Should I Learn Chinese Characters

Learning Chinese characters can be daunting, and you might wonder if it’s worth the effort. This discussion on whether to challenge or avoid Chinese characters addresses common concerns and provides insights into the benefits of learning characters versus relying solely on pinyin (the Romanization of Chinese sounds). This article will help you weigh the pros and cons and make an informed decision about your learning path.

Understanding How Chinese Characters Work

Before exploring the complexities, it’s crucial to understand the basics. To fully appreciate the beauty and logic of Chinese characters, it’s helpful to learn about their composition and function. Understanding the structure of Chinese characters and how Chinese characters work is key to mastering them.

There are two main elements that you must know: radicals and strokes. By familiarizing yourself with radicals and strokes, and by practicing the correct stroke order, you can build a strong foundation in learning Chinese characters.

Chinese Radicals

Radicals are the building blocks of Chinese characters. They often provide clues about the meaning or pronunciation of the character. For example, the radical “氵” (three drops of water) is often found in characters related to water. Learning radicals can significantly ease the process of memorizing and understanding characters. To get a comprehensive list of common radicals and their meanings, check out this Chinese characters list by radicals.

Chinese Strokes

Strokes are the individual lines that make up each character. There are about 8 basic strokes, but this number can expand to 40 when considering various combinations and styles. Each stroke has a specific order, which must be followed to write characters correctly. This Chinese strokes list provides a detailed guide to the different types of strokes used in Chinese characters.

The order in which strokes are written is crucial for both readability and correct character formation. Proper stroke order also helps in memorizing characters and aids in learning to write them efficiently. For a deeper understanding of why stroke order is important and how to master it, refer to this article on the key to master stroke order.

How to Write Chinese Characters

Writing Chinese characters involves understanding the structure, stroke order, and proper form. Start with the basics by learning the correct stroke order, which is essential for writing characters correctly and efficiently. The general rules include writing from left to right, top to bottom, and from outside to inside. For a comprehensive guide, refer to how to write Chinese characters. Practicing regularly on paper can help reinforce your memory and improve your handwriting skills.

How to Type Chinese Characters

In modern times, typing Chinese characters has become more common than handwriting. To type in Chinese, you will need to learn the pinyin system, which uses the Roman alphabet to represent Chinese sounds. Once you know the pinyin for a character, you can type it into a keyboard, and the correct characters will appear for you to select.

Using a Pinyin input method editor (IME) on your computer or smartphone can make this process easy. For a step-by-step guide on setting this up and tips for efficient typing, check out how to type in Chinese.

How to Memorize Chinese Characters

Memorizing Chinese characters is often the most challenging part of learning the language. One effective approach is the topic-oriented method, which is considered one of the most efficient ways to learn hundreds of characters. This method involves focusing on related characters within a specific topic, helping you understand and retain them better. 

Other useful memorization techniques include:

• Visual and Storytelling Techniques: Associating characters with vivid images or stories can make them easier to remember. 
• Understanding Etymology: Knowing characters’ origins and historical development can also aid in memorization. This article on Chinese etymology provides insights into the fascinating backgrounds of characters.
• Consistent Practice: Regular practice and repetition are key to memorizing characters. Utilize flashcards, writing exercises, and language apps to reinforce your learning. For more strategies, refer to how to memorize Chinese characters.

Resources to Learn Chinese Characters

Here are some valuable resources for you to support your journey in learning Chinese characters. By utilizing these resources, you can find the right tools and methods to enhance your Chinese character learning experience.

Comprehensive Learning Resources

For a wide range of tools and materials, check out these resources for learning Chinese characters. This collection includes online tools, apps, and interactive platforms that cater to different learning styles and needs.

Books

Books can be an excellent resource for structured learning and in-depth understanding. Explore this selection of Chinese character books that use various methods, such as storytelling, visual aids, and flashcards, to teach characters effectively.

Courses

Taking a structured course can provide guided learning and comprehensive coverage of Chinese characters. Browse through these Chinese character courses to find options that suit your learning pace and style. These courses often include interactive lessons, practice exercises, and expert guidance.

Related Reading: Chinese for Beginners – All-in-One Guide

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As we start this journey, we aim to unravel the layers of complexity within the Chinese writing system and demonstrate how mastering this skill can offer more than just the ability to script words—it can connect you to the very heart of Chinese heritage. Let’s begin by understanding the fundamental differences between Chinese handwriting and calligraphy, and how each reflects distinct aspects of Chinese culture and personal expression.

What is the difference between Chinese handwriting and calligraphy?

Handwriting, quite simply put, is the ability to write characters in standard script. Calligraphy, however, is the true art of writing in Chinese. While handwriting is a very practical and necessary skill, learning calligraphy can deepen your emotional and cultural collection with the language, encouraging a more profound appreciation for Chinese culture and art.

Chinese learners of any level can and should try their hand at writing calligraphy. It’s a unique sensory experience that provides a historical and cultural context for the written language. By writing the strokes with a real brush and ink, you’ll come to understand that the stroke order you use in everyday writing was truly designed for fluidity, balance, and beauty.

Chinese calligraphy: Your basic toolkit

Chinese calligraphy is a wonderful hobby to embrace, as it offers so much cultural enrichment and results in beautiful pieces that you can hang in your home or offer to friends. There are several tools required for traditional calligraphy practice, including brushes, paper, ink, and ink stone. These items are widely known as the four treasures of the study, or 文房四宝(wén fáng sì bǎo). Other accessories such as a desk mat and brush stand are also frequently seen.

However, don’t feel like you need to invest in the most expensive equipment right away. If you attend a Chinese school or have an in-person teacher, ask if they have supplies you can borrow to get started. Otherwise, begin by getting a single brush and inkstone, then a small amount of ink and paper. Once you immerse yourself in the experience of practicing calligraphy, see if it truly sparks your interest and becomes a hobby that you’re ready to invest in.

Here is what you will need:

A brush 笔（bǐ）

Chinese calligraphy brushes come in a variety of sizes and materials. Generally speaking, smaller brushes work better for beginners as they allow for more precision and control. When it comes to materials, the bristles can be made from a variety of animal or synthetic fibers. Soft bristles, such as those made from goat hair, absorb a lot of ink, while hard bristles, such as those made from wolf fur or nylon, absorb less ink. Many calligraphers recommend hard-bristle or mixed-bristle brushes for beginners.

Rice paper 纸（zhǐ）

Rice paper, also known as xuan paper, is a thin, supple, and absorbent paper used for traditional Chinese calligraphy. Depending on where you buy it, it may come as a stack of single-use sheets or as a roll. There are also some special decorative formats, such as paper designed for wall hangings or rice paper fans. For beginners, though, you can buy rice paper that comes with a pre-printed grid, just like handwriting practice sheets.

