Comments on: The Chinese Alphabet – it’s not THAT big

By: Dig Chinese

Dig Chinese — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 12:33:40 +0000

Those 214 kangxi radicals aren’t nearly as useful as letters are for decomposing characters that aren’t a simple left-right/top-bottom/inside-outside composite of those 214 (亚, 头, 我, 兴, 年). There are a lot of those where you’re reduced to looking at them by stroke, like Chris is saying

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 02:07:03 +0000

An alphabet is defined as being the root components of a written language

Then Chinese has a six-letter alphabet! There are only six basic strokes: 竖 (vertical), 横 (horizontal), 点 (dot), 撇 (left-curving), 捺 (right-curving), and 提 (rising)

By: Ben

Ben — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 16:14:14 +0000

I absolutely agree with Ryan’s point that written Chinese is not as difficult as the thousands of characters would lead some people to to believe. I do want to expound on your argument a bit though. One thing we English learners often forget is how much time it took us to learn how to SPELL our language. I distinctively remember at least half an hour a day of my education from first grade to sixth grade being devoted solely to theis subject. I liken the learning of Chinese characters to learning how to spell English. Sure, there are rules to follow, but there are also a ton of exceptions, and I’d argue English has many more than Chinese.

Another point about Chinese that gives it this reputation as “the world’s most difficult language” is that the most difficult part about learning it is at the beginning. I remember when I first started learning characters and it seemed like neverending memorization of chicken scratch. However, after about 1000 characters or so, the fact that Chinese was composed of characters, and not letters, actually made my Chinese learning easier. For example, whenever I hear a new vocabulary word in spoken Chinese, I try to have somebody write it down. If I just hear the sound of it (or likewise see the pinyin) I am likely to forget it. However if I can see which characters it is constructed out of, it is much, much easier to commit to memory.

By: Marc

Marc — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 21:08:52 +0000

Take a look at the book “Reading & Writing Chinese (Simplified Character Edition)” by William McNaughton. It starts with radicals and builds from there.

By: Jason

Jason — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 06:33:06 +0000

Totally radical post. Most excellent.
I haven’t studied characters too formally, but I made sure to focus on radicals and that definitely made a huge difference. I know quite a few and I owe a lot of that to an ability to easily familiarize myself myself characters. (because of radicals)
They make more and more sense as you go…

By: Ryan

Ryan — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 09:25:17 +0000

Matt, I agree that radicals are an excellent helper when trying to sort out the meaning of things.

A simple example of this would be 口/kǒu/mouth – which as a radical, appropriately enough, generally means the character has something to do with your mouth:

吃/chī/eat
喝/hē/drink
叫/jiào/to be called/shout
哈/hā/sound of laughter
吐/tǔ/to spit
吵/chǎo/make noise

By: Matt

Matt — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 07:05:26 +0000

I’ve been trying to study some of the radicals more lately to learn to write. I can read a fair amount, but my writing is terrible. Also knowing most of the radicals can help you figure out the meaning of some characters/words that you don’t know.

By: Rasta

Rasta — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 16:19:20 +0000

mmmm. Tasty. I was wondering how I would get a handle on the written lingo. I love to read and had concerns about being able to pick up the written language. I gotta read some ancient chinese secrets!!!