Learn Chinese can be Fun! Learn Chinese (learn mandarin) by some Chinese Learning Software, is a fast way of Chinese learning for Chinese learners. Learn how to read, write and speak mandarin Chinese. In this article, SoftSea.net recommend some useful software, help you read, write and speak mandarin Chinese yourself. These freeware or sharewares is ease-of-use, power and fun. These software is an incredible platform where you can learn Chinese with native speakers, wherever and whenever you like. Chinese-English Assistant, This tool helps English speakers learn to read, write and translate Chinese. It offers over 185,000 Chinese entries and over 168,000 English entries. Chinese Practice, this software helps you learn Chinese. It offers text-to-speech synthesis or recorded voice, multimedia features, merging and editing lessons, skinning support, vocabulary organizing, a Brain Flash feature, talking Chinese-English-pinyin dictionary and Chinese text reader. H&H English-Chinese Dictionary is an English-Chinese Dictionary with pronunciations. It includes over 90,000 English entries and over 50,000 Chinese entries. Both simplified and traditional Chinese are supported. The product comes with a Pinyin based input method so you can input Chinese characters. You can not only see the Pinyin (the official Chinese phonetic system), but also hear a real person's pronunciation for each Chinese character. This provide a study tool in this program that allows you to organize your own list of words. You can review the words and test if you have memorized words. ABCconcept ABC Chinese Learning Tools, Animated Chinese Characters, Radicals - stroke by stroke; Mandarin pronunciations (Pinyin); Cantonese pronunciations (Jyutping); More than 20,000 characters; Chinese-English, English-Chinese dictionaries. Learn Chinese and Speak Mandarin, Help you Learn to speak Chinese. Users guide themselves through over one hundred lessons. Each lesson contains a real world conversation between two native speakers. Conversations are broken down into individual sentences, pronunciation, meaning, pinyin, characters and the literal translations of the words that make up the sentences.
Babylon+English-Chinese(T) AdWare Version is the world's leading dictionary and language translation software. Babylon offers you the most intuitive tool for all your translation needs. With Babylon you can quickly translate emails, web pages, documents, instant messages, and more. All you have to do is click on the word or text that you want to translate and a small window instantly appears with the desired results from Babylon's extensive database of language dictionaries, glossaries and conversion tools. These excellence software teach how to write and speak Chinese. Some software introduces a step-by-step learning method to you. Learn Chinese characters by understanding their origins and interconnections, Everything you wanted to know about learning the Chinese langauge. Chinese Software Download and Learn Chinese and Speak Mandarin
Related Articles - Learn, Chinese, by, Chinese, Learning, Software,
วันพฤหัสบดี, ธันวาคม 11, 2008
6 Ways of Creating Chinese Characters
Did you know there are only 6 ways of forming Chinese characters?
Yes, 6 kinds of Chinese characters make up the 50,000 Chinese characters in existence today.
Amazing isn’t it?
It shows that there is a logical symbol system used to create Chinese characters.
That they are not just random lines and strokes.
Once you know these 6 types of Chinese characters, you’l find that learning Chinese writing isn’t so difficult after all.
Oh, one more thing…
The “radicals”
No, these have nothing to do with extremists or terrorists.:)
They are the "root elements" of Chinese characters.
The meaning part of Chinese characters.
There are 214 of them.
They exist independently or are part of complex characters.
Once you get a general idea of the common radicals, you can guess the meaning of Chinese characters.
Modern Chinese dictionaries are organized by radicals – starting with one-stroke radicals, two, three and so on, and hanyu pinyin, the modern Chinese Romanization system.
So you see, by knowing the radicals and the 6 ways of forming Chinese characters, one can pretty much guess the meaning and sound of Chinese characters.
Not all, but many of them.
So, what are the 6 ways of forming Chinese characters?
The earliest Chinese characters some 4,000 years ago were shaped like the things they represented.
These are called pictographs.(1)
They were pictures of humans, animals and natural objects.
The 300 plus pictographs form the building blocks of Chinese writing.
Later to create more words, symbols were added to pictographs to form ideographs.(2)
And two or more pictographs were combined to form composite ideographs.(3)
As you can imagine, this symbol system could not produce a lot of Chinese characters easily.
So borrowed characters came into being.(4)
A character was borrowed because it had the same sound, disregarding the meaning.
So “new” characters with the same sound but different meanings were formed.
But what happened to the original characters?
