How To Learn Simplified Chinese

How to Learn and Memorize Simplified Chinese Characters: A Guide for Beginners

Would you like to learn Chinese characters?

They're really pretty interesting to learn, likewise equally useful if you want to speak and read Chinese.

Chinese characters have been around for over 5,000 years, so we can be sure they're not going to disappear any fourth dimension soon.

They've become an inseparable office of Chinese language and culture, but they can seem disruptive and difficult to learn for a foreign learner, at first.

Don't worry though, Chinese characters are not impossible to larn. In fact, you might realize they tin can be quite easy.

How Many Characters are in the Chinese Alphabet and How Many Practise I Need to Learn?

First things first: You probably already know this, but if you desire to learn Mandarin Chinese, you need to learn the Chinese characters. There's no way around this.

Yous don't demand them for a casual chat, or even for your daily life (if you don't live in Red china). Just if you're serious well-nigh learning this language and visiting China, you volition need to exist confident reading and writing them.

You're probably asking: "And then how many Chinese characters are there and how many do I demand to learn?"

Written Chinese language contains more than than 50,000 characters, and more and more are added all the time.

Just you don't need to learn all of them (just like y'all wouldn't need to learn all the words in the dictionary to speak English language). A fluent Chinese speaking person typically knows around ii,000 characters, and if you want to be at a solid conversational level, it's probably less than one-half of that for you — so yous'll need to learn fewer than one,000 characters.

An Easy Way to Read the Chinese Alphabet

The Chinese language doesn't have an alphabet like the English alphabet, so enter pinyin.

Pinyin takes Chinese characters and transliterates them into the Latin alphabet (the same alphabet that'south used for English language and many other languages spoken in the western hemisphere).

For example 中国 – "China" would be transcribed into pinyin like this: Zhōngguó.

Pinyin will assist you lot a lot when learning Chinese because it means you tin can start reading without learning Chinese characters.

The half-dozen Types of Chinese Characters

Chinese characters are often referred to as "Chinese symbols", and yous'll find out that a lot of times they actually symbolize the word they mean.

Just more often than not, you lot'll just accept to memorize them, as over time, and through simplification, about of them look different to how they originally did.

Before having a look into Chinese writing and learning how to write and read Chinese characters, let's have a wait at a quick overview of six types of Chinese characters:

Pictograms – for example 山 (shān) – "mountain"
Ideograms – e.g.下 (xià) – "downwardly"
Phonetic compounds – 红 (hóng) – "scarlet"
Combined ideographs – 果 (guǒ) – "fruit"
Loan characters – 来 (lái) – "to come" from 莱 (lái) – "cereal" or "cereal plant"
Transfer characters – 考 (kǎo) – "to test" and 老 (lǎo) – "old"

It's always good to know the basics near each type. Merely to learn them quickly, don't worry too much near terminology. Rather, start learning straight abroad.

How to Write and Read in Chinese – Quickly

You've probably seen 汉字 (hànzì) before. That's what "Chinese characters" are chosen. You lot might find the word "hanzi" even in materials written in English, as it became widely used in educational materials.

So how to acquire writing and reading hanzi quickly and effectively?

Break it down into steps and have a piece of paper and a pen ready – actually, many pieces of paper.

First with the Basics

Yous won't principal the language if you lot don't know its basics. To start you off with Chinese characters, learn the easiest ones first.

Hither'southward a list of some of the simplest characters in the Chinese linguistic communication:

一 (yī) – "one"
二 (èr) – "two"
三 (sān) – "3"
四 (sì) – "4"
五 (wǔ) – "five"
六 (liù) – "six"
七 (qī) – "seven
八 (bā) – "viii"
九 (jiǔ) – "nine"
十 (shí) – "ten"
月 (yuè) – "month"
大 (dà) – "big"
水 (shuǐ) – "water"
人 (rén) – "people" or "person"
口 (kǒu) – "mouth"

These are only a few of the easy Chinese characters, just if you exercise these, the more than complicated ones will become easier and quicker to learn. That'southward particularly the instance if you principal these stroke order of these simple characters.

Write, Write, Write

Learning to write Chinese characters becomes much easier when you become an expert in the lodge of strokes. I dare say, you lot can't learn how to write if you don't know stroke order.

The essential guidelines are:

Write left to correct, for example: 一 (yī) – "one"
Write top to bottom: 人 (rén) – "people" or "person"
Horizontal strokes earlier vertical strokes: 十 (shí) – "ten"
Diagonal strokes are left to right before correct to left: 门 (mén) – "door"
Outside strokes before inside ones: 回 (huí) – "return", "go dorsum"

Stroke order guidelines for more complicated characters are easier to grasp, once you're familiar with the easiest ones that accept only a couple of strokes.

