Basic Language | Shi

	Pinyin	shí (second tone)
	English	10; ten
	Pronunciation is a bit tricky as it's more like 'shur' than anything else.

A memorable character as you just have to remember that the Roman numeral for ten is X and then just rotate the symbol and you get the Chinese character for ten. Distinguished from shi (correct) only by its tone so you have to be careful with pronunciation. In fact the 'shi' sound is one of the most frequently used in Chinese and the same basic sound with its four tones variants leads to fifty listings for the character in my dictionary all pronounced as shi (including: lion, pledge, room, business, power, official, market, arrow, pig, eat, stone ....). This demonstrates how pinyin struggles to be useful on its own, you really need the written character to tell them apart.

liu	shí	liu

six	ten	six	= six tens and six = sixty six