AN EXPLANATION OF CHINESE CHARACTERS AND WORDS

AN EXPLANATION OF CHINESE CHARACTERS AND WORDS

Each Chinese character is a syllable with a tone as the examples below. And a character itself usually carries a meaning but sometimes it’s not a word.

Traditional	Simplified	Pinyin/pronunciation	Meaning
家	家	Jiā	Home
大	大	dà	Big
愛	爱	ài	love

Some Chinese words contains only one syllable such as, home, big, and love (as shown above), while others words contains two or three. Words with two syllables are the majority. See examples below.

Traditional	Simplified	Pinyin/pronunciation	Meaning
電腦	电脑	Diànnǎo	Computer
手機	手机	shǒujī	Cellphone
冰箱	冰箱	bīngxiāng	Refrigerator

As I mentioned previously, each syllabus carries a meaning, but it’s not a word sometimes. So let’s take an example here

The word口水(Kǒu shuǐ) consists of two syllables meaning saliva.

The first syllable/ character 口(Kǒu) meaning mouth, and the second one 水(shuǐ) meaning water.  So it’s mouth + water = saliva.

Please note that the syllable/ character水(shuǐ) is also a word. It’s a one-syllable word. So you can say : 我喝水(Wǒ hē shuǐ / I drink water)

BUT the character/syllable mouth口(Kǒu) isn’t and can’t be a word on his own, so you can NOT say: 他的口很大(Tā de kǒu hěn dà. / His mouth is big.).

Instead, you need to say: 他的嘴巴很大 (Tā de zuǐbā hěn dà / His mouth is big.), because 嘴巴(zuǐbā) is the word for mouth which is a two-syllable word.

So be sure next time that you are using words in your sentences not syllables!

SMART Mandarin

Katrina Lee

www.smartmandarinchinese.com

Classes
- 1 on 1 Chinese class in Hsinchu city
- small group Chinese class (2-4people) in Hsinchu city
- Online Skype Chinese lesson wherever you are
- Online audio & video lessons 24/7

Please feel free to contact me here at
smartmandarinchinese@gmail.com (Katrina Lee)

HOW MANY CHARACTERS DO I NEED TO LEARN?

HOW MANY CHARACTERS DO I NEED TO LEARN?

This is one of the most commonly asked questions among my foreign students and friends since from my previous post (SHOULD I LEARN CHINESE CHARACTERS? ) that we know there are around 8000 characters out there according to a Chinese dictionary.

l  Table comes from (https://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/topchars.php )

The above table tells us that the top 1000 characters account for between 86.2% and 91.1% of the characters occurring in the real world.

With knowing 2500-3000 characters, you’ll be able to read general publications with no problem, just like the general native speakers of Chinese.

But if you only aiming at understanding some daily simple signs, texts, or your friends’ posts on social medias, you will only need to learn 500 characters which cover 72.1%~72.2% of the entire daily written material. If you want to take a Chinese proficiency test HSK (http://www.chinesetest.cn/gosign.do?lid=0 ). 

Then please take a look at the tables below which I found from Wikipedia.

According to table 1 as below, you need 174 characters for HSK test level 1 and 347 characters for level 2 (need to learn another new 173 characters), 617 for level 3(need to learn another new 270 characters), 1064 for level 4(need to learn another new 447 characters), 1685 for level 5(need to learn another new 621 characters) and 2663 for level 6(need to learn another new 978 characters).

Table 1.

Table 2

Table 3

The amount of characters for level 6 is quite close to a native Chinese speaker.

RESOURCES TO LEARN/STUDY

        
     There are some online free resources where you can study/learn Chinese characters, here is what I found and I find it really helpful!

Online Flashcards

form HSK level 1 to 6 with options of simplified and traditional characters.

https://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/hsk.php

Top 1000 Traditional Chinese Characters

https://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/fc-options.php?deck=trad-1

Top 1000 Simplified Chinese Characters

https://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/fc-options.php?deck=da-1

Modern Chinese Character Frequency List现代汉语单字频率列表

http://lingua.mtsu.edu/chinese-computing/statistics/char/list.php?Which=MO

(Simplified characters only)

Learning characters can be challenging, but it's a necessity! However, you don't necessarily have to be able to write every single character by heart, as long as you can recognize them, you should be able to read and type with no problem! ;) 

I hope you find this post helpful!
Keep up learning and and fun! ;)


SMART Mandarin 
Katrina Lee
www.smartmandarinchinese.com

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Our Mandarin Classes

- 1 on 1 Chinese class in Hsinchu city
- small group Chinese class (2-4people) in Hsinchu city
- Online Skype Chinese lesson wherever you are
- Online audio & video lessons 24/7

Please feel free to contact me here at
smartmandarinchinese@gmail.com (Katrina Lee)