When you lot're ready to practise writing, look upwardly "stroke order" and you'll find many websites with extremely helpful animations of Chinese characters existence written based on these guidelines.
Y'all can replay them and practice as many times as you want.

Too, have many sheets of paper ready – it's best if you have characters worksheets.

The all-time way to larn Chinese characters is to write. And write. And write a lot.

You merely need to write so much, until it becomes natural to you and you don't even retrieve most stroke order.

Practice with worksheets showtime, and so test yourself.

Online dictionaries or dictionaries you can download to your smartphone or tablet are also a great help. These ordinarily have a handwriting pick, merely be conscientious, considering about times they are not sensitive to the order of strokes.

Break the Characters Down and Visualize

It'due south not a coincidence that Chinese characters are often chosen ideograms.

The term "Chinese ideograms" has its roots in history, when the traditional characters used to represent what they meant.

Traditional characters looked (and often nevertheless await) like the "idea" behind them – the meaning; hence "ideograms".

Nowadays, it'south non as easy to recognize characters this way.
Chinese writing has get more elementary, simply reading Chinese has not for many.

Simplification of Chinese characters caused the resemblance betwixt them and their meaning more or less disappearing, simply often, you are actually able to estimate the meaning, and that's by and large cheers to radicals.

Radicals are components of Chinese characters that not only help you lot notice a character in a Chinese dictionary (where they are listed nether radicals), but can also help yous guess the meaning.

For instance, the character 水 (shuǐ) – "water" changes to a form of radical: 氵and keeps its pregnant.

You can observe this radical in nearly every character that has something to do with water, for case: 海 (hǎi, "sea") or 汁 (zhī, "juice"). In this case, the knowledge of the pronunciation of 十 (shí, "ten") comes in handy, as 汁 (zhī, "juice") sounds like.

Even though simplified characters don't await much like the meaning behind them anymore, you can find some that are all the same similar. Especially if you're willing to attempt to wait very hard.

For example:

女 (nǚ) – "woman"
鸟 (niǎo) – "bird"
口 (kǒu) – "mouth"
雨 (yǔ) – "rain"

Some Tips for Using Chinese Dictionaries

If you're already using Chinese online dictionaries and know about the handwriting function, you know how much it tin help not only to larn and practice, only also every bit a quick help to read and recognize.

Chinese book dictionaries are something else, and even though they are unremarkably big, heavy and it might take longer to find what you need, I couldn't recommend them more.

Learning the Standard mandarin alphabet (its characters) requires you to be familiar with its radicals.

Practise and test yourself with dissimilar dictionaries. You can discover ones that organize their characters based on radicals, some exercise information technology alphabetically based on pinyin and some based on English alphabetical order.

Either way, it'll augment your cognition and vocabulary, every bit most of these dictionaries incorporate additional words and phrases for each graphic symbol.

Read Children'due south Books and Parallel Texts in Chinese

The all-time literature to read when learning a new language are kids' books and parallel texts.

The language in children'due south books is elementary, like shooting fish in a barrel and most likely contains a lot of characters you lot are already familiar with.

You tin also go a beginner'due south chat book; these are ordinarily very helpful with their pinyin transcription and English translation.

Afterward writing, reading Chinese characters is the second near important thing to learn.
So if you can, be sure to spend large amounts of time on both of them.

If your book contains audio, read and echo out loud whenever y'all can. Chinese is a tonal language, and so communicable the right pronunciation is crucial.

Check out some of these books to become yous started with reading Chinese:

Contemporary Chinese Brusk-Short Stories: A Parallel Text by Aili Mu and Mike Smith
Mandarin Chinese for Beginners: Mastering Conversational Chinese by Yi Ren and Xiayuan Liang
Chinese Conversation in Everyday Life ane: Sentences Phrases Words past Hongyang

Self-Subject area and Loads of Worksheets – You're Prepare to Beginning!

To start you off with Chinese characters, you'll need to invest time and energy into writing and reading. Simply if you're practiced at self-discipline, you can acquire the nuts pretty quickly.

Accepting the fact that Chinese characters are an inseparable part of the language, press out your worksheets and opening a parallel textbook are your first steps to mastering Chinese characters.

Information technology might not exist the easiest thing y'all've ever done, only you'll be extremely proud of yourself once y'all showtime noticing how natural the order of strokes and reading are condign to y'all.

The beginnings are the hardest, but don't give up and guaranteed, you lot'll soon exist an good in Chinese characters.