The wonderful world of Chinese characters – 汉字
Today, I wanted to share the world of Chinese characters – Hanzi. We’ll take a look at the amazing system used to teach thousands of characters and better understand their components which make them a pragmatic solution to better understand concepts, world perceptions, and understand the cultural history of Chinese culture throughout the region and dynasties.
1 The Building Blocks
Before they write a full character, children learn the basic strokes (like a horizontal line, a vertical line, a dot, etc.). These are practiced over and over with the correct stroke order for building a character, which is essential for writing efficiently and helping with memorization. Oftentimes , students use special grid notebooks to practice writing and develop muscle memory. Anyone who studies a language using characters will know that a whiteboard is a great tool and/or we’ll go through a lot of notebooks full of thoughts and new Hanzi so we can engrain them into our brains and build muscle memory.
2 Phonetic sounds – Pinyin
Alongside the characters, Pinyin (拼音，Pīnyīn) is the [most common] official system for writing Chinese using the Roman alphabet (used in English, Spanish, Czech, etc), which helps to learn the exact pronunciation and tone for each character. Practice with songs, rhymes, and games. To reinforce what they’ve learned, students read graded readers, short texts, and classic poems. Recitation is also very common. Repeating these texts out loud helps lock in the rhythm of the language and the memory of the characters. This is worthy of going into with much more detail to delve into the chart and better cover the system, so keep an eye out for updates.
3 The Foundation – Character Radicals
Characters are made of components called “radicals” – 部首, bùshǒu. These are like mini-characters that often give a clue about the meaning or sound of the full character. For example, many characters related to water (like “river” or “lake”) share the same “water” radical. Learning these makes guessing the meaning of new words much easier. As you see characters in the world, you’ll notice parts of each will be utilized in various positions within other characters – there is a deep meaning behind this, which is quite pragmatic and makes learning other characters much easier.
4 Learning in Context, not only lists of words
Characters aren’t just taught in a long, isolated list. These are introduced in thematic units like “family,” “school,” or “food.” Using the characters in full sentences and stories early on is essential so the words have meaning and context for integration (any target language you may be studying).
5 Everyday practice… every day.
A classic classroom exercise is 听写 (tīngxiě), or dictation. The teacher says a word, and the students must write the correct characters. This is a listening, recognition, and writing test all at once. Apps, games, and multimedia tools make the process even more interactive and fun. Below, you’ll find some of my favorite tools I use when studying Hanzi.
Hope you found this helpful! Keep an eye out for expansions on these topics in the future. 别放弃！大家回头见。
Useful Phrases
If You Forget a Character:
| 这个字怎么写？ Zhège zì zěnme xiě? | “How do you write this character?” |
| 这个字下面/旁边怎么写？ Zhège zì xiàmiàn/pángbiān zěnme xiě? | “How do you write the bottom/side part of this character?” |
| 我忘了这个字的后半部分，怎么写来着？ Wǒ wàng le zhège zì de hòubàn bùfèn, zěnme xiě láizhe? | “I forgot the second half of this character—how is it written again?” |
| 这个字的偏旁部首是什么？ Zhège zì de piānpáng bùshǒu shì shénme? | “What’s the radical of this character?” |
General:
| 我觉得是这样说的。 Wǒ juéde shì zhèyàng shuō de. | “I think this is how you say it.” |
| 应该是这么说的。 Yīnggāi shì zhème shuō de. | “It should be said like this.” |
| 我不太确定，是这样说吗？ Wǒ bú tài quèdìng, shì zhèyàng shuō ma? | “I’m not too sure—is it said like this?” |
| 我试试看，是这样说吗？ Wǒ shìshi kàn, shì zhèyàng shuō ma? | “Let me try—is it said like this?” |
