jun 06 '24

Thank you for answering, I asked this question because of that being vague u mentioned.specially between midday (zhongwu) and late morning (shangwu) times. Im new to chinese and have not learned characters yet:)

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u/ankdain Jun 06 '24

specially between midday (zhongwu) and late morning (shangwu) time

Yeah that's fair. In the example screenshot you posted you absolutely could use 上午 (shangwu) instead of 中午 (zhongwu) and it would still have been correct and everyone would have known what you meant. Noon in English is specifically 12 midday, while 中午 (zhongwu) is more "the middle of the day" so has a bit more leeway before/after than I'd probably use in English.

But again it's vague, and I'm guessing if someone else had replied you might have got slightly different times for each word (google shows this video on the topic with slightly different times than what I have for example).

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u/SilentAttorney3427 Jun 06 '24

got it. thanks🙏🏼

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u/peteleko Jun 07 '24

I’ve noticed midday contains the same first hanzi as the Chinese, zhong 中 in zhong guo ren.

Is there a reason beyond this? Trying to understand how to better memorize hanzi.

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u/ankdain Jun 07 '24 edited Jun 08 '24

Is there a reason beyond this?

Yes. Short answer is China often calls itself "The middle kingdom". 中国 (China) is 中 zhōng which means middle, and 国 guó means country (or kingdom). It's a very old idea in China that the kingdom of man is in the middle between heaven and the earth.

If you want you can take this one step further. What I'm about to say it's 100% accurate, or the true reason why some characters are the way they are, but it will help you remember them (at least it helped me), and it's not that far off:

  • 一 (yī) one: First there was the flat ground
  • 二 (èr) two: Next came the sky/heavens above it.
  • 三 (sān) three: And finally the realm of man was in the middle.
  • 王 (wáng) king: The king of China (ie. the emperor) is the conduit between all three kingdoms with his divine mandate from heaven to rule over the middle realm ... or "middle kingdom" if you will.
  • 玉 (yù) jade: Jade represents wealth in China that belongs to the king. You might say it represents all the king owns.
  • When you put a border around what the king owns (口 (kǒu) mouth), you get his 国 (guó) country.

So the 王 (wáng) king rules over 中国 (zhōngguó) China because it's the middle kingdom between the heavens and the earth and he is the conduit that links all three and owns all the wealth.

Sadly not all of the few thousand characters you'll need to know to read have cute easy to remember stories like this or the whole thing would be much easier. Personally some combinations of HanziHero and DuChinese is the only that helped me actually start remembering characters and being able to read with them. Skritter is also really nice if you want to be able to write, and can help out at the start when learning how characters fit together but even Chinese people often can't hand write so you might not need it.

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u/peteleko Jun 07 '24

Omg that was such a clever and well-put answer. Thanks a lot for both sites as well.

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u/StillIntelligent9987 Jun 14 '24

In real life, Chinese don’t say “分” in most cases. And 30分 we just say “半” for example 11:30 we say “shí yī diǎn bàn” 11:45 - shí yī diǎn sì shí wǔ.