Lesson 3 · Foundational Components

Big, Small, Middle: 大 / 小 / 中

Three more pictographs — and this trio earns its keep almost immediately: 大/中/小 (big/middle/small) is exactly what's printed on every drink, snack, and clothing size you'll meet while travelling.

Your three new components

大
 
dà
big, large
3 strokes
中
 
zhōng
middle, center
4 strokes
小
 
xiǎo
small, little
3 strokes

Quick recall — click each card to flip it:

大
dà — big, large
中
zhōng — middle, center
小
xiǎo — small, little
大 looks like 人 for a reason. 人 (Lesson 1) is a person seen from the side, legs apart. 大 is the same two legs (丿, ㇏) with one extra stroke — a horizontal bar across the top, like arms stretched wide. "A person with arms spread as wide as possible" became the pictograph for "big." (Wiktionary: 大)
中 is your own course's name. 中文 (Zhōngwén, "the Chinese language") and 中国 (Zhōngguó, "China," literally "middle country") both use this character. You're learning to read 中文 — that's literally what you're doing right now.

Stroke order: reinforcing both rules

大 and 中 are clean demonstrations of the two rules from Lesson 1:

大 — horizontal before diagonals (same pattern as 木)

  1. 一horizontal, left to right (the "arms")
  2. 丿diagonal, upper-right to lower-left (left leg)
  3. ㇏diagonal, upper-left to lower-right (right leg)

中 — close the box, then pierce it

中 is 口 (Lesson 1's enclosure example) with one long vertical line drawn straight through the middle. The box still gets closed before anything else happens to it — the piercing stroke comes last of all:

  1. 丨short vertical (top-left of the box)
  2. 𠃍horizontal turning into the right vertical (one stroke)
  3. 一bottom horizontal, closing the box
  4. 丨long vertical, piercing top to bottom — drawn last

小 contains a hook (like 女 and 子 in Lesson 2), so rather than guess at the exact path in writing, look up the animation at StrokeOrder.com before practicing it by hand.

Where the payoff shows up

大+丶=太

tài — too, excessively / very. "Big" plus one extra dot — more than big. (Wiktionary: 太)

太 shows up constantly in spoken and written complaints and compliments alike: 太贵 (tài guì, "too expensive"), 太好了 (tài hǎo le, "great!" — note 好 from Lesson 2 reappearing), 太多 (tài duō, "too much").

Check your recall

Which component means "big / large"?

太 (大 plus one extra dot) most commonly means:

中 is built from 口 plus what additional stroke, drawn last?

On a drink menu, 大杯 most likely means:

Go further

As always, the Outlier Dictionary of Chinese Characters is the deepest source if you want the full etymological story behind any of these; Wiktionary entries are linked inline above for a free second opinion.

Out in the world: look for 大/中/小 anywhere sizes are marked — drink cups, clothing tags, food portions. It's one of the few character sets you'll get to test immediately, the next time you order something.

Something unclear, or want to go deeper on any of this? Ask your teacher — that's what these sessions are for.