Chinese Characters

Chinese characters are also called Hanzi, which means “Han Character.” Furthermore, it is one of the oldest writing systems in the world. These characters are morphemes, which are the smallest meaningful grammatical unit of a language. These characters/symbols are like small abstract pictures. They allow for a visual representation of meaning without needing an entire word as you would in English. Chinese words are made by composing characters together like you would arrange Lego bricks. Therefore, it is much simpler from a learner’s perspective.

How many words do I need to learn?

Many people think learning Mandarin is difficult because of the different writing system. However, you only need to learn around 2,000 characters to be able to read your Daily Chinese newspaper. An educated Chinese person will know more than 7,000 characters. Also, there is no Chinese alphabet as such. Instead, the Chinese have a system called Pinyin, which translates to “Spell Sound.” In other words, it is the romanization of the characters so you are able to read them like English text and be able to pronounce them right. Read Through Our Posts below to learn everything about Chinese Characters.