In order to retain their original meanings, a meaning component was added to the sound component.
These gave rise to phonetic compounds.(5)
These are Chinese characters with a sound part and a meaning part.
Today, this type of Chinese characters make up 80% of Chinese characters in use.
The last type of Chinese characters are called Transferred characters.(6)
Transferred characters share the same radical and have the same meaning but their pronunciations are different.
So early Chinese characters were created based on meaning alone and started from pictures.
Eventually, each Chinese character became “a unit of sound and meaning” like what we have today.
But it remains possible to guess the meaning of Chinese characters from the meaning component, the radicals.
To read a lively description of the 6 ways of forming Chinese charcters complete with Chinese character examples, go to http://www.living-chinese-symbols.com.
Related Articles - Chinese, character,
Yes, 6 kinds of Chinese characters make up the 50,000 Chinese characters in existence today.
Amazing isn’t it?
It shows that there is a logical symbol system used to create Chinese characters.
That they are not just random lines and strokes.
Once you know these 6 types of Chinese characters, you’l find that learning Chinese writing isn’t so difficult after all.
Oh, one more thing…
The “radicals”
No, these have nothing to do with extremists or terrorists.:)
They are the "root elements" of Chinese characters.
The meaning part of Chinese characters.
There are 214 of them.
They exist independently or are part of complex characters.
Once you get a general idea of the common radicals, you can guess the meaning of Chinese characters.
Modern Chinese dictionaries are organized by radicals – starting with one-stroke radicals, two, three and so on, and hanyu pinyin, the modern Chinese Romanization system.
So you see, by knowing the radicals and the 6 ways of forming Chinese characters, one can pretty much guess the meaning and sound of Chinese characters.
Not all, but many of them.
So, what are the 6 ways of forming Chinese characters?
The earliest Chinese characters some 4,000 years ago were shaped like the things they represented.
These are called pictographs.(1)
They were pictures of humans, animals and natural objects.
The 300 plus pictographs form the building blocks of Chinese writing.
Later to create more words, symbols were added to pictographs to form ideographs.(2)
And two or more pictographs were combined to form composite ideographs.(3)
As you can imagine, this symbol system could not produce a lot of Chinese characters easily.
So borrowed characters came into being.(4)
A character was borrowed because it had the same sound, disregarding the meaning.
So “new” characters with the same sound but different meanings were formed.
But what happened to the original characters?
In order to retain their original meanings, a meaning component was added to the sound component.
These gave rise to phonetic compounds.(5)
These are Chinese characters with a sound part and a meaning part.
Today, this type of Chinese characters make up 80% of Chinese characters in use.
The last type of Chinese characters are called Transferred characters.(6)
Transferred characters share the same radical and have the same meaning but their pronunciations are different.
So early Chinese characters were created based on meaning alone and started from pictures.
Eventually, each Chinese character became “a unit of sound and meaning” like what we have today.
But it remains possible to guess the meaning of Chinese characters from the meaning component, the radicals.
To read a lively description of the 6 ways of forming Chinese charcters complete with Chinese character examples, go to http://www.living-chinese-symbols.com.
Related Articles - Chinese, character,
The benefits of learning Chinese
The benefits of learning Chinese
Before the dawn of globalization, most people thought it would be fun to learn another language, but never took it seriously. In high school, for instance, teenagers learned Spanish, French, German or even Latin, only to lose it quickly after graduation.
Recently, however, Chinese has become the language of choice and it is not only being taught in high school and college, but online as well.
Its rise in popularity shouldn’t be too surprising, however. More than 1 billion people speak the Chinese language. Being able to learn Chinese is not only fun, but it’s also becoming an essential skill for business people and world travelers alike.
Taking Chinese language lessons and mastering the language opens doors to nearly one-fifth of the world’s population. Standard Mandarin is spoken in China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and many other regions of the world. Mastering the Chinese language is essential for business people who want to expand into the Asian market, particularly the rapidly growing market for Western products and services in China.
Not only has China become a giant in the global economy, but the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing promises to put China on the international stage as it plays host to the world’s oldest sporting competition. The entire country will be on display for the world to see and the games offer savvy business people and travelers an ideal opportunity to learn to the Chinese language.
While Chinese has a reputation as being difficult to learn, the adoption of Simplified Chinese characters and the development Hanya Pinyin have made it easier for Westerners to learn the Chinese language.
