Learn Chinese Characters

Pinyin is the official Chinese phonetic characterization used to learn mandarin; it superseded Zhuyin, used to learn Chinese characters. A language without an alphabet sounds almost counter intuitive, as though it were only a spoken language and not written. However this can not be less true for the Chinese language. Though Chinese does not have an alphabet per se, it does employ the use pictographic symbols or characters used in written text to illustrate Chinese messages, and as a written text it dates back several thousands of years making it one of the world’s oldest written languages. The most fundamental difference between Chinese characters and conventional alphabets is that the characters represent whole words (in same instances) or entire concepts making it logo syllabic in some sense. A single character in Chinese can consist of a maximum of sixty four strokes, for instance the characterization of the term ‘talkative’ in Chinese, has sixty four strokes in total. Also, Chinese characters were traditionally read from right to left in vertical columns, this has since changed to a more conventional style where text is read from right to left in horizontal columns.

Taking the time to derive a deeper meaning and learn Chinese characters will help you in written word. There have been several techniques used to teach or tutor people who wish to learn how to write Chinese using the official transcription technique, pinyin. However those who wish to learn the characters themselves can still do so for instance, by use of character animations; because of the unique ability of a Chinese character to represent an entire concept, in this technique characters can be quickly and intelligently mastered through animations where the character itself can be “reconstructed” to illustrate the concept thus making them the task to learn Chinese characters easier.

Other successful techniques include the use of Chinese flash cards to learn Chinese characters. This by far is the most popular method with flash cards being readily bought in any china town or over the internet. In these cards the concept and abstract ideas represented by the Chinese character is illustrated on one side while the other has a brief both the character itself and short stories explaining the genesis of the meaning of the character. With a command of roughly three thousand characters you will be capable of reading most Chinese written texts. As you become familiar with the ‘strokes’ used to represent characters of the hànzi you will notice a pattern in the usage of certain strokes for certain meaning.

By: Ola Kowalska

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