Deciphering a chinese menu Part 2 - Seafood

	Prawns	虾(xīa)	虫(chóng) provides the meaning and 下(xià) lends its sound
	Fish/Fish slice	鱼/鱼片(yú/yú pìan)	Sometimes this 鱼 character are used in words that sometimes give you a hint that the character is related to the sea for example abalone
	Crabs	螃蟹(páng xiè)	Notice both contains the 虫(chóng) character. By itself it means insect or bug. This character hints the meaning, if you notice above the prawn and crab all have this character in it. Other insects and snakes also have this.

Deciphering a chinese menu Part 1 - Meats

In this lesson, I thought I'd at least learn how to understand what sort of dishes are on a menu. So today I'm going to memorise the type of common meats:

Chicken	鸡(jī)	鸟(niăo) gives the meaning hint. At least with this character (鸟) you can guess that it is some sort of bird depending on the context it is used.
Duck	鸭 (yā)	Sound-Meaning character 甲(jiā) gives the sound and 鸟(niăo) gives the meaning hint
Cow or ox/Beef	牛(níu)/ 牛肉(níu ròu)	This character is just a picture of a cow, I imagine this as a cow with only one horn on the left. By adding the 肉character we get beef. This can be imagined as meat hanging on a rack or as zhongwen.com definition, an open carcass.
Pig/Pork	猪(zhū)/ 猪肉(zhū ròu)	Meaning-sound character 豕(shĭ) actually means pig, but isn't used alone anymore while 者(zhĕ) gives the sound
Lamb/Mutton	羊(yáng)/羊肉(yáng ròu)	This character is just a picture of a lamb, notice the two horns on top?

So if you memorise this your should be able to know at least what meats are on the menu. Better than nothing :) Tomorrow let's try to go through some seafood words. Yum ;)