Speak Real Chinese

Your animal sign or Chinese zodiac is precisely determined in the lunar calendar, which is not the same as the Gregorian calendar, the calendar which people normally use. As a result, if you were born 1964 in a Gregorian calendar day, it’s possible that you were born in 1963 in lunar calendar instead. But it could also be 1964 because those two calendars still have 90% match. So In order to know your Chinese zodiac, first you have to find out what your birthday is in lunar calendar. How do we get to know that?

First open this web page in a new browser tab. You should see a page simiar to the following picture. I marked in the picture 3 red boxes which will help us follow the instructions easily.

1. Select your birth year and month in the upper red box which contains 2 text boxes.
2. Click your birth date in the biggest red box.

Now you should see your Chinese zodiac in the right up corner, in the smallest red box, a Chinese character within brackets. Try to recognize which one is yours in the following table.

If your animal sign is ‘pig’, then you say ‘wǒ shǔ zhū’. ‘wo’ (我) means I, and ‘shǔ’ (属) means ‘category’. So ‘wǒ shǔ zhū’ (我属猪) is meaning ‘My Chinese zodiac is pig’. Yes, Chen Feng shǔ zhū. Listen to the audio if you want to learn how to pronouce 12 animals precisely. BTW, tell us what your animal sign is with a comment. It’s gonna be a lot of fun.

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