Why these 20
English gets by with brother, sister, aunt, uncle and grandparent. Chinese does not: age, side of the family and relationship by blood or by marriage are all built into the word itself. 哥 is an older brother and 弟 a younger one, and there is no neutral term covering both. This looks like extra work until you notice what it buys — a Chinese speaker knows the shape of a family the moment somebody names its members.
For the teacher
What a learner should be able to do afterwards
- Write the everyday family terms and say who each one points to
- Use the older/younger distinction correctly: 哥 and 弟, 姐 and 妹
- Read the 女 radical as a clue to meaning across 妈, 姐 and 妹
Running it
- Teach the four sibling terms as two pairs rather than four words. 哥/弟 and 姐/妹 each differ only by age, and learners who meet them as a list of four tend to collapse them into "brother" and "sister" — which is the one thing this pack exists to prevent.
- 妈, 姐 and 妹 all take 女 on the left. Point at it once on this sheet and the radical will do work for years; it is the clearest example on the whole site of a component that carries meaning.
- A family tree drawn on the board while the sheet is being written turns the vocabulary into a diagram the class can point at. Ask each child to label their own.
- Twenty characters is a lot for one sitting. A natural split is the eight closest relatives first, then 爷奶老朋友好爱名 as a second sheet.
These notes were written from general teaching practice; not yet reviewed by a classroom teacher. If you teach and something here is wrong, we would rather hear it than not.
All 20 characters
| 家 | jiā | home; family | 10 strokes |
| 人 | rén | person | 2 strokes |
| 爸 | bà | dad | 8 strokes |
| 妈 | mā | mum | 6 strokes |
| 哥 | gē | older brother | 10 strokes |
| 姐 | jiě | older sister | 8 strokes |
| 弟 | dì | younger brother | 7 strokes |
| 妹 | mèi | younger sister | 8 strokes |
| 儿 | ér | child; son | 2 strokes |
| 子 | zǐ | child | 3 strokes |
| 女 | nǚ | woman | 3 strokes |
| 男 | nán | male | 7 strokes |
| 爷 | yé | grandfather | 6 strokes |
| 奶 | nǎi | grandmother; milk | 5 strokes |
| 老 | lǎo | old | 6 strokes |
| 朋 | péng | friend | 8 strokes |
| 友 | yǒu | friend | 4 strokes |
| 好 | hǎo | good | 6 strokes |
| 爱 | ài | to love | 10 strokes |
| 名 | míng | name | 6 strokes |
Questions people ask
With a family word anyway. A woman your mother's age can be 阿姨, a man your father's age 叔叔, an older classmate 学长 or 学姐. Using kinship terms for non-relatives is normal and polite.