The Chinese Zodiac Animals

With our mandarin tutor, we learned that Chinese zodiac sign is another way to know how old you are when a direct age question might come across as rude. If you are in China, you may often hear dialogues like the following.

A: 他今年多大？(tā jīn nián duó dà)- How old is he?

B: 他一九八二年十月二十七日出生，属狗(tā yī jiǔ bā èr nián shí yuè èr shí qī rì chū shēng, shǔ gǒu.) - He was born on August 27th, 1982. He belongs to the year of the dog.

In the dialogue, what does “shǔ gǒu” mean? The Chinese character “shǔ”(属) means “belong to,” and “gǒu” means “dog.”  Is the person saying that he belongs to the animal of dog?  Actually, it means he was born in the year of the dog.

In today’s Chinese language tutorial, we are going to learn the zodiac system based on twelve animals in Chinese culture. In Chinese culture, there are 12 different animals that symbolize 12 years. And it’s in a cycle. For instance, this year is the year of mouse, so in anther twelve years we'll have another year of the mouse. The animals in the cycle are in a set order. So if you can follow the order of twelve animals and know the zodiac sign of the current year and a person, then you can tell how old he is.

So what is the order? The twelve animals are, “shǔ" (mouse) “niú" (ox), “hǔ" (tiger), “tù" (rabbit), “lóng" (dragon), “shé" (snake), “mǎ" (horse), “yáng" (sheep), “hóu" (monkey), “jī" (rooster), “gǒu" (dog), “zhū" (pig). Among the twelve animals, only dragon doesn’t really exist in the real world. In Chinese culture it is a symbol of power, a force for good.

With this cycle, if you know the current zodiac year, you can figure out the rest. For instance, 2013 is the year of snake, "shé nián." If you know that and the order of the animals, you can figure out that 2014 is the year of horse, “mǎ nián.” So here comes the question, can you figure out what is the zodiac animal for next year? Join us in Skype Chinese to learn more about Chinese culture.