For example, the adoption of the Simplified Chinese character system in 1954 reduced most of the complex symbols to just a few strokes. Many were reduced to what amounts to common shorthand. Since the characters are simplified and many share commonalities, it is not only easier to learn how to learn Chinese, but it is easier to write the Chinese language as well.
While the Chinese dictionary contains 40,000 characters, only 3,000 are needed to read a newspaper and well-educated Chinese know about 6,000 to 7,000 characters. If that sounds like a lot to remember, the average English speaking person uses about 8,000 words regularly. In many respects, learning the Chinese language is easier than learning English.
One of the best ways to learn Chinese is online. That’s because learning to speak Chinese Mandarin is easier when a student works with a native speaker. Listening to the native speaker allows the student to learn the correct pronunciation quickly.
This is the first step in learning the Chinese language. By teaching you how to use pinyin, you will quickly learn to read and pronounce key characters. The native speaker can help you with pronunciation. Unlike English, characters almost always have just a single sound. The rules of the language are much more rigid than English too, so you don’t have to learn countless exceptions to each rule.
While there are many websites that teach Chinese, one of the most popular and most effective is Mando Mandarin (http://www.mandomandarin.com). Its live language lessons feature private tutors from China, so you can be sure that the Chinese language lessons will give you a mastery of the language in no time. In fact, they will show you how to learn Chinese in five minutes or less during a free trial lesson, so you can see how easy it is to learn the language.
Once you are introduced to the wonders of learning a new language, you’ll want to put your newfound skills to good use. Whether you’re bound for the Summer Olympics, a teleconference with the home office in Hong Kong or your neighborhood Chinese restaurant, learning how to the Chinese language is one of life’s greatest (and most useful) joys.
Related Articles - learning, chinese, language,
Before the dawn of globalization, most people thought it would be fun to learn another language, but never took it seriously. In high school, for instance, teenagers learned Spanish, French, German or even Latin, only to lose it quickly after graduation.
Recently, however, Chinese has become the language of choice and it is not only being taught in high school and college, but online as well.
Its rise in popularity shouldn’t be too surprising, however. More than 1 billion people speak the Chinese language. Being able to learn Chinese is not only fun, but it’s also becoming an essential skill for business people and world travelers alike.
Taking Chinese language lessons and mastering the language opens doors to nearly one-fifth of the world’s population. Standard Mandarin is spoken in China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and many other regions of the world. Mastering the Chinese language is essential for business people who want to expand into the Asian market, particularly the rapidly growing market for Western products and services in China.
Not only has China become a giant in the global economy, but the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing promises to put China on the international stage as it plays host to the world’s oldest sporting competition. The entire country will be on display for the world to see and the games offer savvy business people and travelers an ideal opportunity to learn to the Chinese language.
While Chinese has a reputation as being difficult to learn, the adoption of Simplified Chinese characters and the development Hanya Pinyin have made it easier for Westerners to learn the Chinese language.
For example, the adoption of the Simplified Chinese character system in 1954 reduced most of the complex symbols to just a few strokes. Many were reduced to what amounts to common shorthand. Since the characters are simplified and many share commonalities, it is not only easier to learn how to learn Chinese, but it is easier to write the Chinese language as well.
While the Chinese dictionary contains 40,000 characters, only 3,000 are needed to read a newspaper and well-educated Chinese know about 6,000 to 7,000 characters. If that sounds like a lot to remember, the average English speaking person uses about 8,000 words regularly. In many respects, learning the Chinese language is easier than learning English.
One of the best ways to learn Chinese is online. That’s because learning to speak Chinese Mandarin is easier when a student works with a native speaker. Listening to the native speaker allows the student to learn the correct pronunciation quickly.
This is the first step in learning the Chinese language. By teaching you how to use pinyin, you will quickly learn to read and pronounce key characters. The native speaker can help you with pronunciation. Unlike English, characters almost always have just a single sound. The rules of the language are much more rigid than English too, so you don’t have to learn countless exceptions to each rule.
While there are many websites that teach Chinese, one of the most popular and most effective is Mando Mandarin (http://www.mandomandarin.com). Its live language lessons feature private tutors from China, so you can be sure that the Chinese language lessons will give you a mastery of the language in no time. In fact, they will show you how to learn Chinese in five minutes or less during a free trial lesson, so you can see how easy it is to learn the language.
