Chinese Characters Introduction

Components and Radicals

Look at the characters below and try to find which part(s) they have in common.

Explanation:

We call parts of Chinese characters such as , , , , , ,

components (, bjin). These components are what make up Chinese
characters. Some of them contain meaning (such as and )1, while others are
Chinese radicals (, bshu) (such as ). Together, these components can
be used to form many different Chinese characters.

Chinese Character Structures

Look at the following sets of characters below. What does each set of words have
in common?

Explanation:

For these characters, their similarity lies in how the components are put together.
For example, the first set is made up of
up of

characters, the second set is made

characters, and the third set is made up of

characters.

The pronunciation and definition of the characters and are:

n.

female

n.

horse

Generally speaking, Chinese characters can be separated into the following 12

structures/forms:
Structure

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Examples

zo sv. to be early

g sv. to be ancient

sn nu. three

zhng n. chapter

n pron. you

t pron. he; him

h n. lake

c n. side

Top-bottom

Left-right

Standalone

Enclosed

Semi-enclosed

m n. wood
do n. knife

hu v. to return

yn n. cause; reason

tng sv. to be equal; to be alike

fng n. wind

yu n. right

l n. calendar

s n. department (under a ministry)

j n. sentence

xing sv. to be unlucky; to be evil

yu sv. to be secluded

jn v. to enter
q v. to rise

Structure

5.

Examples

q n. area
jing n. craftsman

Semi-enclosed

The Six Categories of Chinese Characters

Here, we will introduce the Six Categories of Chinese Characters (lish).
are the six principles that the ancient Chinese used to categorize all Chinese
characters. The basic concepts are as follows:

1. Pictograms (xingxng)
A long time ago, before Chinese characters were formed, there was no paper for
people to write on or note down important things. Thus, they carved pictures
on the walls in the likeliness of the objects they wished to portray.
Ex.

yu

hu

n. sun

n. moon

n. fire

ln

ch

n. woods

n. car

n. horse

shu

rn

shu

n. hand

n. person

n. water

2. Ideograms (zhsh)
The ancient people found that some things were difficult to draw, so they used
symbols on the pictograms they had to form ideograms.
Ex.

m
n. the top of a tree; extended to mean last

bn

n. root of a tree; extended to mean the

basics; the root (of a problem)

n. wood

3. Ideogrammic Compounds (huy)

Later, the people discovered that they needed more words, so they used the
words they had to make new ones.
Ex.

person leaning against a tree

rn

n. person

n. wood

xi
v. to rest
holding hand over eyes

shu

n. hand

n. eye

kn
v. to look

4. Phono-semantic Compounds (xngshng)

There are limits to pictograms and ideogrammic compounds, because there
are many abstract concepts that cannot be easily portrayed by pictograms or
ideogrammic compounds alone. Because of this, the ancient Chinese formed
new characters based on their sound.
Ex.  (qng) means good; pretty, so clean water is (qng, clear),
to be polite is (qng, to please) and good weather is represented
by (qng, sunny). Most Chinese characters were formed this
way.

5. Derivative Cognates (zhunzh)

Sometimes, people of different regions made characters with the same meaning
that looked similar but were not the same. For example,
Ex.  (lo)

and (ko)

were both originally used to

mean elderly people. The two characters were similar phonetically

and had the same meaning, so they are considered to be a set of
derivative cognates.

6. Rebus (phonetic loan) Characters (jiji)

Other times, there were no better way for characters to be formed, so they were
borrowed from other words that sounded the same.
Ex. 

was originally voiced , z to mean nose. But because

the in (zj, self) is also pronounced , z, the same

(originally for nose) was borrowed and used for the in
. Technically speaking, Derivative Cognates and Rebus
characters are not newly formed words, but are words with a new
usage.

How to Use a Dictionary

When you see a word you dont know, you can look it up in the dictionary.
Chapter One and Chapter Two introduced the MPS and Hanyu Pinyin systems. They
can be used to find the words we want in dictionaries. But what happens when you
dont know how a word is pronounced?
The ancient Chinese had this problem, too. In the Han Dynasty, a person called
Xu Shen (, X Shn) studied the ways characters were formed and proposed
the Six Categories. He then wrote a book about it, called Shuowen Jiezi (
, Shu wn ji z). In this book, he used radicals to edit the characters. But
what are radicals? Take the words , , , and 2 for example. These words
all have something to do with (m, on the left of each character), which means
that they all belong to the radical. Using this method of looking for a characters
radical, one can look up words in dictionaries without having to know how they are
pronounced.
There are now a total of 214 radicals. From Book 1, Chapter Three onwards, well
introduce a common radical in each chapter to help you remember what words mean
and how they are pronounced.

 he pronunciation and meaning of the characters , , , and are as follows:

T
ln n.woods
sn n. forest
sh n. tree
sng n. pine
b n. cypress