Ink 墨（mò）

The traditional form of Chinese calligraphy ink is inksticks, a small, molded stick made of soot and oils that is ground into the inkstone and mixed with water to create the proper consistency for writing. However, bottled calligraphy ink is a much more convenient alternative because it doesn’t require the user to know how thick or thin the ink needs to be. For beginners, bottled ink is the obvious choice. Note that some bottled ink can be used directly out of the bottle, while some varieties still need to be diluted with water.

Inkstone 砚（yàn）

An inkstone is a rough stone or ceramic container used to hold calligraphy ink. Generally, coarse stone inkstones are recommended for those who use inksticks, but any vessel is suitable for bottled calligraphy ink.

How to Get Started with Traditional Chinese Calligraphy

Find your center: How to hold a Chinese calligraphy brush

Chinese calligraphy is an art form that involves the whole body, not just the hand. Your posture should reflect the qualities you want to see in your writing: grace, calm, and alignment. Your sitting position should be upright and held, but not tense or painful.

When you are ready to take your brush in hand, you need to hold it upright, not slanted like a pen. You should hold the brush perpendicular to the paper, gripping it loosely between your index finger and thumb. Then, wrap your middle finger around the outside so that the brush presses gently into the pad of your middle finger. The ring finger should brace against the back of the brush. While the pinky finger does not make contact with the brush itself, you shouldn’t stick it out like you’re having high tea. Rather, use it to support your ring finger as it balances the brush. This should allow you to write each stroke with a flick of your wrist.

This grip may feel foreign at first, but you’ll acclimate to it as you begin your practice. If your hand begins to cramp or feel fatigued after only a short while, take a moment to rest before coming back to your practice.

Now with your body and hand in alignment, it’s time to begin.

The Eight Principles of 永(yǒng): The only character you need

Nearly all characters in traditional Chinese calligraphy are composed of eight simple strokes, also known as the Eight Principles of Yǒng. If you’d like, you can practice each stroke individually a few times to get a feel for how your wrist moves the brush to paint each of them.

There is, however, a much more elegant way to practice these eight fundamental strokes, and that is the famous character永(yǒng), which fittingly means “forever” or “permanence.” Many calligraphers begin each writing session with this character, as it helps them center their energy, find their focus, and hone their craft.

I’ve learned the Eight Principles by heart, what do I write now?

Once you’ve familiarized yourself with the basic strokes, the whole world opens up to you. This can be both exciting and intimidating. If you’re not sure what you want to write next, do what the Chinese have been doing for thousands of years: copy poetry.

Three Hundred Tang Poems is a world-famous anthology of poetry from the Tang dynasty. While you may not understand the meaning of these poems at first glance, taking the time to learn each character’s significance and diligently practicing the brushstrokes will help you forge a stronger connection with the words. Now, by no means do you have to write all three hundred! Simply pick one to focus on and completely immerse yourself in. You may be surprised how meaningful these poems become to you.

The common Chinese Characters list is also a fantastic source for your calligraphy practice.

A Final Word

The journey into Chinese handwriting and calligraphy is much more than learning a new set of characters or mastering a foreign script. It’s a voyage into the depths of Chinese culture, history, and philosophy. Whether you’re meticulously tracing the strokes of a single character or expressing your thoughts through the fluid movements of calligraphy, you’re participating in a tradition that spans thousands of years. This experience offers not only a unique form of artistic expression but also a reflective practice that can enhance mindfulness and cultural appreciation.

As you continue to explore the rich Chinese writing system, remember that each stroke, each character, carries with it a story, a piece of history, and a breath of life from the past. Whether for personal enrichment, artistic pursuit, or academic study, the practice of Chinese handwriting and calligraphy can add depth, beauty, and understanding to your learning. So take up your brush, embrace the challenges, and let each character you write connect you more deeply with the vast world of Chinese language and culture.

The post Learning to Write in Chinese: An Introduction to Chinese Calligraphy appeared first on .

Fortunately, you don’t have to rely on brute memorization to expand your vocabulary and meet your learning goals. You can rely on the writing system’s surprisingly intuitive structure, expertly developed learning strategies, and even more creative approaches to associating characters with their corresponding pronunciations and meanings.

In this article, we’ll look at ways to establish a strong foundation and then build from there to help you develop a vocabulary that is both rich and authentic. While a lot of this content is geared towards helping beginners find their way to get over the initial hurdle of adapting to a new writing system, the learning strategies and resources provided below are suitable for learners of all levels, especially those aiming to expand their vocabulary and enhance their ability to memorize Chinese characters effectively.

Step One: Learn How the Chinese Writing System Works

The first major step to solving these little puzzles is to understand the different components they’re made of and how those components are arranged. This may sound like a major investment of time and energy, but it’s a lot easier than it seems at first glance.

While we already have a quite comprehensive article on the fundamentals of character structure and how to write them, I really want to emphasize the importance of two common components: radicals and phonetic components.

Radicals, also known as 部首(bùshǒu), are the most essential part of understanding the meaning of characters. Take 女(nǚ) for example; by itself, it means “woman” or “female” but can be combined with other pieces to create words like 妈妈(māmā, mother)，姐姐(jiějiě, older sister)， and 妹妹(mèimèi, younger sister). There are 189 radicals in simplified Chinese, but Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither is fluency. You can focus on the most common, fundamental radicals and still see the major payoff in your studies.

The next key piece of the puzzle is phonetic components. Going back to the three words we looked at earlier, you’ll notice the pieces added to the radical, 马(mǎ, horse), 且(qiě, even/moreover), and 未(wèi, not), have nothing to do with the meaning, BUT the pronunciation does match closely or exactly. These phonetic components do not add anything to the definition of the character, but rather they provide a clue to indicate how you should say it out loud.

This is just a taste of what the Chinese writing system looks like when you break it down, but can you already see the mystery of these characters starting to dissipate? If you want to keep going more in-depth, you can also check out these two courses that provide an in-depth overview of the writing system to help you find your footing and become more confident in both reading and writing Chinese characters.

Once you feel you have a solid foundation, then it’s time to start building.

Step Two: Build Your Chinese Vocabulary Through Repeated Exposure and Practice

This is the stage where you can start to have more independence when it comes to choosing both the content that you want to study and the strategies you want to use. This is the stage in my own learning journey where I felt lost at sea, adrift with no real direction and nobody to help me. And while I can’t tell you exactly what to study and how, I can provide some of my own insights to set you off on the right path.

