Get ready to delve into the fascinating world of Chinese characters (汉字 – hàn zì)! But don’t worry, this won’t be a boring Wikipedia-style data dump. Instead, we’ll explore the basics in a way that’ll leave you eager to learn more!
First off, let’s think of Chinese characters as mini drawings that symbolize meaning! Chinese characters are not letters or words like in other languages. Rather, Chinese characters are symbols that represent meaning (known as morphemes). Some morphemes stand on their own as words, while others must be be combined with other morphemes to form complete words or phrases. Let’s look at the word for goodbye — 再见。
Did you know that almost 95% of Chinese words are one, two, three, or four characters? Moreover, about half of those words are just two characters!
Types of Characters
Now that you have a better understanding of what characters are, let’s explore the different types of characters.
Some Chinese characters are almost like a drawing of the image they are depicting. For instance, the character that means “tree” looks like a tree. These are called Pictograms.
Other characters are visual representation of abstract concepts. Imagine how you would draw the concept “three”. In Chinese this is shown by three horizonal lines. These are called Simple Ideograms.
If you put two or more simple components together, you can make a Compound Ideogram. The components work together to form a new meaning. The radical 宀 means roof. If we put a 宀 over 女 (meaning woman), we get the character for “safe”.
These first three types of characters are fun and easy to memorize. However, 80% of Chinese characters are Phono-semantic Characters. This is just a fancy way of saying that one component represents the meaning, and another represents its sound. The radical 女 means woman. If we combine 女 with 马 (pronounced mǎ), we get the character for “mom”.
There are two other types of characters that we won’t get into just yet. If you’d like to read more about them and find more in-depth information about types of Chinese characters, click here.
Building Blocks of Characters
Did you know that every Chinese character is composed of various types of strokes? Don’t worry, they’re not random lines! Some strokes are basic, while others are combinations of these basic strokes. There are different stroke classifications out there, ranging from six to eight basic strokes. The key is to examine the way characters are written closely. If you’d like to jump in and find out more about how Chinese characters are written, click here.
Strokes combine in specific ways to form radicals. These radicals are like building blocks of the language, serving as a visual classification system for characters. By recognizing the radical of a character, you can quickly narrow down its meaning and pronunciation, even if you’re encountering it for the first time. Studying radicals not only makes learning characters more enjoyable, but also speeds up the learning process. Click here to learn more about radicals.
Simplified Vs. Traditional Chinese Characters
You may have heard there are two different written forms of Chinese characters: simplified characters and traditional characters. Simplified characters have been the standard writing system in China since the 1950s. Traditional Chinese characters are still used in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Most second language learners focus on studying simplified characters.
How many characters do I need to learn?
• The Chinese writing system contains more than 50,000 characters, but a well-educated native speaker only knows around 8,000 characters.
• If your aim is to achieve basic fluency in Chinese, you’ll need to learn at least 1,200 characters.
• If your goal is to understand books, shows and movies without problems, you’ll need to know about 2,500 characters.
It’s important to remember that everyone’s learning goals are unique. Therefore, it’s best to prioritize and focus on learning the characters that are most relevant and useful to you personally.
Summary
Chinese characters may seem like random tiny pictures, but they’re actually composed of smaller components that symbolically or visually convey their meaning or pronunciation. By learning radicals, you’ll recognize more characters and find the learning process enjoyable rather than intimidating. The more characters you learn is the easier it becomes, so focus on learning a few characters at a time and enjoy the process!