Learn Chinese: Fingers Of The Hand

Well here's the first instalment on Learn Chinese With Me and we're starting with the Chinese for the fingers of the hand.

Why are we starting with this? Well, I've been carrying around a piece of paper with the Chinese for the different fingers on it for more than a year. Now I can finally retire the piece of paper, because it will be recorded right here.

Lesson

First, the general term for finger is shǒuzhǐ (手指). Now here is the Mandarin for the different fingers:

English	Pinyin	Chinese Characters
Thumb	dàmǔzhǐ	大拇指
Index Finger	shízhǐ	食指
Middle Finger	zhōngzhǐ	中指
Ring Finger	wúmíngzhǐ	无名指
Little Finger	xiàozhǐ	小指

Lesson Notes:

As is common in Chinese, the zhǐ from shǒuzhǐ is carried through with each of the fingers, but the leading character changes to indicate which finger we're talking about.

Of the actual fingers, there are some characters which may be familiar to Chinese learners:

• Thumb: dà 大 means big. Makes sense: the thumb is the big finger.
• Little finger: xiào 小 means small, so literally this means small finger.
• Middle finger: zhōng 中 means middle. zhōng can also be seen in Zhōngguǒ 中国 which is China or literally Middle Kingdom.

Keywords: shouzhi, damuzhi, shizhi, zhongzhi, wumingzhi, xiaozhi, da, xiao, zhong, zhongguo

Well that's all for the first 'lesson' (used very loosely!).