How to Learn Chinese Characters _ Introduction to Chinese Characters

Hello, I'm Yishuang from Harbin Mandarin.com. In this lesson, I'm going to teach you how to learn and understand Chinese characters. At first glance, Chinese characters can look like a lot of random lines and drawings that are impossible to learn. However, it's not as difficult as it might first seem. Most Chinese characters have clues to their meaning in the way they are written. Also, rather than being a series of random lines, even the most complex Chinese characters are written using more basic components. In my last lesson, we learned about the history of Chinese characters. In this lesson, we'll learn about the different kinds of Chinese characters and how they are constructed. I'll also show you some of the ways Chinese characters give you hints about their meaning and even their pronunciation. And I'll show you some tips and tricks to help you memorize them. OK, let's begin. In the last lesson, we saw how the characters for person, tree, and horse evolved from drawings of the objects they represent. These characters are also used as building blocks to make more complex characters. For example, This character, which means follow, is built from two person characters. It's like a drawing of one person following another. This character, which means rest, is built from the characters for person and tree. Note that the person character sometimes gets squished when it's used as part of a more complex character. And this character, which means mother, is built from the characters for female and horse. This character, which means want, may look more complicated, but it's actually built from three simpler parts. In green is the character for tree, in blue is the character for eye, and in red is the character for heart. As you learn more characters and their building blocks, you will be able to easily recognize and learn more complex characters. So rather than seeing Chinese characters as a bunch of random lines that are difficult to remember, you'll be able to recognize the structure at a glance, which will make them much easier to learn. There are four types of Chinese characters that are very useful for Chinese language learners. These characters give hints about their meaning and sometimes their pronunciation. The first category of Chinese characters comes from drawings of objects in the real world. For example, as we saw in the last lesson, this character, which means person, comes from a drawing of a person viewed from the side. This character, which means mouth, comes from a drawing of an open mouth. And this character, which means mountain, comes from a drawing of the peaks of a mountain. Chinese characters that come from drawings of objects are known as pictographs. But drawings of objects are not enough to express a full language. Languages also need to be able to convey more abstract ideas and concepts. For example, here is the Chinese character for the number three. It represents three with the three horizontal lines that are used to write it. This character means middle, and it represents that with a vertical line drawn through the middle of a rectangle. And these two characters mean above and below. For these characters, the long horizontal line represents the ground, and the character that means above shows an object above the ground, while the character that means below shows an object below the ground. These kinds of characters are known as simple ideographs. In addition to simple ideographs, characters that represent other ideas or concepts were created by combining multiple characters together. For example, this character means rest. It is constructed from person and tree. If you imagine a person resting in the shade of a tree, you can understand why this character means rest. And once you know that, this character becomes very easy to remember. This character, which means woods or forest, was created by combining two trees. And this character, which means look, was created by combining hand and eye. It represents a person holding their hand over their eyes to more clearly see into the distance. These kinds of characters are known as compound ideographs. And finally, the most common type of Chinese characters are known as semantic phonetic compounds. In these characters, part of the character gives a hint about the character's meaning, and another part gives a hint about its pronunciation. Around 80% of Chinese characters are semantic phonetic compounds. For example, here is the Chinese character for mother. The left side means female, which is the semantic or meaning component. This lets us know that this character has something to do with women. And on the right side is the character for horse, which is the phonetic or pronunciation component. If you have watched my tones video, you will know that horse and mother are pronounced similarly, but with different tones. Horse is pronounced ma, while mother is pronounced ma. So this character is telling us that its meaning is related to women, and its pronunciation is similar to the pronunciation for horse. These hints help us remember that it's the word ma, mother. And here is the character for scold or curse. On top is the meaning component, which is made up of two mouths. And on the bottom is the pronunciation component, which again is the character for horse. So this character has something to do with mouths, and sounds like horse, ma. Knowing that helps us remember that this is the character ma, which means to scold or curse. You can also imagine that the two mouths on top are yelling, and that along with the hint that the pronunciation sounds like horse, will make it easy to remember both the meaning and the pronunciation of this character. These four character types give hints about the character's meaning, and sometimes about its pronunciation. That makes them easier to learn and remember, but unfortunately, this doesn't work for all characters. For characters that don't give you a hint about their meaning or pronunciation, you can use mnemonics, such as imagining a picture or story based on the character that will help you remember it. For example, this character means old, but the character itself doesn't give us a hint about what it means. So let's come up with a mnemonic to help us remember its meaning. This character is made out of two components. On the left side, there is a vertical line that doesn't really have a meaning of its own. And the right side means sun or day. The line on the left looks like the number one. So we'll use the keywords one and day to make a story or phrase that will help us remember the character's meaning. Bread is best on the day when it's baked. After one day, bread gets old and the bakeries might need to sell it for half price. To help us remember this character, we'll use the phrase After one day, bread gets old. Remembering this will help us remember the character's meaning. You can also imagine an unhappy baker with lots of one day old bread that's difficult to sell to make the memory stronger. Using stories like this makes it much easier to learn and remember Chinese characters that otherwise don't give you a hint about their meaning. Understanding the way Chinese characters are constructed, the history of a character, and using mnemonic devices all make it much easier to learn and remember Chinese characters. I'm excited to announce that I'm going to start releasing a new series of lessons that will teach you how to read and write Chinese characters. In these lessons, I'll give you tips and tricks to help you remember the characters including drawing pictures on them or using mnemonics or stories to help you remember them. I'll also cover how to pronounce the character as well as related vocabulary words. Also, Chinese characters need to be written using the right stroke order so that they look correct. I'll be teaching that as well and will create practice sheets that you can download for free and use to practice writing the characters from home. Before ending this lesson, I would like to take some time to thank Tony from England, True from Texas, and William for supporting my YouTube channel. Thank you so much! If you would like to make a contribution to my channel, please follow the link at the end of this video. OK, that's all for this lesson. I hope you've enjoyed this lesson and I'm looking forward to seeing you in my new lesson series. Did you enjoy this lesson? Please click like below and leave me a comment. If you are interested in private Chinese lessons, please visit my website harveymandarin.com and send me a message. I'll see you guys next time. 再见!