Ten words for talking about the planet at HSK 5: 环境, 气候, 污染, 环保, 保护, 自然, 资源, 垃圾, 节约 and 地球.
环境保护 means environmental protection. Chinese shortens long compounds by keeping one character from each half, and 环境 plus 保护 becomes 环保 — both source words sit on this same sheet, which makes the mechanism visible in a way a wordlist rarely is. The habit is everywhere once you notice it: 北京大学 becomes 北大, 空气调节 becomes 空调. Reading comfortably means treating the clipped form and the full form as one word.
气候 (qì hòu) is climate, the long-run pattern, while 天气 (tiān qì) is what the sky is doing today. They share 气 and are not interchangeable, and swapping them is obvious to any reader. 污染 wears its meaning on the left: both 污 and 染 carry 氵, the water form of 水. Keep 节约 for conserving a resource, as in 节约用水, and 节省 for saving money or effort.
Trace the guided strokes, then write each word from memory. Say it aloud too, since this vocabulary shows up in listening sections as often as in reading. Take the topic further on the HSK 5 lessons hub, or pull extra words out of an article and add them with the free worksheet generator.
Words on this worksheet: 环境 (huánjìng) — Environment; 气候 (qìhòu) — climate; 污染 (wūrǎn) — contaminated; 环保 (huán bǎo) — environmental protection; 保护 (bǎohù) — protect; 自然 (zìrán) — natural; 资源 (zīyuán) — Resources; 垃圾 (lā jī) — rubbish, garbage, refuse, waste; 节约 (jiéyuē) — save; 地球 (dìqiú) — earth. Hear these words in beginner Mandarin songs.环境保护, environmental protection. Chinese clips long compounds by keeping one character from each half, and both halves happen to appear on this worksheet. The short form is now the ordinary word, so you will meet 环保 far more often than the full version.
No. 气候 is climate, the pattern over years, and 天气 is the weather right now. They share 气 but are not substitutes, so a sentence about today's rain needs 天气 while a sentence about warming needs 气候.
节约 is for conserving resources: 节约用水, 节约能源. 节省 is for saving money, time or effort. Both translate as to save, but a water campaign uses 节约 and a household budget more often uses 节省.
Both carry 氵, the compressed form of 水, because pollution was first described in terms of dirtying water. Spotting the water radical is a quick way to place an unfamiliar character in the right semantic neighborhood.