The various elements that one must remember when learning characters are:
The Structure of Characters
Characters may be physically structured in many different ways. Characters are classified as either unitary or compound. If you imagine the character to be a square box, for the compound characters the box may subdivided in half in two parts, left and right, or top and bottom:
left-right | 師/师 | shī | teacher; master; specialist | n. |
top-bottom | 空 | kōng | empty; sky | n. |
Or, again for compound characters, the box may be divided vertically into thirds, or it may be divided top and bottom, with the top part further divided in half or thirds, and the bottom half also sometimes may be divided:
left-right into thirds | 懶/懒 | lǎn | lazy | adj. |
left-right into thirds | 嫩 | nèn | tender | n. |
top-bottom with top in thirds | 彎/弯 | wān | bend; curve | n. | top-bottom with top in thirds | 戀/恋 | liàn | love | v. |
Each of these subdivisions or parts of the ‘box’ may contain one or more radicals, or a number of unique strokes.
These are just a few of many possibilities for the writing of characters (or for the innovating of new ones to be added to the character set).
Other Possible Character Configurations
⿰ ⿱ ⿲ ⿳ ⿴ ⿵ ⿶ ⿷ ⿸ ⿹ ⿺ ⿻
Represented above are figures showing a dozen different possible Chinese character configurations that are used for characters.
Contextual Learning and the Logic of Chinese
Certainly, learning the spoken language is hard enough for foreigners. The written language is, however, not as difficult as it may seem on its face.
This is because characters are learned in a context, and the context makes each bit of knowledge fit into place, until the learner has a sufficient corpus of knowledge to make further learning seem to be an ‘easy fit’.
Don’t let the task scare you into thinking that it is too complex. It is true that learning Chinese is more difficult than learning Western languages like French, Spanish or Italian.
Even German and Russian, difficult as they are, are probably less difficult: but once the learner establishes a base of knowledge in Chinese, further accretion of knowledge fits into place seamlessly.
Chinese people are very proud of their language …one reason is because they feel that their language is a very logical, well-connected language. While in some ways they are correct, perhaps they are so knowledgeable about the language that they overlook many of the inconsistencies and illogicalities that it also contains.
No matter, all native speakers ‘see the logic’ of their native languages and tend to overlook the illogical aspects of them. It is the subjective impression of this writer that, in fact, Chinese people are correct: their language is highly logical. (See ‘Grammar’ for some of the reasons that it is not as hard as it seems at first.)
Mention has already been made about the possible number of definitions attached to each character. While this does make rote memorization of characters complex, the rote memorization of thirty or forty definitions of a character is not how the characters are actually learned.
Functionally, each character is learned in a context …either in the context of a word, a sentence, or a subject. Chinese is a highly contextual language. The context will act as a cue for the learner as to which meaning of the character is being used in any particular situation.
A peaceful section of the Li River in Guǎngxī province.
When that character is encountered in a different context, a new additional definition will be added to the first …and so on in a slow building process until the character has many meanings and is very familiar and is automatically understood correctly.
Bottom line, however, is that if you want to know characters, you have to use them frequently. You have to write them, read them and focus on them to absorb enough to actually function in the Chinese language in Chinese society …if that is your goal.
The Process of Learning Characters
All programs for students of Chinese as a foreign language initiate the process of teaching characters immediately. There is a logic to this: the large number of characters that must be mastered in order to become proficient in the language, and the necessity to become immersed in the language being just two reasons. Learning to speak first, and then going back to begin the process of learning to read and write is NOT an effective method of learning the language.
If you go to China to study, there will be an expectation that your reading, writing and speaking/listening comprehension skills are all in synch with each other. All programs in China expect second year students to have achieved a certain level of ability in the language, and so on up to full fluency with the language. Each year of study brings a certain expectation of proficiency in all areas of the language (on the part of the educational institutions. Your placement in classes will be based on a composite of your abilities in all areas.)
So, when you begin to study the language, expect to immediately begin to learn reading, writing, and speaking/listening at the same time.