Once you are introduced to the wonders of learning a new language, you’ll want to put your newfound skills to good use. Whether you’re bound for the Summer Olympics, a teleconference with the home office in Hong Kong or your neighborhood Chinese restaurant, learning how to the Chinese language is one of life’s greatest (and most useful) joys.
Related Articles - learning, chinese, language,
How is learning Chinese writing different from learning a Western language?
In the modern Chinese writing system, each character is a form of its own, representing a particular sound and at least one meaning.
In other words, each Chinese symbol is a unity of form, sound and meaning.
To learn Chinese writing, you need to know each Chinese symbol or character individually.
You will need a vocabulary of at least 3,000 characters to understand 90% of what you read.
A vocabulary of 4-5,000 characters allows you to understand almost everything written in Chinese in the modern context.
Although there are more than 60,000 characters listed in the largest Chinese dictionaries most of them are ancient symbols and no longer in use.
Only a very small proportion of Chinese characters- some 300, perhaps- are simple representations of natural objects; all others are composite signs.
Each sign generally has two components:
a graphic component (which represent a man, woman, tree etc.)
and a phonetic component, which gives some idea of the pronunciation.
Learning Chinese writing is quite different from learning a Western language.
To learn a Western language like English, you need to know a whole series of sounds.
If you take an English word apart, separating it into its many phonetic syllables, it would lose its meaning altogether.
In learn Chinese writing, you first learn the characters and then you learn the word.
Take, for instance, the Chinese word da4 xue2 ?? which means "university". First you learn da4 “big” and xue2 “school; learn” separately.
Although the meaning of da xue has to do with da and xue, it is not a simple case of da ”big” plus xue ”school”.
It does not mean "big school".
If you were to take the English word “university” and try to figure out its meaning based on the meanings of the five syllabic components u/ni/ver/sit/ty, you would not understand anything because they mean nothing.
So, the Chinese character forms the basis in learning Chinese writing whereas the word or sentence forms the basis for learning a Western language.
In Chinese writing, the symbol is the unit carrier of meaning whereas in English it is the word which serves the same purpose.
Chinese characters are essentially pictures and they appeal to the eye.
In comparison, Western letters and words are based on sound rather than sight.
Related Articles - Chinese, writing,
In other words, each Chinese symbol is a unity of form, sound and meaning.
To learn Chinese writing, you need to know each Chinese symbol or character individually.
You will need a vocabulary of at least 3,000 characters to understand 90% of what you read.
A vocabulary of 4-5,000 characters allows you to understand almost everything written in Chinese in the modern context.
Although there are more than 60,000 characters listed in the largest Chinese dictionaries most of them are ancient symbols and no longer in use.
Only a very small proportion of Chinese characters- some 300, perhaps- are simple representations of natural objects; all others are composite signs.
Each sign generally has two components:
a graphic component (which represent a man, woman, tree etc.)
and a phonetic component, which gives some idea of the pronunciation.
Learning Chinese writing is quite different from learning a Western language.
To learn a Western language like English, you need to know a whole series of sounds.
If you take an English word apart, separating it into its many phonetic syllables, it would lose its meaning altogether.
In learn Chinese writing, you first learn the characters and then you learn the word.
Take, for instance, the Chinese word da4 xue2 ?? which means "university". First you learn da4 “big” and xue2 “school; learn” separately.
Although the meaning of da xue has to do with da and xue, it is not a simple case of da ”big” plus xue ”school”.
It does not mean "big school".
If you were to take the English word “university” and try to figure out its meaning based on the meanings of the five syllabic components u/ni/ver/sit/ty, you would not understand anything because they mean nothing.
So, the Chinese character forms the basis in learning Chinese writing whereas the word or sentence forms the basis for learning a Western language.
In Chinese writing, the symbol is the unit carrier of meaning whereas in English it is the word which serves the same purpose.
Chinese characters are essentially pictures and they appeal to the eye.
In comparison, Western letters and words are based on sound rather than sight.
Related Articles - Chinese, writing,
Dr Gunther Von Haagens (Bodyworld's) Teaches Me Chinese Reading System On Plane
On a trip back from Beijing in 2005 who should sit next to me on the plane, but the inventor of plastination and owner of anatomical specimens which have been plastinated, Dr. Gunther Von Haagens - BodyWorlds, or just BODIES exhibition.
I was delighted to strike up a long conversation with him and tried my best to make a friend out of this impressive self-made marketer and medical doctor.
He told me that on aeroplane flights he always works on a system for learning how to READ and WRITE mandarin Chinese. I was immediately intrigued.
