While I'm in Hong Kong, I will be studying Mandarin/Pútōnghuà. And my Chinese final exam is on Thursday. So every day this week, I will do an article on a new Chinese word with pronunciation, example sentences, character meaning, etymology, usage, special notes on stroke order, and if I can manage it, usages in popular media, twitter and/or literature where they are relevant. I want to learn Traditional characters, so wherever the traditional commonly differs from the Simplified I shall include them after the simplified or in brackets where there is only one or two different characters in a sentence. My assumption in these articles is that they are not for absolute beginners of Chinese: Ideally, they are suited for people at my level: People who have been studying Mandarin for one year outside of China.
My first object of analysis is niánjí 年级, which is the word that you use when you're talking about which "year level" or grade of school you are at. It's a counter word, so it always comes after numbers and before nouns, as in the sentence 你几年级？／ Nǐ jǐ niánjí? ／lit: you how many year level? / trans: what is your year level? 是三年级学生 / Wǒ shì Sān niánjí xuéshēng / I am a third year student. Next year, after I complete my exchange, I will be a 四年级学生. 我的妹妹唸几（幾）年级？Wǒ de mèimei niàn jǐ niánjí? 我想。。。我的姐妹都在TAFE唸一年級。
Synonyms include 等级, Děngjí, which I guess, since 级 means "level" by itself and 等 can mean "grade/class" on its own e.g. 共分三等 /Gòng fēn sān děng / (something that has been) classified into three grades, indicating a more general meaning than 年级, which literally means "year level." 品级 / Pǐnjí can be used for "grade" as well, but since 品 means goods, it may refer to the quality of merchandise or something. 级别 / Jíbié refers to one's level within an organisation as opposed to their year level within the marking system, e.g. 教授级别 / Jiàoshòu jíbié / professor level. or 学生级别 / Xuéshēng jíbié. For instance, 可以申请教练级别的对应关系 / 可以申請教練級別的對應關係 / Xuéshēng jíbié kěyǐ shēnqǐng jiàoliàn jíbié de duìyìng guānxì / Students may choose the teaching level curriculum (That's not the literal translation, but if you check the website, which is one of many martial arts schools in China, you can tell the meaning from context.) 年度 ／niándù refers to the the calendar year, e.g. 年度计划 / 年度計劃 / Niándù jìhuà / annual plan.
Now for the characters: 年 can be tricky for beginners to write nicely because they don't realise that the vertical line through the middle must go last. But as a basic character with a similar pronunciation to the Japanese nen, it is self-explanatory. 級 has the phonetic component ji which it shares with 及 and极 (as in 好极了）, and the radical means "silk," which I have no idea how to explain. I mean, why on earth would you use a wood radical for 极？
You may notice that a lot of words have two characters with the same meaning, such as 等级. I'm not sure myself yet why this is the case, I think it has something to do with how Classical Chinese has had to adapt to European style writing. Another thing you may notice is that when reading Chinese and trying to get the meaning, you often have to read the entire sentence (at the very least) to get the meaning of the various components. This is because Chinese, like English, is highly inflected, meaning that meanings are dependent on the location in the sentence.
The meaning is the same for written Cantonese (pronunciation: nìhn4kāp1), but not for Japanese (nen), which omits the 級. The first part of 三年学生 sannen gakusei sounds almost similar to Mandarin!
＊Note: Example sentences are taken from the Cambridge Chinese dictionary or scribe origins.
My first object of analysis is niánjí 年级, which is the word that you use when you're talking about which "year level" or grade of school you are at. It's a counter word, so it always comes after numbers and before nouns, as in the sentence 你几年级？／ Nǐ jǐ niánjí? ／lit: you how many year level? / trans: what is your year level? 是三年级学生 / Wǒ shì Sān niánjí xuéshēng / I am a third year student. Next year, after I complete my exchange, I will be a 四年级学生. 我的妹妹唸几（幾）年级？Wǒ de mèimei niàn jǐ niánjí? 我想。。。我的姐妹都在TAFE唸一年級。
Synonyms include 等级, Děngjí, which I guess, since 级 means "level" by itself and 等 can mean "grade/class" on its own e.g. 共分三等 /Gòng fēn sān děng / (something that has been) classified into three grades, indicating a more general meaning than 年级, which literally means "year level." 品级 / Pǐnjí can be used for "grade" as well, but since 品 means goods, it may refer to the quality of merchandise or something. 级别 / Jíbié refers to one's level within an organisation as opposed to their year level within the marking system, e.g. 教授级别 / Jiàoshòu jíbié / professor level. or 学生级别 / Xuéshēng jíbié. For instance, 可以申请教练级别的对应关系 / 可以申請教練級別的對應關係 / Xuéshēng jíbié kěyǐ shēnqǐng jiàoliàn jíbié de duìyìng guānxì / Students may choose the teaching level curriculum (That's not the literal translation, but if you check the website, which is one of many martial arts schools in China, you can tell the meaning from context.) 年度 ／niándù refers to the the calendar year, e.g. 年度计划 / 年度計劃 / Niándù jìhuà / annual plan.
Now for the characters: 年 can be tricky for beginners to write nicely because they don't realise that the vertical line through the middle must go last. But as a basic character with a similar pronunciation to the Japanese nen, it is self-explanatory. 級 has the phonetic component ji which it shares with 及 and极 (as in 好极了）, and the radical means "silk," which I have no idea how to explain. I mean, why on earth would you use a wood radical for 极？
You may notice that a lot of words have two characters with the same meaning, such as 等级. I'm not sure myself yet why this is the case, I think it has something to do with how Classical Chinese has had to adapt to European style writing. Another thing you may notice is that when reading Chinese and trying to get the meaning, you often have to read the entire sentence (at the very least) to get the meaning of the various components. This is because Chinese, like English, is highly inflected, meaning that meanings are dependent on the location in the sentence.
The meaning is the same for written Cantonese (pronunciation: nìhn4kāp1), but not for Japanese (nen), which omits the 級. The first part of 三年学生 sannen gakusei sounds almost similar to Mandarin!
＊Note: Example sentences are taken from the Cambridge Chinese dictionary or scribe origins.
