This is the Chinese character 口 (kǒu), which is an old character for mouth and still carries the meaning of mouth or opening. If you look at the character’s two component radicals in the figure on the right, you will see that the radical on the left half is shaped like a box. This Chinese character has the same meaning and use as the question mark does in English, except that in Chinese, the question mark is not silent, but is spoken at the end of the sentence. Take the character 吗 (ma) shown below as an example. The theory is that a story is easier to remember than an arbitrary shape. The story may be based on the appearance of the character or how the character is constructed from different radicals. However, this is the method used by the Chinese people, almost all of whom learn more characters than the vast majority of non-native speakers of Chinese ever manage to learn, which is a statistic that makes it hard to criticize the method.Īnother method-one that is quite popular with Western students of Chinese-involves attaching a story to each character. Many non-native learners of the language criticize this method as outdated and inefficient. Characters are studied and written down again and again until they are remembered.
The method used by Chinese school children is the repetition method. There are a few different techniques for learning characters and which one is best really depends on which one works for you. In fact, many advanced students of Chinese say that remembering and achieving good oral comprehension of the vocal tones associated with Chinese characters and words is actually the hardest aspect of learning Chinese. You’ll learn the difference between the phonetic alphabet and the Chinese character system.Ĭontrary to what many new students expect, learning the characters is not a particularly hard part of learning Chinese. Watch the following video to delve deeper into the pictographic and ideographic nature of Chinese characters. Learning characters will help reveal the language’s logical structure as well as China's history and culture. Having a deeper understanding of Chinese characters is important for any student of Chinese. So, review your radicals, familiarize yourself with the most commonly used Chinese characters, and watch as your Mandarin skills grow exponentially! Although Chinese characters may seem daunting at first, patterns will quickly emerge once you develop a basic foundation. Skritter is an excellent APP to help you learn stroke order.
For language learners, being familiar with just 2,000 to 3,000 characters will give you the tools to read most newspapers and magazines.Īn important rule to note is that characters are written according to a standardized stroke order, which typically moves from left to right, top to bottom and outside to inside. Most Chinese dictionaries include about 20,000 characters, though linguists estimate literate speakers know between 5,000 and 8,000. The majority of the written Chinese language is comprised of character compounds, in which several characters are combined to make one word. When two or more radicals are combined, they work together to create a single character the radical on the left indicates the character’s category or meaning, while the radical on the right might indicate its pronunciation. 人=rén=person 从=cóng=from/follow 众=zhòng=crowd. The evolution of the characters 人, 从, and 众.
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