He has developed a system which does not so much involve monotonous repitions of words, such as that is taught in the Chinese schools, but descriptive ways of explaining how each character is written out of a number of different strokes.
For example, the strokes for the number 1 in the Von Haagen's system is HORIZON. This is because it is a horizontal straight line stroke which could be interpreted as a symbol of a horizon in the distance. When you look out to sea and see the horizon, that is what the horizon looks like - a horizontal straight line.
So to remember how to read and write the Chinese symbol for the word 1 (ONE) the sentence is...
ONE HORIZON. - the first word of the sentence is always the actual translation of the character and tends to make sense (there is only one horizon generally in the distance).
Let's look at a two stroke (but still very easy) character.
The number 10.
The Chinese character for the number 10 (TEN) is similar to the PLUS SIGN (+). In other words it is a vertical line intersecting a horizontal line.
Von Haagens explained to me that the way in his system for learning to write Chinese for reading or writing the number TEN 10 is to remember the Western sentence coming up below.
Of course, Dr. Von Haagens native tongue is German so he was in fact slightly vexed by getting the perfect translation of his system into English, a task for which I was only too eager to volunteer to do!
Notice that the symbol for the number 10 involves the HORIZON again (horizontal line) and there is a vertical line straight through the middle. Von Haagen's calls this the POLE line.
Therefore to remember the Chinese character for number 10 the sentence in Western speak is:
TEN POLES ON THE HORIZON (+)
Of course there is only one pole, but to remember that the meaning is TEN (10) the ten is the first word of the sentence.
In this way, Dr. Gunther Von Haagens has created sentences with a meaning (sometimes humourous) from which can be constructed more than 2000 Chinese symbols.
Sam Beatson runs http://www.chinesesym.com and is taking part in the SEO contest found at http://ambatchdotcom-seocontest.chinesesym.com
I was delighted to strike up a long conversation with him and tried my best to make a friend out of this impressive self-made marketer and medical doctor.
He told me that on aeroplane flights he always works on a system for learning how to READ and WRITE mandarin Chinese. I was immediately intrigued.
He has developed a system which does not so much involve monotonous repitions of words, such as that is taught in the Chinese schools, but descriptive ways of explaining how each character is written out of a number of different strokes.
For example, the strokes for the number 1 in the Von Haagen's system is HORIZON. This is because it is a horizontal straight line stroke which could be interpreted as a symbol of a horizon in the distance. When you look out to sea and see the horizon, that is what the horizon looks like - a horizontal straight line.
So to remember how to read and write the Chinese symbol for the word 1 (ONE) the sentence is...
ONE HORIZON. - the first word of the sentence is always the actual translation of the character and tends to make sense (there is only one horizon generally in the distance).
Let's look at a two stroke (but still very easy) character.
The number 10.
The Chinese character for the number 10 (TEN) is similar to the PLUS SIGN (+). In other words it is a vertical line intersecting a horizontal line.
Von Haagens explained to me that the way in his system for learning to write Chinese for reading or writing the number TEN 10 is to remember the Western sentence coming up below.
Of course, Dr. Von Haagens native tongue is German so he was in fact slightly vexed by getting the perfect translation of his system into English, a task for which I was only too eager to volunteer to do!
Notice that the symbol for the number 10 involves the HORIZON again (horizontal line) and there is a vertical line straight through the middle. Von Haagen's calls this the POLE line.
Therefore to remember the Chinese character for number 10 the sentence in Western speak is:
TEN POLES ON THE HORIZON (+)
Of course there is only one pole, but to remember that the meaning is TEN (10) the ten is the first word of the sentence.
In this way, Dr. Gunther Von Haagens has created sentences with a meaning (sometimes humourous) from which can be constructed more than 2000 Chinese symbols.
Sam Beatson runs http://www.chinesesym.com and is taking part in the SEO contest found at http://ambatchdotcom-seocontest.chinesesym.com
Is Chinese really so hard to learn as a second language?
Many foreign friends of mine are complaining to me that Chinese is so hard to learn: the ridiculously difficult writing system, the confusing four tones, the extensive system of measure words, so a lot of things to memorize… It seems that I should thank God just for being born Chinese. Is Chinese really that hard to learn as a foreign language?