Stroke Order and Writing Characters
Writing characters is also a somewhat complex art to learn. Chinese characters are written according to rules of stroke order.
All Chinese writing textbooks will first detail the rules of stroke order in a prefatory note. Only infrequently will these rules be broken, but, be assured that there will be cases that break the rules.
There are (depending upon what classification system is being used,) between 28 and 32 basic strokes used in the writing of Chinese characters, not counting transformed and attached strokes. In general, characters are written from upper right to lower left, with horizontal lines (usually) written before vertical lines.
Each character will have its own well-defined stroke order. In fact, early Chinese electronic dictionaries usually only recognized a handwritten character if written in the proper stroke order, although more modern character entry systems used on cellphones allow much more leeway with cursively written characters.
Memorization By Repeatedly Writing Characters
All students of Chinese (including ‘native speakers’,) learn (ie. ‘memorize’) new characters by first writing each new character 10 or more times.
In school, Chinese children start doing this in the first grade, although many Chinese parents start teaching their children character-recognition and writing before the children start attending school. Remember that the Chinese are surrounded by their written language in the same way that westerners are surrounded by their written languages …on signs, on walls, on advertising, essentially, everywhere.
The Forbidden City in Beijing.
Without memorizing the stroke order of a character by repeatedly writing it, it is almost impossible to visualize a character’s written form from the sound alone even for characters that one can easily recognize.
This probably has something to do with the way that shapes (ie. pictographs) are recorded in the brain. Try for yourself …have someone draw a ‘character’ or shape made of about ten connected lines (and not a regular polygon).
Look at the shape for a few moments, and then look away and try to reproduce it. You will probably not be able to.
While it is possible to learn to recognize characters without learning to write, it is definitely a more difficult task. When you learn to write a character, you fix all of the strokes of the character in your brain, and enable yourself to recall the written form from the sound and meaning.
Learning to write characters will also enable you to recognize other people’s handwritten characters, which sometimes look considerably different from the characters as printed in books, mostly because the stroke order of the characters often leads to popular shortcuts in cursive writing.
It is always interesting to see a native Chinese speaker try to remember how to write an infrequently written character. The first thing that they do is try to ‘write’ it on their palm using their finger as a stylus.
The usual result is that, once they start moving their finger to write it, they remember the character’s strokes.
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© R. Teller, 2015
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(!) | Simplified character is completely different from the Traditional character |
A.C. | ancient Chinese |
ab. | abbreviation |
acctg. | accounting |
adj. | adjective or adjectival phrase (in Chinese an adj. is often simply a v. or n. to which de5 [的] is added: the 的 is usually omitted in this dictionary) |
adv. | adverb or adverbial phrase |
aka | also known as |
alt. pron. | alternate or non-standard pronunciation |
Am. | American; American usage |
anat. | anatomy |
anc. | ancient |
arch. | archaic character, use or meaning |
