As you can see above, simplified pictograms don’t look like their meaning a lot of times, but there are certain exceptions. For example, pictograms, as their name suggests, are pictures of the words. Some of these types can be really useful for you to know as you learn to read written Chinese. Transfer characters – 考 ( kǎo, “test”) and 老 ( lǎo, “old”).Loan characters – 泗 ( sì, “sniffles, nasal mucus”) from 四 ( sì, “four”).Combined ideographs – 家 ( jiā, “home, family”).Phonetic compounds – 历 ( lì, “calendar”).Pictograms – for example 人 ( rén, “person, people”).Let’s have a look at the 6 types of Chinese characters: The reason why the types of Chinese characters are not in the very beginning of this article is simple: you don’t need to learn about them to be able to read Chinese writing.īut it’s definitely important to know how Chinese characters are classified And at the end of the day, the knowledge might come in handy when reading and analyzing the Chinese texts. If you already know the character 四 ( sì, “four”) and the character 月 ( yuè, “month”), then you can guess that 四月 ( sìyuè) means “four/fourth month”, therefore meaning “April”.Let’s take a look at more examples of how you can guess the meaning of Chinese words: 前 ( qián) in Chinese means “ex” or “before”, 男 ( nán) is “male” and 朋友 ( péngyǒu) means “friend”. The same word in Chinese, 前男友 or 前男朋友 ( qián nányǒu or qián nánpéngyǒu, “ex-boyfriend”) is formed the exact same way. In the same way some English words are formed, Chinese words often make sense when broken down.įor example, the English word “ex-boyfriend” is formed by three parts: “ex”, “boy” and “friend”. Have a look at these and try to guess what they mean: As mentioned before, the simplification of characters has made it a bit more difficult to do that, but some characters still have a symbol that’s close to their meanings. 心 ( xīn) – “heart” can either stay as it is at the bottom of a character: 想 ( xiǎng, “want, think”) or can change to 忄when located on the left of a character: 快 ( kuài, “fast”)Ī great example that combines both the semantic (meaning) and phonetic (sound) components is the character 洋 ( yáng, “ocean”), where 氵is the sign of water and 羊 ( yáng, “sheep”) indicates how to pronounce it.Īnother way to break up the characters and make it easier to read written Chinese is to visualize.水 ( shuǐ) – “water” changes to 氵, for example: 河 ( hé, “river”).火 ( huǒ) – “fire” looks like this when it acts as a radical: 灬, such as in the character 黑 ( hēi, “black”).There are 214 simplified Chinese radicals and here are a couple of examples: Some radicals have different variations based on a character and the process of simplification of Chinese characters has made it even more difficult to recognize them. Not every character is determined by its radical. You should be familiar with radicals, but don’t focus all your attention on them. Recognizing radicals will help you more easily find the Chinese character translation, as many Chinese dictionaries list characters based on their radicals. Character radicals often indicate the meaning of the character and sometimes the way it’s pronounced. The most important component of every Chinese character is its radical. It’s never just a letter, and sometimes it’s a whole word. Remember that every Chinese character represents a syllable. Let’s learn how to read Chinese “letters” and words - the characters. Now that you know what pinyin is, it’ll be easier for you to jump into learning how to understand Chinese writing. Pinyin also includes all the tones, for example, 汉字, “Chinese character” is transcribed as hànzì. As a transcription from the Chinese characters to Latin alphabet, it’s a great help for a new learner. There’s no such thing, but pinyin is as close as it gets to it.
The Chinese language doesn’t have an alphabet per se, so if you try to search for “Chinese alphabet”, most likely you’ll just find something about the characters. It’s a transcription of the Chinese characters into the Latin alphabet - the alphabet that I’m using to write this article. Afterward, you’ll learn more advanced characters and it will all become much easier.įirst things first: what’s pinyin? Pinyin is going to be your biggest helper when you learn to read Chinese characters. How Do You Read Chinese Writing? Start With PinyinĪ simple answer to the question “How to read Mandarin?” is: start by learning pinyin and then continue with the simplest characters.
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