Actually, I don't think so. Chinese grammar is much simpler if compared to that of the European languages. English speakers sometimes complain that languages like Spanish have a complicated grammar (masculine and feminine genders, verb conjugations, etc), whereas the Chinese language has little or no bound morphology and there are no grammatical paradigms to memorize. Each word has a fixed and single form: verbs do not take prefixes or suffixes showing the tense or the person, number, or gender of the subject. Nouns do not take prefixes or suffixes showing their number or their case. I'm not trying to tell you that Chinese has no grammar; what I means is that due to the lack of inflectional morphology, Chinese grammar is mainly concerned with how words are arranged to form meaningful sentences. Plus each Chinese character pronounced in one syllable, that's why when watching Chinese movies, you find that a few words can be translated into a syllable mapping in the English subtitle.
Probably, you would say that the above is far from enough to convince you; okay, I've got one more encouraging and authoritative evidence for you. A couple of days ago I fortunately came across one piece of inspiring news when reading Beijing Times: Less than 1,000 Chinese characters allow you to read 90% of the current Chinese publication, according to a survey conducted by the Education Ministry and Language Commission of China. The findings of this survey is claimed to be based on 900 million characters used in more than 8.9 million files chosen from newspapers, magazines, the Internet and television. Nowadays, the Chinese media is using fewer characters, and to understand 90 percent of the content in publications, you need only to know about 900 of around 50,000 individual characters that are made up of Written Chinese. On the other hand, how many words are there in English? Almost 100,000 and it's still on the rise. One important reason for this is that Chinese characters, unlike English words, are mainly to represent meaning, not pronunciation, and what's more, many characters are archaic and some found only once in the whole history of the written language, such as the names of people or places. An average Chinese university graduate may know only about 6,000.
Now, would those all above relieve you a little bit in your Chinese language study? Hope so, but do not misinterpret this: I am not in any intention to convince you that Chinese is very easy to learn or other languages like English are much harder; what I mean is that Chinese is really not that difficult as you imagined or heard about, it's just very different from your mother tongue, but difference does not necessarily mean difficulty, right? And that hard Chinese idea won't be of any help in your study. Trust yourself, once that fear factor is overcome, the language is actually not that hard to learn. Good luck with your Chinese language study.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Lily Chao is the author of EaseChinese.com at http://www.easechinese.com, a website providing a collection of reviews and recommendations of Chinese language learning resources, and more. She is also a would-be TCSL (Teaching Chinese as a Second Language) teacher, living and studying in Beijing, China.
Related Articles - learn Chinese, study Chinese, learn Mandarin, Chinese grammar, Chinese character, Chinese culture, travel in China,
Actually, I don't think so. Chinese grammar is much simpler if compared to that of the European languages. English speakers sometimes complain that languages like Spanish have a complicated grammar (masculine and feminine genders, verb conjugations, etc), whereas the Chinese language has little or no bound morphology and there are no grammatical paradigms to memorize. Each word has a fixed and single form: verbs do not take prefixes or suffixes showing the tense or the person, number, or gender of the subject. Nouns do not take prefixes or suffixes showing their number or their case. I'm not trying to tell you that Chinese has no grammar; what I means is that due to the lack of inflectional morphology, Chinese grammar is mainly concerned with how words are arranged to form meaningful sentences. Plus each Chinese character pronounced in one syllable, that's why when watching Chinese movies, you find that a few words can be translated into a syllable mapping in the English subtitle.
Probably, you would say that the above is far from enough to convince you; okay, I've got one more encouraging and authoritative evidence for you. A couple of days ago I fortunately came across one piece of inspiring news when reading Beijing Times: Less than 1,000 Chinese characters allow you to read 90% of the current Chinese publication, according to a survey conducted by the Education Ministry and Language Commission of China. The findings of this survey is claimed to be based on 900 million characters used in more than 8.9 million files chosen from newspapers, magazines, the Internet and television. Nowadays, the Chinese media is using fewer characters, and to understand 90 percent of the content in publications, you need only to know about 900 of around 50,000 individual characters that are made up of Written Chinese. On the other hand, how many words are there in English? Almost 100,000 and it's still on the rise. One important reason for this is that Chinese characters, unlike English words, are mainly to represent meaning, not pronunciation, and what's more, many characters are archaic and some found only once in the whole history of the written language, such as the names of people or places. An average Chinese university graduate may know only about 6,000.