Let’s first answer the question of WHAT to study. The answer here is going to look very different depending on your learning level. Quite frankly, for beginners, there’s a very straightforward answer: learn the words that are used most often. Chinese character frequency lists will provide you with the characters you hear most often in daily life, or you can always refer to the classic HSK vocabulary lists.

As you become more advanced and feel confident with the words you hear on a daily basis, you may need to look at specializing based on your own interests and learning goals. For example, if you’ve been learning business Chinese for several years and you plan on putting that knowledge to use working with a software company, then naturally it would serve you to learn the specialized terminology of your field. Or if you don’t have any professional aspirations, you can merely focus on areas of interest. If you’re a literature fanatic, then you may even choose to learn some archaic Chinese words to help you understand classical works and poetry. The only limit here is your imagination.

Next comes an even bigger question. Once you have a list of words you want to learn, HOW do you learn them without feeling like your brain is completely overloaded? The first key is based on the Chengyu 锲而不舍(qiè ér bù shě)， persevere, and keep chipping away at it. The second key is to find the learning strategies that work for you.

Let’s take a look at some of the ways to make memorizing Chinese characters easier.

– Strategy 1: Flashcards and Spaced Repetition

We all know them, and we all have a love-hate relationship with them. Flashcards have remained one of the most common strategies for character memorization because they allow you to quickly check whether or not you can remember the meaning of a character. It’s also quite easy to find a spare 10 minutes for flashcards as opposed to sitting down for an intensive study session.

However, just doing flashcards doesn’t always guarantee results. It’s also hard to know how many times you should study a card before moving on, and what happens if you forget a word that you previously studied. This is where the concept of spaced repetition comes in.

Spaced repetition is an evidence-based study technique that is used by linguists, medical professionals, law school students, and more. This system is based on the concept of studying new terms more frequently and familiar terms less frequently. It focuses your attention on the words that are less familiar but still prompts you to return to words that you’ve already studied, which strengthens your recall and makes you less likely to forget it.While spaced repetition systems (SRS) can be difficult to manage with hand-made flashcards, many popular flashcard apps, such as Anki, already have an SRS baked into their code, making this strategy readily accessible to anyone.

– Strategy 2: Visual Cues

Do you consider yourself a visual learner? Then why not take advantage of the fact that many Chinese characters are based on pictograms? Radicals such as 口(kǒu) and 目(mù) pictorially represent the mouth and eyes, so they serve as visual cues to remind you of the meaning of words like 喝(hē, to drink) and 眼睛(yǎnjing, eyes). I’ve always found that making visual associations strengthens my memory more than anything else.

You can choose to draw these connections by yourself during your regular reading and writing practice, or you can do intentional visual association using an established guide, like Chineasy, designed to help visual learners memorize characters more effectively.

– Strategy 3: Storytelling and Mnemonics

Another strategy that is based on making external connections is storytelling. Creating a narrative around a new word can help you more effectively remember its meaning and importance in the language. You don’t have to write a novel. Even just writing a few short sentences can help your brain grasp a foreign term more strongly and more quickly.

This strategy is extremely effective for learning Chengyu, four-character idiomatic phrases that are often based on traditional fables. Learning the story behind these complex expressions makes a world of difference, and it’s truly inspiring to be able to learn more about Chinese history and culture while also expanding your practical knowledge of the language.

Mnemonic devices are a slightly more abstract strategy to remember the pronunciation and meaning of characters. These are often personal ideas or opinions that we assign to a specific character because they help us recall more effectively and faster. Let’s look at one example together. I’ve been trying to learn the word 单独(dāndú, alone, singlehanded), and I have a coworker named Dan who recently quit. So now, when I see this character, I think of the fact that due to Dan, I now need to handle my work alone.

Personally, I have mixed feelings about this strategy because sometimes it can be very difficult to find a way to meaningfully link a character to a phrase in my native language. However, when you do find a solid mnemonic device, it can be extremely effective in helping you recognize the character later on.

– Strategy 4: Learning in Context

Sometimes the most effective way to pick up new terms is through learning on the job, which means learning new characters when you come across them while reading. Many linguists would say that this lines up with the strategy called Comprehensible Input, which is currently one of the most popular methods of learning a new language.

The reason why learning in context is so important is that it exposes you to the characters you will need most often in your day-to-day life, plus it adds additional insights about the word’s usage and cultural implications. Learning characters in isolation can teach you how to recognize and write them, but learning through real-life scenarios will help you turn passive understanding into active usage, which has a much higher impact on your fluency.

This strategy is one of the easiest to implement into your studies because it can be applied to any scenario where you are reading Chinese characters as part of a larger story or conversation, such as texting friends, reading books or manhua, and browsing social media.

When you come across a character that you don’t recognize, it’s important that you take note of its structure and components, plus the pronunciation and meaning. Thankfully, many popular reading apps like MandarinBean, DuChinese allow you to see a word’s pinyin and definition by tapping on it, or you can install a browser extension that will allow you to do the same on any website.

Step Three: Test Your Knowledge Regularly

No matter how you choose to go about memorizing characters, you need to ensure that you’re actually retaining the knowledge over time if you want to get the maximum benefit. There are a few different ways you can go about testing to see if you really remember all those words you studied.

– Test 1: Reading Comprehension

The first test is the easiest because reading only relies on recognizing characters and remembering their meaning. If you’re studying HSK-related vocabulary, then look at reading materials or mock tests that are aimed at your current level (or the one above!) and see if you are able to read through a passage smoothly, or if you feel like you’re hitting speedbumps in every sentence. Perhaps some words come back to you immediately, others you can figure out by looking at them for a minute, and some won’t come back to you at all. If you want to give yourself a grade, you can count how many characters fall into each of those three categories, but I find that you can most often intuitively get a sense of your performance just by going through the passage.

– Test 2: Written Expression

Now comes the real challenge. Can you both think of the character you want to use and then remember how to write it? If you’ve been studying vocabulary around a specific topic, such as how to order food, writing business emails, or describing a movie you saw, you can try to write a short paragraph or dialogue to demonstrate your knowledge. This will not only reinforce your knowledge of characters but also all of the grammar points you have studied. Don’t worry if you can write fewer characters than you can recognize, that’s completely natural and is even true of native speakers.If you want to try this test but feel like your writing skills aren’t up to par, you can also consider typing your text. Different typing input methods can test your character recognition in different ways, such as inputs based on pronunciation, radicals, or stroke order. It isn’t as rigorous as handwriting everything, but it will still allow you to see if you’re retaining the information that you studied.

Key Resources for Learning Chinese Characters

Having the right tools to support your practice can often make the difference between finding success or falling short. This is a curated collection of apps, books, and courses designed to boost your Chinese vocabulary in ways that are extremely helpful, streamlined, and fun.

