Learning to identify Chinese characters

Simply, we can learn to identify the Chinese character based on their look and story. As a teacher, my favorite part is explaining how characters are created with syllables, tone, and varied combinations.

First, we need to use our imagination to understand the evolution of how the characters were created. This is a process called “Pictogram”. We can easily see the similarity of the character, 日, 月, 木, 水 , as they relate to the drawings depicting their meaning. Please view the image below.

Next, we can see the story each character created by combining together.

In English, we learn the language convention of Prefix and Suffixes. Similarly, Chinese has included a “radical” for each character. For example, there is usually the “radical” 手 for characters referring to people, 水 related to water, and 虫 used for insect references. Please view the image below as example.

In conclusion, there are 3 Basic concepts for identify Chinese characters.

1. Character: Pictures, stories, prefixes, suffixes, meaning, categories.
2. Syllable: Tones, sounds, initials.
3. Combination: root + story + sound