Chinese Characters are about 3300 years old; the earliest characters were oracle bone inscription. Before 1949, when New China was founded, people used traditional characters, but after that people started to make the traditional characters easier and more convenient to use and learn, so they invented simplified Chinese characters. Those simplified characters are used in mainland China up to now. Hong Kong and Taiwan however are still using the traditional ones.
There are six categories of Chinese characters: pictographs, pictophonetic characters, associative compounds, self-explanatory characters, phonetic loan characters and mutually explanatory characters. We will introduce the common four categories, the other two are unusual.
1. Pictographs
Some Chinese characters were created from pictures of real things, for example:
mén 门 „door“
mù 木 „tree“
mǎ 马 „horse“
2. Pictophonetic characters
Pictophonetic characters are always made from a radical and a single Chinese character.
Pictophonetic characters can be divided into 8 types. The most common type is “left radical right phonetic.” The left part of the Chinese character is a radical; it shows you the possible meaning this Chinese character might be related to, and from the right part, you can guess how to read this Chinese character.
Examples:
mā 妈 “mother”
The left side is a radical, “nǚ 女 female” shows the meaning; the right side shows the phonetic, because “mǎ 马 horse” and “mā 妈 mother” have similar pronunciations.
ma 吗 “a question word”
The left part is a radical, “kǒu 口 mouth;” you need to ask questions by mouth, so the left part shows you the possible meaning, and the pronunciation of the right part “mǎ 马 horse” is similar with “ma 吗 a question word.” So “吗” is the meaning side “口” plus the phonetic side “马.”
3. Associative compounds
These Chinese characters can be divided into two parts: One part is about figure, the other part is about meaning.
For example in “xiū 休 rest,” the left part is the radical of person, the right part means tree; it’s like a man leans against the tree. In ancient times, people worked in the field, and when they felt tired, they could have a rest beside a tree. When you see this Chinese character, you can think of this figure naturally.
“dàn 旦 daybreak, dawn,” can also show you a figure. The upper part is“rì 日 the sun,” and the lower part is like the horizon line; when the sun rises from the horizon line it’s daybreak.
4. Self-explanatory characters
These types of Chinese characters are not convenient to be drawn as a concrete image, so they are shown by a single abstract symbol, line, or a Pictograph and an abstract symbol.
For example “yī 一 one,” “èr 二 two,” “sān 三 three,” one line represents the number “one,” two abstract lines are just the abstract image of two things, and so is three.
“shàng 上 on, up,” the short line shows the position; it’s up the long line “xià 下down, below,”the short line is below the long line.
Post time: Feb-07-2020