DigMandarin’s Chinese Character Courses

These courses are an extremely valuable resource for any student looking to familiarize themselves with the fundamentals of Chinese characters. I found that the instructor broke down complex concepts into digestible pieces, allowing me to learn without feeling overwhelmed. They’re also extremely affordable, and the format allowed me to access the course when it was convenient for me.

Pleco

Pleco is by far the best Chinese dictionary app you will ever use. It offers an extremely comprehensive database of terms and phrases. You can also use any input method you want: Chinese, English, Pinyin, handwriting, or simply taking a picture. Certain add-ons can be purchased to add additional features, such as a flashcard system, but they are very low-cost and are a one-time purchase instead of an ongoing subscription.

Anki

Anki is an extremely well-known SRS (spaced repetition system) app used to create and manage flashcard decks. While its interface is still stuck in the 90s, it can be learned fairly quickly and lends itself to being used creatively. You can create your own flashcards and add supplements like audio and images to improve retention, or you can download existing flashcard decks created by other users. I’m currently using this extensive HSK 3.0 vocabulary deck, which includes writing and stroke order practice.

Chineasy

This series originally hit the scene as a book with an innovative take on learning Chinese characters through drawings, and it is now one of the most popular methods for learning characters intuitively. They also now have an app that makes it even more accessible.

Du Chinese

This app was a key piece for me when it came to learning characters in context. The interface is extremely intuitive, and it makes reading practice more engaging by offering a huge variety of content at different HSK levels. The premium subscription is quite expensive, but the free version is still very high quality.

Mandarin Bean

The website offers graded reading material organized by HSK levels, all available for free. Each article features a variety of types, including news, business, stories, fun, and culture, among others. The selection of vocabulary lists tailored to each level is an exceptionally convenient method to learn words that match your proficiency. Engaging and progressively challenging content ensures a stimulating and effective learning experience.

Final Thoughts

Learning a new language can be a daunting task, let alone tackling a new writing system with its own extensive history and specific nuances. However, many have trodden this path before you and are ready to offer their expertise and tips to help you navigate the language with both curiosity and a hunger for learning.

Characters are the most basic foundation of the Chinese language, and learning them, especially how to memorize Chinese characters, is a unique task that challenges your brain to think in new ways. We are all unique individuals, and we learn in different ways. I invite you to try the strategies laid out in this article and see if they spark something new for you. It may just be the thing that ignites your passion.

The post Rise to the Challenge: How to Memorize Chinese Characters Like A Pro appeared first on .

Why Are You Learning Chinese?

Before you decide whether to learn to handwrite characters or not, pause for a moment and ask yourself another question: “Why am I learning Chinese?” Depending on your learning goals, you might choose a different path.

If you study Chinese just to manage as a tourist on a trip to China, then handwriting characters isn’t the most efficient way to spend your time. You can enjoy your trip with basic Chinese and a phone with a translation app.

If you learn Chinese for business reasons, being able to handwrite Chinese characters will impress your business partners, but you might prefer to focus on developing your speaking and listening comprehension skills, instead of spending hours on learning stroke order.

If you are interested in Chinese culture and history and think that learning Chinese might be useful for you in the future, then you could still reach a low-intermediate Chinese level and manage by typing characters using pinyin input.

As you can see, you don’t need to learn how to handwrite characters to be able to speak Chinese, understand it, work using it (to a certain extent), and even live in China! But there is always a “but”.

Why Learn To Write Characters By Hand

Before we talk more about the “but”, let’s see why anyone would decide to learn to handwrite Chinese characters. Why spend time and effort on something that you can manage without?

Well, there are a few good reasons to learn handwriting Chinese characters:

• First of all, knowing how to handwrite Chinese characters is just cool. It feels like magic when you write a few strokes on paper, that don’t normally make sense, but they suddenly come together and create a meaning, a word. And amazingly, you can understand it.
• Second, handwriting characters is a form of meditation. Once you learn how to stay focused, you will not only notice that your concentration skills improve, but you will also find yourself feeling calm and relaxed when writing characters. Seriously!
• Third, handwriting characters train your muscle memory, making characters stay longer in your memory and improving your reading and speaking skills. And here lies the aforementioned “but”. You can manage without handwriting characters and learn Chinese to a certain level, but without knowing how to write characters by hand, you are very unlikely to reach a level above intermediate.

✓ 快 vs 块, never mess them up again

Many characters look the same and only have a different radical. For example, 快 and 块. They have the exact same pronunciation, kuài, but the meanings have nothing to do with each other. One means “fast”, and the other is “a piece”. You might originally memorize them as separate pictures, but would you still remember them in a month or two, or a year? When you handwrite a character, you learn the parts it consists of, you memorize it by those parts, and so you are more likely to remember the character much later and see the difference between similar characters.

✓ Use dictionaries faster

Another bonus of knowing how to handwrite characters is that you can easily use electronic dictionaries to look up characters you’ve never seen before. Just write it on your phone and a dictionary like pleco will recognize it and give you the meaning.

How to start handwriting characters

So you’ve decided to learn to write characters by hand, what’s next? The most important thing is to get the basics right from the very start. Here is a brief guide on how you can do it.

– Understand the structure of a character

A character consists of one or more components, called radicals. Spend some time figuring out how characters are structured because understanding that will help you in the future. Simply put, a radical on the left side of a character is (often, but not always) connected to the meaning, whereas, a radical on the right is connected to the pronunciation of the whole character (again, often, but not always).

– Get familiar with strokes

Characters are similar to legos; they can be broken down into pieces. They consist of radicals, while radicals consist of strokes. There are eight traditional fundamental strokes, but only five of them are considered modern modular strokes, called “’札字法” （zházìfǎ).

Take some time and practice writing each of the strokes separately. Keep in mind that it does make a difference if you draw a line from top to bottom or bottom to top. I recommend drawing each stroke about 30 times. It might sound strange, but it will help you in the future – you’ll see a character, recognize the strokes, and your hand will just write them correctly.

– Learn the radicals

Now that you know how to write strokes, learn the radicals. There are 214 radicals in the original Kangxi radical list, but a few of them are no longer used in simplified Chinese. It is highly recommended to learn them all, but realistically, you should memorize the most common ones and then, once you advance in your studies, learn the others.

– Get the stroke order right

Now that you can deconstruct a character into separate pieces, learn how to write it correctly. The proper stroke order for writing characters has been developed for over thousands of years, and Chinese people are very attentive to it. And to be honest, when you write a character with the correct stroke order, it just flows naturally, as if there is no other right way to write it.

There are some general rules, such as writing from top to bottom and left to right. However, the exact stroke order of each character should be learned and memorized individually, especially when you have just started learning handwriting characters. Later, you don’t need to memorize each new character’s stroke order. In most cases, you will already know the order based on previously learned characters. Just remember, it is ok not to be sure about the stroke order, you can always check in a dictionary. 

There is another more detailed article on how to write Chinese characters and get the stroke order correct. It will give you a better overview of character composition and provide some insights on stroke order. You can check it out here:

How to Write Chinese Characters (Quick Start Guide + Free Mini Course)

Tips to practice writing Chinese characters

What’s next? Well, here comes the hard part. There isn’t really a workaround to learn to handwrite characters without spending time on it. In the very beginning, handwriting characters is exciting. You start something completely new, and it’s exciting. After writing 50 lines of characters, none of which look pretty or similar to the ones in the book, you get bored and tired. my advice? Be persistent, and don’t give up. The more you practice, the easier it becomes, and the faster you memorize characters.

– Use worksheets

Find or print out some Chinese writing worksheets. If you are totally new to handwriting characters, I recommend getting worksheets with character stroke order and gridlines. You can even create a worksheet of your own, with characters that you want to practice. Many websites have worksheets, archchinese being one of them where you can customize your own practice sheets.

– Deconstructing a character

When feeling bored of writing characters in worksheets, try another exercise. Select a character from your textbook, and don’t check pronunciation or meaning. Try to analyze it. What radicals does the character consist of? Can you guess its meaning? Can you guess its pronunciation? Think of its stroke order. Write it. And finally, look up the character in a dictionary.

The online dictionary MDBG not only provides the meaning of a character but also shows the number of strokes in it, its radical, the radical’s pronunciation, and the stroke order. But there are plenty of other dictionaries, choose whichever one suits you best.

– Checking the origins of a character

Another way to learn about characters is to look up their origins. Understanding why the character for water looks like this 水 will help you memorize it. Of course, you can’t do it for every single character, but again, in the beginning, it can help you a great deal. By looking into the etymology of a character, you will better understand Chinese culture. Check out another article here to dive deeper into the etymology of characters.

Handwriting characters is difficult. And if you are like many others, you may want to give up at some point. Because it requires a lot of time, a lot of concentration, and a lot of patience. And it’s ok if you quit. But if you choose to continue, remember, it gets easier the more you practice. I remember when I just started handwriting characters, I needed to write a character at least 20-30 times before I could remember how to read and write it. Later I could memorize a character after writing it 5-7 times. But you need to practice continuously. Now, after years of only typing in Chinese, I find that writing a character 5 times is not enough. Handwriting doesn’t feel natural anymore, and sometimes I struggle to write even simple characters. So don’t repeat my mistakes, be consistent in your practice. 加油！

The post Why You Should Learn to Write Chinese Characters by Hand and How to Start appeared first on .

Chinese Etymology is the study of the origin of Chinese characters. The more knowledge you can apply to a character, such as 泉, the more you understand that character.

The more likely you are to never forget it.

In this article, we’ll break down 水, 泉, 冰, 永 and analyze the etymology of these characters.

You’ll never get them confused again!

Chinese Etymology in Practice

The formation of Chinese characters has been a long process, thousands of years in the making.

Ancient Chinese scripts relied much more heavily on pictographs: visual representations of a word, similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Over time, ancient Chinese scripts were corrupted and simplified into their modern-day equivalents.

By undoing the corruption and simplification of ancient Chinese scripts, you can see that, actually, the modern-day version makes perfect sense.

A Chinese character’s origin is often the key to understanding its true meaning.

Ancient men didn’t get water from a tap. They collected it from rivers and streams.

At a glance, 水 has absolutely no relation to the word water.

Whoever invented a character to represent the word ‘water’ had to rely on imagery common at that time.

Depicted on the far left of the image above is the earliest representation of a Chinese character for ‘water’. It’s a pictograph of a river.

The middle line represents the deeper middle section of a river. The edges represent the shallower areas where water rushes over rocks or other obstacles, creating waves and white water.

Over time, these attributes have been simplified. By comparing the origin of this Chinese character to the modern-day version, 水 becomes a very meaningful symbol.

The deep, rushing core of the river and its turbulent outer edges.

Pretty neat.

Etymology of Chinese character 泉

Let’s consider the character 泉 (quán) spring.

There are a few ways to deepen your understanding of this character.

For example, we can break it into its components:

白 (bái) white

水 (shuǐ) water

White water alone gives us a clue to the combined meaning. After all, a spring in nature is a clean, pure (white) source of water.

Let’s dive deeper.

The history of the character 白 also gives us a clue to its meaning.

In the ancient 甲骨文 (jiǎ gǔ wén) oracle bone script, 白 is drawn as 日 (rì) sun with a drop on top.

Despite 3000+ years of meddling, it has pretty much stayed like that.

Some think the ancient Chinese script symbolises the time just before the sun peeps over the horizon when the area of sky above the sun is briefly cast a brilliant white.

It could also represent the bright white light cast at the entrance of a cave.

Either way, it’s clear that the sun here is used to depict white light.

Our brains like patterns. They don’t like randomness. We’re building stories and meaning (understandable patterns) into these characters.

They are no longer squiggles on a page, or even a sequence of strokes. Chinese etymology helps build a stronger story for our minds.

So we now know both components of 泉 (quán) spring. Cool.

How do they work together?

Well actually, they don’t.

I mentioned corruption earlier. This can be seen in the history of the character 泉.

If we look at the oracle bone script here, 泉 is beautifully depicted as a river or stream (notice the same oracle bone character as 水) running out of an opening or cave in the ground.

This makes perfect sense.

A spring begins life as rainwater. Once fallen, it finds its way underground, eventually reemerging from an underground opening.

This opening is often seen from above as cracks between rocks, which water appears to rise (or spring) from.

So here you can see a cavern-like opening in which water flows out from a spring.

Understanding both the modern components (水 and 白) and their origins gives your brain multiple stories to work with, understand, and remember.

It also allows you to undo history and return 泉 to its original picture-like essence.

Using Chinese Etymology to Distinguish Similar Characters

Let’s quickly look at two more characters.

冰 (bīng) ice

This character is composed of two elements.

The 甲骨文 (jiǎ gǔ wén) oracle bone script uses two arrow-like strokes representing cracks formed in ice (think of ice in its natural form in nature).

The addition of a river, or water (水) was later used to indicate the relationship between ice and water.

If we apply this to the modern-day character, 冫is actually cracks within 水 water.

You could read it as ’cracked water’: ice.

永 (yǒng) eternal/perpetual

Here the transformation over time has been a trade-off between how easy the character is to understand and how easy it is to write.

