Things you need to know about chinese charaters
1. “Can I just learn pinyin without learning Chinese characters?”
Short answer: not really this way you will never truly understand Chinese, and if you ever went to China you would be instantly lost!
Why not: Chinese is a visual language so characters carry the actual meaning of the language while pinyin is just a phonetic tool for helping you to get started. If you go to China, there is no pinyin but only Chinese characters. You can't even read a menu.
Based on my teaching experience, people who don't recognize Chinese characters never reach an advanced level. This happens to many overseas Chinese children.
When it comes to input, there is listening and reading. If you only listen to Chinese without reading, you are missing out on reading input. Also, Chinese characters are like Lego, you can take phrases apart and then make new phrases which will help you understand the Chinese logic so much easier. For instance, 手机/shǒujī means “hand machine” = cellphone and 耳机/ěrjī means "ear machine” = earphones.
2. “When should I start learning Chinese characters?”
I suggest you start when you hear two similar sounds but with two different meanings. Normally this happens during my fifth lesson when my students start to ask me why two similar sounds mean different things.
3. “Do I need to write Chinese characters for memorization?”
In most cases, I think it helps you to take apart the characters and see them better and thus helps you memorise them. However, if you really don't enjoy writing and you can recognize characters by reading a lot, this can also work.
4. “What about the stroke orders when writing?”
I am not very strict with stroke orders, but I would suggest that when you start writing you follow the stroke order to get the logic of Chinese characters but later on you probably don’t need to. When you see a character like 川/chuān/river, at a minimum you should know it's written from left to right. When you see a character like 三/sān/three, you should know it's from top to bottom and when you see a character like 国/guó/country, it's from the outside box to the inside part and eventually you "close the box" just like how we “locked” the country to be safe.
5. Let's get started with all the basic things.
Now before we get started with my video course, I would like to introduce a few basics.
Basic pictographs:
日/rì/sun 月/yuè/moon 水/shuǐ/water 火/huǒ/fire 土/soil/dirt
口/kǒu/mouth 人/rén/people 目/mù/eye 手/shǒu/hand 耳/ěr/ear
山/shān/mountain 木/mù/tree
See the pictures below for reference:
http://hanzibunan.weebly.com
Radicals: the meaning part of Chinese characters
Radicals help you easily distinguish words with similar sounds but different meanings, especially when typing.
氵Water radical related to water/liquid
冫 Icy/cold radical
亻 Person radical
讠Speaking radical
忄Heart radical related to status/emotions
灬 Fire radical related to hot/cooking etc
目 Eye radical related to eyes/look
饣Food radical
土 Dirt/soil radical
艹 Grass radical related to vegetables and herbs
扌Hand radical related to actions that require your hands
木 Tree radical
口 Mouth radical related to eat/drink/shout etc
冖 宀 厂 广 roof radical related to places
子 Child radical
女 Female radical
月 Meat radical related to physical parts or moon radical related to time
There are 6 major ways Chinese characters were created, in this blog I will introduce the ones I have discussed in my lessons.
Pictographs are characters based on images like 人/rén/people.
Indicatives depict an abstract idea with an iconic form. For example,本 consists of 木/mù/tree with an extra line at the bottom referring to “origin”.
Compound ideographs are compounds of two or more pictographic or ideographic characters to suggest the meaning of the word to be represented. For example, 林/lín/forest consists of two 木/mù/tree so refers to a forest. What about 森/sēn? It also means forest, actually 森林/sēn lín is the complete word for forest.
Phono-semantic compounds represent over 90% of the modern Chinese lexicon. They are created as compounds of at least two components: a phonetic component + a semantic component aka radical
This is the MOST important one!
Now compare 作 and 昨, the left part is the radical/meaning part so the first word is related to a human being because it has the亻person radical, whilst the second character is related to time because it has the日/sun radical. These two characters share the same phonetic part, that's why they have similar pronunciations, 作/zuò means work (only human beings have to work, sigh, Chinese ancestors knew it all...) whereas 昨/zuó means yesterday.
More questions about Chinese characters, leave your comment and I will consider adding more information!
Can't wait to start learning Chinese characters? Click here to get started now!
I have deconstructed Chinese characters and added photos to help you understand and memorise them. I have also written 5 mini stories about a cat who loves chicken pizza plus Totoro and his adventure to Japan!
See the examples below:
