Learn Chinese Characters 007 人

By Caren Zuo

人 (rén)

The types of charactere script (from left to right)--oracle script, bronzeware script, seal script, regular script

It draws a man’s figure in profile. The original form of “人” may reveal the revolution of human being from anthropoid apes to men, for the man stands not very straight. It only has two strokes,  which is called “piě”, (a diagonal stroke falling from right to left) and nà (a diagonal stroke falling from left to right).

Human is the creator and leader of this world. When we mention the single character “人”， it stresses that the human being which are different from other creatures in this world.

Many characters can be put before “人” to form related phrases with narrower scopes. We can say 男人， 女人，老人，白人，黑人，名人。 男人 means man, 女人means woman, 老人means the aged, 白人means the white, 黑人means the black. 名人means famous person. 劳动人民 means the working-class people.

What’s the difference of “人” and “人民” ? “人民” contains more political color, while “人” stresses the one who is different from other creatures of this world.

“人” is a radical which is related to MAN or HUMAN when it forms combined characters. This radical sometimes is transformed into “亻” （called dān rén páng  in Chinese）, which is usually put on the left side of a combined characters.

Please point out where rén or dān rén páng  lie in the following characters.

休 他 们 从 介 众

Phrases:

人口 (rén kǒu) population  

人才 (rén cái ) talents  

人民 (rén mín)  people  

男人 (nán rén )  man  

女人 (nǚ rén)  woman  

老人 (lǎo rén ) the aged  

黑人 (hēi rén) the black  

白人 (bái rén)  the white  

名人 (míng rén ) the famous