Arch. | Architecture; referring to Architecture or having to do with Architecture |
ast. | astronomy |
aux. | auxiliary verb |
b. | born |
bce. | Before the Common Era (=BC: Before Christ) |
Bei.pron. | Beijing-style pronunciation |
bf. | bound form |
bib. | biblical |
bot. | botany |
Br. | British; British usage |
Cant. | Cantonese |
CCP | Chinese Communist Party |
CE | Church of England |
ce. | Common Era (=AD: Anno Domini) |
cf. | compare |
Ch.id. | Chinese idiom |
char. | Chinese character |
Chin. | China; Chinese |
Chr. | Christianity (including both Protestantism and Catholicism) |
coll. | colloquial expression or usage |
conj. | conjunction |
contemp. | contempuous |
court. | courteous |
d. | died |
derog. | used as a derogatory term |
dial. | dialect |
dipl. | diplomacy; diplomatic |
dist. | distinguished from; as distinguished from |
econ. | economics |
Eng.id. | English idiom |
Eng.ph. | English phrase |
env. | environment; environmental |
ex. | exclamation |
expr. | expression |
fam. | familiar usage |
fig. | figurative usage |
fmr. | former or formerly |
fr. | from |
Fr. | France; French |
fv. | functive verb |
geol. | geology |
geom. | geometry |
gr. | grammar |
gr.str. | grammatical structure or construction |
gya | billion years ago |
hist. | history; historical |
id. | idiom |
imp. | impolite |
interch. | interchangeable with |
intj. | interjection |
Isl. | Islam |
Jp. | Japan; Japanese; Japanese variant (of a character) |
KXR | Kangxi Radical |
L. | Latin, from Latin or having a Latin root |
L.ph. | translation of Latin phrase (as used in English) |
leg. | legal terminology |
lg. | language |
lit. | literal (ie. word-for-word) translation |
M. | measure word (used as a numerary adjunct for nouns) |
mach. | machines; machinery |
math. | mathematics |
ME | Middle East; Middle Eastern |
mech. | mechanics |
med. | medicine; medical terminology; as used in the practice of, etc. |
met. | metaphorical usage |
mil. | military terminology |
mod. | modern usage |
mus. | music or musical notation |
mya | million years ago |
n. | noun |
na. | name or title |
naut. | nautical, marine or maritime |
NGOs | Non-Governmental Organizations |
nph. | noun phrase; compound noun |
nu. | number |
obs. | obsolete |
oft. | often |
on. | onomatopoeia (as, a sound's written representation of how it sounds) |
opp. | opposite or as opposed to |
part. | particle |
pat. | pattern |
ph. | phrase |
phil. | philosophy |
phy. | physics |
pl. | plural |
pn. | place name, geographic location or geographic feature |
pol. | polite form of address |
pol.sl. | political slogan |
pop. | popular speech; popularly used; common speech |
pop.wr. | popularly written |
pp. | past participle |
pr. | pronoun |
PRC | People's Republic of China; as used in the PRC |
pre. | prefix |
pref. | preferred |
prep. | preposition |
pron. | pronounced; pronunciation |
pw. | place word |
qs. | question sentence |
qw. | question word |
r. | reigned |
rad. | radical- used as a part of Chinese characters |
RC | Roman Catholic |
regl.var. | regional variant |
rve. | resultative verb ending |
sa. | saying |
sb. | somebody |
se. | sentence |
sf. | sentence fragment |
sh. | short form or shortened form |
sl. | slang |
so. | someone |
so.s | someone's |
soc. | sociology |
sp. | specialized language used in technical situations or by specialists (eg.: medical, legal, etc.) |
Sp. | Spanish |
sp.pron. | special or unusual pronunciation |
sport. | as used in sports; sports terminology |
ss. | sample sentence |
st. | sometimes |
st.pron. | sometimes pronounced |
st.wr. | sometimes written |
stat. | statistics |
sth. | something |
suf. | suffix |
sv. | stative verb (an adj. which includes 'be' as in 'be (x)', often simply labeled as 'adj.') |
sw. | somewhat |
