Did you know that Chinese does not have an alphabet? In English, words are written with letters from an alphabet. Each letter has a sound, and those sounds make up each word. Chinese is different. Chinese has characters or symbols that represent meaning. The pronunciation of each character can be different depending on the region or area, but the meaning remains the same. A word can be made up of one character or multiple character, but typically no more than 4 characters.
How many characters do you need to know? There are over 90,000 Chinese characters! That’s a lot to memorize, but don’t fret. You only need to know around 3,500 commonly used characters to be literate in Chinese - to read a newspaper, magazine, or book. And your child will only need to know even less to read Chinese at their grade level. Much less, right?
Now, let’s see the most common three ways that characters are formed. By knowing these common ways, it will help you better memorize characters and start to write them!
Chinese pictograms
The first step in understanding Chinese characters are pictograms. Chinese characters were first developed as pictures that represented the word. So, many characters resemble its meaning. This is the first step to associating characters with their meanings and getting a basic understanding of Chinese. It is also helpful when learning to memorize characters.
Here are some examples:
人 (rén) means human. As we all know, humans have two legs. So, the Chinese character looks a bit like two human legs walking.
田 (tián) means field. Since the character was most used for rice field, it drew its inspiration from the square patches and plot lines in a rice field. Thus, the character has four distinct plot lines to represent a field.
雨 (Yǔ) means rain. This character looks like rain, right? The little dotted lines inside the character looks like rain drops viewed from your window.
Chinese ideograms
Not all Chinese characters were developed as a picture of its meaning. Some characters represent an idea of its meaning instead. Characters that stem from ideograms use symbols to relay meaning instead of a picture.
For example, the character刀means the edge of a knife. It is an ideogram, because it only adds a small line 刃 to change its meaning to blade.
Combined ideograms
Another type of characters combines both a picture of the meaning and its symbolic representation. So, essentially, it’s a combination of an ideogram and a pictogram.
A good example of this is “休”. This character means “rest,” and looks like someone leaning on a tree. The first part means “person” and the last part means “tree”. Together, they represent the idea of rest, as people used to rest leaning on trees or napping beneath them for shade.
Some combined ideograms express the meaning and a sound. However, it is important to note that many characters do not have any phonetic meaning. An example of this is “湖,” which means “lake”. The first part of the character represents water. The second part of the character represents the sound “hu” “胡”.
Do you feel ready to write characters? Of course, writing in Chinese can’t be taught with just one lesson, but at least you have a good starting point.
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