Now, would those all above relieve you a little bit in your Chinese language study? Hope so, but do not misinterpret this: I am not in any intention to convince you that Chinese is very easy to learn or other languages like English are much harder; what I mean is that Chinese is really not that difficult as you imagined or heard about, it's just very different from your mother tongue, but difference does not necessarily mean difficulty, right? And that hard Chinese idea won't be of any help in your study. Trust yourself, once that fear factor is overcome, the language is actually not that hard to learn. Good luck with your Chinese language study.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Lily Chao is the author of EaseChinese.com at http://www.easechinese.com, a website providing a collection of reviews and recommendations of Chinese language learning resources, and more. She is also a would-be TCSL (Teaching Chinese as a Second Language) teacher, living and studying in Beijing, China.
Related Articles - learn Chinese, study Chinese, learn Mandarin, Chinese grammar, Chinese character, Chinese culture, travel in China,
Where is the Chinese alphabet?
(Also called: The Case of the Missing Chinese Alphabet)
Does the Chinese language have an alphabet?
If so, where is it? Why don’t I see it?
Each month thousands of people search for the "Chinese alphabet" on the internet.
To answer the above questions, let’s look at how the Chinese writing system evolved…
Societies create their own symbols.
As societies change so do the meaning of their symbols.
In most societies, as a culture took shape and a written language of letters was developed, symbols – which were once the primary means of communication, were replaced by words or phrases.
The evolution of the Chinese language took a rather unique turn.
Instead of visual symbols being replaced by a written language of letters, the symbols themselves became the written language.
One of the reasons for this is that the Chinese language is tonal – the tone of voice used to speak a syllable alters its meaning.
In Mandarin for instance, there are four tones.
The same utterance in each tone gives four different meanings.
In addition, words in the same tones often have different meanings and their meanings can only be made clear by the context of the sentence.
This unique feature of the Chinese language gives rise to rebuses or “visual puns”.
The interplay of phonetics and puns often reveal the hidden meanings of Chinese symbols.
Phonetics and puns often give clues to the hidden meaning of images.
Hence a picture of a fish is an expression of abundance because the Chinese word for "fish" yu2 ? has the same sound as "abundance" yu2 ? .
This is a “visual pun” or what’s known as a rebus.
Now it’s easy to see why there is no such thing as a “full Chinese alphabet” or “Chinese alphabet letters”.
Or why the Chinese alphabet is “missing”.
An alphabet consists of a small number of letters (e.g. 26 in English) which make up all the words in the spoken language.
There aren't any letters in Chinese writing -- only thousands of individual symbols or ideographs each with their specific sound/s and meanings.
The Chinese language is an “ideographic writing system”.
Since there are no letters in Chinese it naturally follows there is no Chinese alphabet.
There, mystery solved!
Related Articles - Chinese, alphabet,
Does the Chinese language have an alphabet?
If so, where is it? Why don’t I see it?
Each month thousands of people search for the "Chinese alphabet" on the internet.
To answer the above questions, let’s look at how the Chinese writing system evolved…
Societies create their own symbols.
As societies change so do the meaning of their symbols.
In most societies, as a culture took shape and a written language of letters was developed, symbols – which were once the primary means of communication, were replaced by words or phrases.
The evolution of the Chinese language took a rather unique turn.
Instead of visual symbols being replaced by a written language of letters, the symbols themselves became the written language.
One of the reasons for this is that the Chinese language is tonal – the tone of voice used to speak a syllable alters its meaning.
In Mandarin for instance, there are four tones.
The same utterance in each tone gives four different meanings.
In addition, words in the same tones often have different meanings and their meanings can only be made clear by the context of the sentence.
This unique feature of the Chinese language gives rise to rebuses or “visual puns”.
The interplay of phonetics and puns often reveal the hidden meanings of Chinese symbols.
Phonetics and puns often give clues to the hidden meaning of images.
Hence a picture of a fish is an expression of abundance because the Chinese word for "fish" yu2 ? has the same sound as "abundance" yu2 ? .
This is a “visual pun” or what’s known as a rebus.
Now it’s easy to see why there is no such thing as a “full Chinese alphabet” or “Chinese alphabet letters”.
Or why the Chinese alphabet is “missing”.
An alphabet consists of a small number of letters (e.g. 26 in English) which make up all the words in the spoken language.
There aren't any letters in Chinese writing -- only thousands of individual symbols or ideographs each with their specific sound/s and meanings.
The Chinese language is an “ideographic writing system”.
Since there are no letters in Chinese it naturally follows there is no Chinese alphabet.
There, mystery solved!
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