The ancient scripts depict two rivers converging, ultimately joining to become a raging torrent.

Because of the merging of the two rivers, the main river is able to flow out the other side continuously, uninterrupted.

This has connotations of something stretching out into the future and simultaneously connected to the past.

The drop above 水 represents this: one continuous river, flowing eternally.

Seeing the Origin of Chinese Characters In Modern Day Script

水   泉   冰   永

水 is a river with a strong, deep core and turbulent edges.

泉 is pure white water coming from the mouth of an underground cavern.

冰 is the cracks in ice–frozen water.

永 is two rivers converging into one.

The more you know about the character 泉 (quán), the more likely you are to never forget it. By understanding the formation and evolution of Chinese characters, you can appreciate how they have been simplified from ancient pictographs to modern-day symbols. For example, the ancient scripts relied heavily on visual representations of words, much like Egyptian hieroglyphics. Over time, these characters were simplified, but their origins often hold the key to understanding their true meanings.

The post Chinese Etymology – Learning the Origins of Chinese Characters Makes Them Impossible to Forget appeared first on .

The following is a list of all the essential Chinese strokes and their corresponding variations. There is also a downloadable Chinese stroke list PDF.

#1 Main Stroke: “一”（横） Horizontal

	Stroke Variations	Names of Strokes	Examples
1		横 （héng） Horizontal	一，二，三，王，工
2		提 （tí） Rising Stroke	习，地，冷，冰，刁

#2 Main Stroke: “丨”（竖） Vertical

	Stroke Variation	Name of Stroke	Examples
1		长竖（cháng shù） Long vertical	书，快，师，十，市
2		短竖 （duǎn shù） Short vertical	刊，修，候，刚，利
3		竖钩 （shù gōu） Vertical hook	小，水，求，寸，找

#3 Main Stroke: “丿”（撇）Left falling

	Stroke Variation	Name of Stroke	Examples
1		撇（piě） Left falling	月，木，大，人，个
2		横撇 （héng piě） Shorter and more horizontal left falling	千，舌，毛，白，禾

#4 Main Stroke: “丶”（点）Dot

	Stroke Variation	Name of Stroke	Examples
1		短点（duǎn diǎn） Short dot	主，广，心，注，文
2		长点（cháng diǎn） Long dot	双，不，贝，头
3		左点 （zuǒ diǎn） Left dot	办，刃，心，必，小
4		平捺 （píng nà） horizontal right falling	之，延，这，走
5		斜捺 （xié nà） slanted right falling	又，义，个，人，大

#5 Main Stroke: “乛”（折）Turning

	Stroke Variation	Name of Stroke	Examples
1		横折（héng zhé） Horizontal turning	口，问
2		横折提（héng zhé tí） Horizontal turning and rising	说，话，讨，论，讲
3		横撇（héng piě） Horizontal and left-falling	又，反
4		横折钩 （héng zhé gōu） Horizontal turning and hook	刀，门，也
5		横钩（héng gōu） Horizontal hook	买，皮，卖
6		横折斜钩 （héng zhé xié gōu） Horizontal and slanted hook	飞，风，凤，凰
7		横折弯钩 （héng zhé wān gōu） Horizontal turning and curved hook	几，九，匹
8		横折弯 （héng zhé wān） Horizontal turning and curved turning	朵，铅
9		横折折 （héng zhé zhé） Horizontal turning and turning	凹
10		横折折撇 （héng zhé zhé piě） Horizontal turning and turning left-falling	廷，建
11		横折折折 （héng zhé zhé zhé）	凸
12		横折撇弯钩 （héng zhé piě wān gōu）	阵，队，除
13		横折折折钩 （héng zhé zhé zhé gōu）	乃，奶
14		竖折 （shù zhé） Vertical turning	山，匹
15		竖弯 （shù wān） Vertical curved turning	四
16		竖提 （shù tí） Vertical and rising	民，切
17		竖折折 （shù zhé zhé） Vertical turning and vertical	鼎
18		竖折折撇 （shù zhé zhé piě） Vertical turning and left-falling	专，传
19		竖弯钩 （shù wān gōu） Vertical curved hook	儿，乱
20		竖折折钩 （shù zhé zhé gōu） Vertical turning and turning hook	与，马
21		撇折 （piě zhé） Left falling and turning	么，公
22		撇点 （piě diǎn） Left-falling and dot	女，巡
23		弯钩 （wān gōu） Curved hook	家，了，子
24		斜钩 （xié gōu） Slanted hook	戈，我，伐

Learning the correct stroke order is equally important, as it helps in memorizing characters and ensuring they are written correctly. To learn more about why stroke order matters and how to master it, visit this informative guide on stroke order.

You can go back to A Comprehensive Guide to Chinese Characters to have a mountaintop view of the characters.

The post Full Chinese Character Strokes List appeared first on .

But don’t be afraid! You can read around 99.48% of modern, everyday Chinese if you know approximately 3,500 characters. Obviously, reading complex writings like science textbooks or literature requires a more in-depth knowledge of Chinese characters, but you can cross that bridge when you get to it!

Where to Start

Comparatively with Chinese, English speakers are afforded a shortcut when it comes to learning new words and phrases with the usage of letters and phonetic rules to guide our pronunciation. For instance, a native speaker being well-versed, perhaps unintentionally, in the art of English pronunciation, can pronounce the following made-up words:

Googlet Barkjump   Champlotterfloogel

Despite having likely never seen either of these words before, you are still able to at least pronounce them and perhaps intuit something about the meaning based on the word roots. Once armed with our knowledge of letters and their pronunciation rules, we can attack texts with confidence and employ strategies to decipher any fresh words we come across.

Differences in Learning Chinese and English Words

Chinese presents a new challenge for us: how do we undo the complicated, centuries-old maze of Chinese characters 汉字 (py Hànzì; literally Han characters) and wade through the seemingly never-ending waves of intricate symbols?

The answer is (brace yourself) that it just takes effort to learn and memorize these characters; there is no way around it. Many scholars have attributed the unapproachability of Chinese to foreign learners directly to these characters. We must remember, however, that complaining about a language is more difficult because it is not like we miss the whole point as to why we choose to learn that new language. Yes, these characters present a significant challenge for students, but putting in the time to learn characters as well as strategies to memorize them will be nothing but an enormous benefit to your Chinese career! While some folks are content learning only the phonetic system of Chinese that uses Latin characters to guide pronunciation (pinyin), this can only get you so far. Once you leave the safety of your classroom and step foot in Shenzhen or the magnificent school campus of Beida surrounded by student posters alight with beautifully scribed Hanzi, pinyin will not be your closest ally.

