1.4: Chinese Characters
- Page ID
- 187642
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Brief Introduction:
Chinese characters, also called Hanzi, are the oldest continuously used writing system in the world. Unlike the Roman alphabets, Chinese characters are used to illustrate meaning rather than sound. That’s why learning to read Chinese requires a lot of memorization.
There are over 100,000 different Chinese characters. It is actually impossible to count them all precisely. However, the good news is, for language learners, knowing just 2,000 to 3,000 characters will give you the tools to read most newspapers and magazines.
Character Composition:
The composition of Chinese characters follows a certain system. Most of the characters consist of two components, one phonetic component and one symbolic component (as can be found in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th, 8th, and 12th rows of the table below). The phonetic component indicates how a character is pronounced, and the symbolic component signifies the meaning of the character. For example, the character 姐 on the 2nd row consists of two components: on the left is the symbolic component “女”, meaning “female, woman”; on the right is the phonetic component “且”, with the pronunciation “qie”. The meaning of the character is “big sister”.
Some characters consist of three components, as listed in the 4th and 5th rows of the table below.
Some characters are single component ones, such as 口，大，水 , as listed in the first row of the table below.
Radicals:
Here is a table that lists commonly used radicals: https://www.mandarintutor.com/resources/commonradicals
Basic Strokes:
When learning to write Chinese characters, a good first step in making the task less intimidating is identifying strokes. A basic stroke is a single calligraphic mark moving in one direction across a writing surface. Here are some basic strokes.
Stroke Order:
Following the stroke order rules will make it easier for you to write Chinese characters. Your handwriting will also look better if you write characters in the correct stroke order.
There are seven basic stroke order rules to follow. Please check them out at http://blog.tutorming.com/mandarin-chinese-learning-tips/7-basic-rules-to-chinese-stroke-order