Switz. | Switzerland |
T.S. | Tone Sandhi |
tax. | taxonomy (as, scientific naming system); taxonomic name |
TCM | Traditional Chinese Medicine; Chinese herbal medicine |
tm. | trademark |
topo. | topolect (some part of the word has been phonically transliterated from English into Chinese) (aka loanword) |
tr.na. | trade name, business name or product name |
trans. | translation |
tslt. | transliteration |
TW | Taiwan; as used in Taiwan |
u.f. | used for |
undef. | undefined |
usu. | usually |
v. | verb |
var. | various; variety; variant |
vern. | vernacular |
vo. | separable verb-object combination |
vph. | verb phrase; compound verb |
vul. | vulgar |
wr. | written or literary use |
A01 | Agriculture: Soil, Crops and Tools |
A02 | Livestock and Animal Husbandry |
A03 | Nomadism and Pastoralism |
A04 | Sericulture and Silk |
A05 | Trees and Forestry |
A06 | Wood Products, Carpentry and Woodworking |
A07 | Other Misc. Wooden Articles and Furniture |
A08 | Plants and Botany |
A09 | Flowers |
A10 | Fruits and Melons |
A11 | Beans, Nuts, Seeds, Oils and Tubers |
A12 | Molds, Mushrooms and Other Fungi |
A13 | Smells, Aromas and Fragrances |
A14 | Fibers, Textiles and Dyeing |
B01 | Rarity, Precision, Value and Excellence |
B02 | Beauty, Aesthetics, Art and the Fine Arts |
B03 | Colors |
B04 | Pattern, Design, Appearance and Decoration |
B05 | Architecture, Structures and Construction |
B06 | Handicrafts |
B07 | Porcelain and Pottery |
B08 | Clarity, Darkness and Gloom |
C01 | Books, Poetry, Literature and Publishing |
C02 | Myths, Legends, Stories and Reading |
C03 | Documents, Correspondence, Paper and Printing |
C04 | Journalism, News, Newspapers and Media |
C05 | Acting, Theater, Video and Cinematography |
C06 | Voice, Sound, Music and Dance |
C07 | The Eye, Vision and Photography |
C08 | Radio, Television, and Broadcasting |
D01 | Science and Scientific Ideas |
D02 | Biology, Microbiology, Taxonomy and Genetics |
D03 | Anatomy, Physiology, Kinesiology and Bioelectronics |
D04 | Land Animals |
D05 | Insects and Spiders |
D06 | Rivers, the Littoral, the Ocean, Fish, Amphibians, Aquatic Animals and Oceanography |
D07 | Birds and Flying Mammals |
D08 | The Environment, Conservation, Ecology, Pollution and Garbage |
E01 | Chemistry |
E02 | Communication and Humor |
E03 | Technology, Computers, Electronics and the Internet |
E04 | Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry |
E05 | Batteries, Electricity and Light |
E06 | Geology and the Earth Sciences |
E07 | Petroleum, Minerals, Mining and Metallurgy |
E08 | Jade, Gemstones and Jewelry |
F01 | Individual Character Definitions |
F02 | Chinese Culture, Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture |
F03 | Chinese Dynasties and the Dynastic Period |
F04 | Ancient Chinese Warfare and Weapons |
F05 | Chinese Language: Measure Words, Negatives and RVEs |
F06 | Nature and Natural Resources |
F07 | Names, Proper Names and Trade Names |
F08 | Chinese Books, Writing and Characters |
G01 | Diplomacy and International Relations |
G02 | Nationality, Ethnicity, Nations and Peoples |
G03 | Bureaucracy, Government and NGOs |
G04 | Geography and Maps |
G05 | Places and Place Names |
G06 | Topography and Geographic Features |
G07 | Politics |
G08 | Cities |
H01 | Economics and Markets |
H02 | Business, Enterprise, Commerce and Ownership |
H03 | Accounting |
H04 | Sales, Marketing and Service |
H05 | Negotiation, Labor and Management |
H06 | Money and Banking, Finance, Insurance and Investing |
H07 | Products, Companies, Manufacturing and Manufactured Goods |
H08 | Skill, Standards and Quality |
I01 | Education |
I02 | Mathematics, Statistics, Quantities, Series, Progression and Size |
I03 | Prehistory, Protohistory and World History |