While it may still seem daunting, there are many strategies to learning characters rapidly and effectively! Many fellow students of subjects other than Chinese have commented that the characters don’t seem to have anything linking them, they are all random, or even that there is nothing one can do except to memorize them character by character grudgingly. But they were wrong! If you are willing to take the time to learn about the Kangxi radical system, you will quickly be able to break down and interpret new characters with a large degree of accuracy! Much in the way you can determine that Barkjump has something to do with a dog barking and something jumping (my own term for when a dog startles me by barking loudly), this same idea can be applied to Chinese characters!

The Plan of Attack

My recommendation to start on your journey of learning the Kangxi radical system and familiarizing yourself with the structure of Chinese characters would be to start with the essential radicals that you will come across. Memorizing these radicals and their meanings will enable you to interpret new characters you come across. Learn them and learn them well! While this may seem like a pointless task, spending the time to learn these radicals will give you a deeper understanding of the Chinese language beyond simple character memorization!

A helpful learning strategy is to learn and group the radicals of characters you already know! For instance, when learning the radical 女， you could group it with the characters 好 and 她. Remember when we said the radicals could help you glean the meaning of the character? In this case, 女 (this radical means “woman”) is in the character她, which means “she.” Here we can see that there is an excellent logic to Chinese Hanzi!

Where Do We Go From Here?

As always in the course of learning a new language, there are constant challenges and brain gaps we must bridge; not only are we learning to speak and read a different way, but also to construct ideas and images differently in our head so that we can approach the language in the way it is meant to be approached. I will never forget a fellow student asking Ms. Lu what the Mandarin translation of “dude” was, the disappointment when he realized there wasn’t one, and his determination and semester-long struggle to find a suitable replacement. In his words, “If I can’t use dude, I don’t really know how I will be able to speak properly.”

The delicate art of Hanzi cannot be learned overnight! There are many resources across the internet with sharp, pertinent insights that can start to guide you on this mission, such as those found in Chinese Grammer or various articles in DigMandarin, which offer a far better explanation of the nature of radicals than I could ever hope to achieve. The important thing is to review the list of Kangxi radicals and their respective meanings, and then apply them to characters that you already know!

Related Lesson: A Comprehensive Guide to Chinese Characters

Learning this particular system takes patience, hard work, and time. The more you cut away at it, the closer to its heart you get! Happy studying!

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The strokes and simple pictogram characters are most frequently mentioned in courses, such as “人” “大” “天” “日” “月” “水” “火”, etc. Very familiar and easy to understand, right? Many people find that courses generally don’t explain characters in-depth or go beyond teaching basic characters.

The problem is trying to figure out what’s next. Besides the strokes and theoretical creation methods, how can we really learn and memorize the other Chinese characters? Only a few simple and easy-to-memorize characters are covered, how about the rest of the more complicated ones? No one prepares learners to learn and memorize the thousands of other characters.

How It Works

To help the learners who would like to learn more, the Topic-oriented Character learning method comes into play. If you have basic knowledge of characters, you can find that Chinese characters were created in categories. In ancient China, it was a systematic way to create characters. If we could memorize the characters with the same thoughts and logic, not only can we understand the WHYs behind the culture, but also master all the characters more efficiently.

The course consists of 10 main common, daily topics, including Numbers (数字), People（人）, Position（地点）， Nature（自然）， Weather（天气）， Description with Adjectives（形容词）， Location（地点）， Body（身体）， Furniture & Home appliance（家具&家电）and Food（食物）. Each of the topics contains related and commonly used characters.

Structure

Topic-Oriented Key Characters

Under each topic, several key characters are most commonly used. With the key characters, the most frequently used words and sentences are also presented. For individual characters, there is not only a simple translation but also the origins of the character and how/why it formed to its current form.

Components to Words

After the first section, there are two or three components derived from the key characters. These extended characters are made by the components. The corresponding words and sentences are also made and presented.

Practice & Review

To help the learners better understand, memorize, and use the characters, a practice & review section follows each lesson. Using content you have learned in previous and current lessons, you can practice creating new sentences and holding conversations. Even though the course is about character learning, the corresponding grammar and uses are provided.

Writing

While learning Chinese characters, writing is necessary and unavoidable. Some may say they just need to read or type, and that writing is not that important. As a matter of fact, writing can help you memorize and recognize the characters much easier. We acknowledge the importance of writing, so we decided to include that in our video lessons. The characters are clustered section by section. The instructor will show you the whole writing process by hand, stroke by stroke. With the proper speed, you can easily follow and imitate the writing.

Verdict

Learning to write characters is also a great way to learn Chinese language. From characters to words, from words to topics, and from topics to conversation, it’s all connected. If you understand the logic behind Chinese characters, the following process could not be easier. This topic-oriented Chinese character method provides you with the route to learning.

This course contains about 240 Chinese characters and corresponding words, which range from HSK level 1 to level 3. It’s an ideal course for beginner to intermediate-level learners.

Just learning by watching is not enough for sure. As a writing character course, there are also downloadable, stroke-by-stroke, writing sheets of each topic. All the key and extended characters are listed there for the learners to write and review. In addition, there is also a test in each lesson which helps the learners check if they have mastered and memorized the characters properly.

As a character learning course, it fills the gap between beginner to intermediate level, especially after the fundamental stage, with quite a systematic and logical thought. Learners can easily access the course and begin their journey to Chinese character mastery.

Additional Resources:

Rooted on the Topic-oriented Character Learning Method, other resources are available to help you learn Chinese characters efficiently.

For instance, articles like Chinese Characters About Farming and Nature and Chinese Characters for Animals offer insights into specific categories of characters. Learning characters related to body parts, the Mid-Autumn Festival, and numbers can provide a deeper cultural context and aid memorization.

The post Topic-Oriented Method: The Most Efficient Way to Learn Hundreds of Chinese Characters appeared first on .

Definitely not! We Chinese use the same keyboards as other countries. But how can we type out so many characters with just the regular 26 letters? That`s what I`d like to share with you: how to type in Chinese.

Methods of Typing Chinese Characters

1. Pinyin Input Method

As you can see from the following image, Chinese characters are constructed with various strokes, which are relatively independent of the phonetic system. It`s impossible to list all the characters on the keyboard since there are about 80,000 characters in total. Each character has its own pronunciation, though many of them share the same phonetic syllables, known as Pinyin. Thus, we can get a list of the characters by typing the phonetic syllables.

