比赛 (bǐ sài) is the Chinese for “competition.”
To help you remember:
● 比 (bǐ) means ”compare”
● 赛 (sài) means “contest”
As we explored in previous posts, to help you remember vocabulary you can build
groups of words which contain either character, like:
● 比较 (fairly, relatively)
● 比如 (for example)
● 比亚迪 (the BYD car company)
Or:
● 赛区 (competitive arena)
● 赛车 (racing car)
● 赛点 (match point)
But there’s another way, which is to compare and contrast words which contain the
same sound but in different tones. You might like to start by writing the words which
share the sound “bi” in a quadrant, each one representing a different tone: eg. words
with “bi” in in the first tone in the top left quadrant; in second tone in the top right; in
third tone in the bottom left; and in the fourth tone in the bottom right.
For example:
- 逼迫 (bī pò) force, compel
- 鼻子 (bí zǐ) nose
- 比赛 (bǐ sài) competition
- 人民币 (rén mín bì) Ren Min Bi (Chinese currency)
When we Think Chinese we see tones not as an irritating complication but rather as
a clever invention to keep the number of different sounds we have to remember to a
minimum by recycling each one up to four times.
This article is written by Tim Nash @ ZipF