I04 | Chinese History and Historical Mythology |
I05 | Japan and Japanese History |
I06 | Sanitation and Hygiene |
I07 | Materials |
I08 | Actions |
I09 | Shapes, Forms and Models |
I10 | Textures, Rough and Smooth Surfaces, and Flexibility |
J01 | The Kitchen, Cooking Techniques, Utensils and Nutrition |
J02 | Foods and Ingredients, Tea and Other Beverages, Spices, Sauces and Seasonings |
J03 | Alcohol, Wines and Spirits |
J04 | Restaurants and Entertaining, Menu Items, Chinese (and Other) Food and Recipe Names |
J05 | Absorb, Inhale, Assimilate and Include |
J06 | Easy, Difficult, Similarities and Differences |
J07 | New, Old, More, Less |
J08 | Instructions, Directions, Opportunity, Problems and Mistakes |
K01 | Language |
K02 | Grammar and Grammatical Constructions |
K03 | Phonetics |
K04 | Exclamations, Expressions, Phrases, Proverbs, Sayings, Slang and Idioms |
K05 | Descriptions |
K06 | Order and Disorder, Methods and Meetings |
K07 | Sources, Results, Solutions, Beginnings, Endings and Waste |
K08 | Comparisons, Combinations, Connections, Distribution and Containers |
L01 | Rules, Law, Courts, Justice and Criminology |
L02 | Threats, Safety and Security |
L03 | Winning, Losing, Success, Failure, Luck, Fame and Fortune |
L04 | Hide, Conceal, Secrets, Questions and Answers |
L05 | Seek, Barriers, Limits and Restrictions |
L06 | Help, Strong and Weak |
L07 | Change, Plan, Functioning and Usefulness |
L08 | Groups, Unity, Decision, Agreement and Harmony |
M01 | Logic, Intellect, Talent and Ability |
M02 | Philosophy, Ideas, Knowledge and Inventions |
M03 | Medicine, Health and Pharmacology |
M04 | Memory, the Mind, Psychology and Emotion |
M05 | Human Characteristics and Responsibilities |
M06 | Corruption in Society, Sex and Pornography |
M07 | Public and Private, Manners and Civility, Respect and Honor |
M08 | Real, Counterfeit, Substitutes and Copies; Cheap and Expensive |
N01 | Military Affairs and Intelligence, Weapons, Strategy, War and Peace |
N02 | Protest, Violence, Rebellion, Civil War, Terrorism and Guerilla Warfare |
N03 | Engineering |
N04 | Time and Tides |
N05 | Organization, Competence, Aspiration and Obligation |
N06 | Childhood, Maturation, Adulthood and Old Age |
N07 | Sleep |
N08 | Life, Death, Living and Dying |
O01 | General Physics |
O02 | Space, Optics, Astronomy and Astrophysics |
O03 | Atoms, Atomic Energy and Particle Physics |
O04 | Aeronautics, Aviation, Air Power and Spaceflight |
O05 | Weights, Measures, Flow, Positioning and Distance |
O06 | Fire, Water and Ice |
O07 | Weather, Meteorology and Conditions |
O08 | Float, Wave, Rise in the Air, Spin, Revolve and Other Motions |
P01 | Faith, Religion, Morals and Ethics |
P02 | Great Religious Writings |
P03 | The Zodiac, Astrology and Other Symbols |
P04 | Hope, Fate, Belief and Superstition |
P05 | Women and Women's Things |
P06 | Permission, Acceptance and Rejection |
P07 | Opposites, Categories and Kinds |
P08 | Collect, Assemble, Give and Receive |
Q01 | Sociology, Society and Culture |
Q02 | Relationships |
Q03 | Clothing, Fashion and Style |
Q04 | Behavior, Habits and Addictions |
Q05 | Home, Furniture, Household Appliances, Housewares and Household Activities |
Q06 | Work, Jobs and Careers |
Q07 | Sports, Athletics and Exercise |
Q08 | Toys, Games, Gambling, Entertainment and Leisure Activities |
R01 | Gifts, Prizes, Ceremonies, Achievements and Philanthropy |
R02 | Ships, Shipping, Sailing, Naval Forces and Maritime Affairs |
R03 | Rope, Bind, Tie, Packaging and Packages |
R04 | Travel, Transportation, Air Travel and Tourism |
R05 | the Science of Mechanics, Mechanisms, Instruments, Devices, Machines and Engines |
R06 | Vehicles, Driving and Speed |
R07 | Breakage, Accidents and Disasters |
R08 | Machine Parts, Tools and Their Use |