The phonetic syllables are constructed from three parts: the initial, the final, and the tone. The initial and final are composed of the 26 English alphabet letters, the same as those on your keyboard. You may wonder, then, how about the tones? Well, tones are often the most challenging part of Chinese pronunciation for many foreigners. Fortunately, it`s not necessary to type out each tone. All you need to type are the letters. This typing method also makes many Chinese learners feel comfortable since they don`t need to memorize the exact tone of each character. When you input the letters of the initial and final, all the corresponding characters with 5 different tones will be shown. You just need to choose the one you want and ignore the others.

2. The Five-stroke Input Method（五笔输入法）

Chinese characters have many small components that need to be put together in a specific order. Each component is made of smaller strokes.The modern modular strokes are based on the “扎”字法, which are regulated into five types: “一”（横）、“丨”（竖）、 “丿”（撇）、“丶”（点）and“乛” （折）. This system is the foundation for Chinese people to learn how to write characters. 

五笔输入法（The five-stroke input）was very popular for a period because it is based on the stroke construction of each character. As you can see from the following image, each letter on your keyboard represents several Chinese strokes. What you need to do is break down the character into its different stroke components, find the corresponding alphabet letter that represents each stroke, and then you can form the character you want.

The advantage of this method is that even if you don`t know the pronunciation of a character, you can easily type it out. With the Pinyin input method, it`s hard to type a character if you do not know or are unsure about its pronunciation. This five-stroke input method has a lower error rate.

However, more and more Chinese people are taught to learn pronunciation and characters using Pinyin in primary schools. As a result, many people feel more familiar with Pinyin, leading to fewer people choosing to use the five-stroke input method.  Additionally, it`s really not easy to memorize all the small components.

3. The Handwriting Input Method（手写输入法）

This is the easiest method to understand. Unlike the Pinyin Input Method, you don`t need to know the exact pronunciation of each character; you can input by hand. Unlike the Five-Stroke Input Method, you also do not need to memorize the strokes on your keyboard. You can simply write the characters on the screen.

The drawbacks of this method are that you need to use a touchscreen (which may not be easy), or you may find it hard to write characters accurately. And if you do not write neatly and properly,  the input software may not recognize what you have written. The common characters listed by the Radicals and How to Memorize Chinese Characters Guide could help better improve your handwriting.

Tool Recommendation

The three input methods mentioned above are very popular. You can easily acquire the input method tool of your choice on your smartphone or computer. Below is a list of some commonly used tools

Pinyin input method applications:

• 谷歌拼音（Google）
• QQ拼音
• SOGOU 拼音

Five-stroke input method applications:

• SOGOU五笔
• QQ五笔
• 百度五笔（BAIDU）

Notes

Even if you are comfortable typing with the pinyin input method, don`t forget to practice your tones while speaking. People cannot distinguish words without tones when talking with each other.If you have mastered typing Chinese characters with pinyin, sometimes handwriting may seem unnecessary. However, handwriting can help Chinese learners remember the characters more accurately and systematically. With actual writing, your muscle memory will help you remember and master these characters because they are easier to recall this way.  Additionally, writing by hand is also a part of understanding Chinese culture.  Therefore, I highly recommend you continue to practice handwriting.

Closing

Understanding how to type Chinese characters can greatly enhance your ability to communicate in Chinese, whether you are a beginner or an advanced learner. By familiarizing yourself with the Pinyin, Five-Stroke, and Handwriting input methods, you can choose the one that best suits your needs and preferences. Each method has its own advantages and challenges, but with practice, you can become proficient in typing Chinese characters. For more detailed information on Chinese characters, you can explore this guide on Chinese characters. Additionally, to learn more about efficient ways to master Chinese characters, check out this article on the topic-oriented method. 

Here is an all-in-one guide to mapping your learning for all Chinese beginners. 

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The real Chinese language is composed of square characters that record both the meaning and the sounds of the language. They are the fundamental building blocks of the language, the origins of concepts, and the logic of its thinking.

By the origins of concepts and the logic of their thinking, we mean that many concepts in the Chinese language originated from different sources other than English. Let’s look at some interesting examples:

The concept of light and heavy, 輕(Qīng) and 重(zhòng) originated from chariots of ancient times. Both characters have a 車(chē) in them. The character 輕(Qīng) is composed of a chariot and a stream. The character 重(zhòng) is formed by adding one more wheel on each side of a 車(chē)。 It is not the sound 【qīng】and 【zhòng】 that carry the concept of light and heavy, but the shape of the characters.

The same logic applies to 领袖(lǐngxiù), which means “leader.” 领(lǐng) is the collar of a jacket; 袖(xiù) are its sleeves. As the collar and sleeves are the most important parts of a jacket, they are used to refer to the leader of a group of people.

The collar is also the part that you grab to lift a jacket. From there comes the meaning of leading. From the concept of leading, the meaning of 领(lǐng) was extended to “captain,” such as in 领队(lǐngduì)；“ to understand” such as in 领会(lǐnghuì)；“ to accept” such as in 认领(rènlǐng). All these meanings are logically interlinked in Chinese, but it appears like nonsense to foreign students, who would surely ask, “Is there any relationship between the collar of a jacket and the captain of my football team?”

The logic underlining the Chinese language is not always the same as with English. For example, the concepts of “fast” and “slow” are written as 快慢 (kuàimàn), where both characters carry the part of 忄, which is a variation of 心, “mind.” In Chinese logic, fast or slow is only a mental phenomenon. It is all about the feeling of the speakers.

The above examples demonstrate that Chinese characters are not only symbols to record the meaning and sounds of spoken Chinese, but they also reveal the concept and logic of Chinese thinking. They are indispensable to the understanding of the Chinese language, whether oral or written.

Alphabetical languages depend heavily on grammar rules such as tenses, gender variations, and where related words must change their form and pronunciation to make sense. However, the rich characters of the Chinese language made it possible to get rid of the restrainment of grammar rules. There are no grammar rules in ancient Chinese. The concept of Chinese grammar is an imported term to facilitate analyzing Chinese sentences in the modern era. There was no grammar book written in the history of China before the May 4th Movement, which took place in 1919.

The benefit of having no grammar rules is the flexibility, efficiency, and speed of both oral and written expressions in the Chinese language. Particularly in speaking numbers.

Another benefit that Chinese characters brought to the language is that they allowed for the separation of oral and written language. This unique feature permitted the Chinese culture to survive thousands of years consistently and permitted the existence of numerous dialects in different places. In some parts of China, even nearby villages have their proper dialects. Dialects did not ruin the integrity of the language: They all speak Chinese.

Given all of the above arguments, it is clear that the characters are the real foundation of the sophistication of the Chinese language. To learn the characters should be the first step to learning the language. Though they are difficult to handle, once the learners break this barrier, the rest of the journey toward proficiency will be so much easier.

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