Comments on: Phonetic components, part 1: The key to 80% of all Chinese characters https://www.hackingchinese.com/phonetic-components-part-1-the-key-to-80-of-all-chinese-characters/ A better way of learning Mandarin Sun, 05 Oct 2025 16:32:26 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 By: How to not teach Chinese characters to beginners: A 12-step approach | Hacking Chinese https://www.hackingchinese.com/phonetic-components-part-1-the-key-to-80-of-all-chinese-characters/#comment-141372 Sun, 05 Oct 2025 16:32:26 +0000 http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=3948#comment-141372 […] avoid talking about functional components, especially phonetic components, since without these, it might take them months or even years before they figure out how a vast […]

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By: Don't use mnemonics for everything | Hacking Chinese https://www.hackingchinese.com/phonetic-components-part-1-the-key-to-80-of-all-chinese-characters/#comment-126691 Sun, 22 Dec 2024 11:22:21 +0000 http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=3948#comment-126691 […] In many characters, there are clues hidden in their structure that can help you figure out the pronunciation without needing detailed mnemonics. In essence, simply understanding how phonetic components work is enough. […]

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By: Student Q&A, June 2024: How much time on flashcards, Remembering the Hanzi, and resources for learning characters | Hacking Chinese | Hacking Chinese https://www.hackingchinese.com/phonetic-components-part-1-the-key-to-80-of-all-chinese-characters/#comment-120476 Mon, 03 Jun 2024 07:41:47 +0000 http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=3948#comment-120476 […] ⁠Phonetic components, part 1: The key to 80% of all Chinese characters […]

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By: Review: The Outlier Dictionary of Chinese Characters | Hacking Chinese | Hacking Chinese https://www.hackingchinese.com/phonetic-components-part-1-the-key-to-80-of-all-chinese-characters/#comment-117099 Wed, 07 Feb 2024 15:42:22 +0000 http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=3948#comment-117099 […] Phonetic components, part 1: The key to 80% of all Chinese characters […]

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By: 5 levels of understanding Chinese characters: Superficial forms to deep structure | Hacking Chinese | Hacking Chinese https://www.hackingchinese.com/phonetic-components-part-1-the-key-to-80-of-all-chinese-characters/#comment-116957 Sat, 03 Feb 2024 11:45:24 +0000 http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=3948#comment-116957 […] The problem is of course that to believe these stories, you need to have missed one of the most fundamental things about how Chinese characters work, namely that most characters contain components that are there for no other reason than to indicate p…. […]

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By: The building blocks of Chinese: Mastering compound characters | Hacking Chinese https://www.hackingchinese.com/phonetic-components-part-1-the-key-to-80-of-all-chinese-characters/#comment-116004 Wed, 10 Jan 2024 07:10:11 +0000 http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=3948#comment-116004 […] Phonetic components, part 1: The key to 80% of all Chinese characters […]

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By: Shapeshifting Chinese characters | Hacking Chinese | Hacking Chinese https://www.hackingchinese.com/phonetic-components-part-1-the-key-to-80-of-all-chinese-characters/#comment-112999 Mon, 23 Oct 2023 18:53:55 +0000 http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=3948#comment-112999 […] they are indeed the same character is that when in characters where it’s the phonetic component (i.e. where its function is to indicate sound), the pronunciation is still rén. For example, in the character 仁 (rén), “benevolence”, 亻 […]

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By: Mastering the Pronunciation of Chamomile | SacredSmokeHerbals.com https://www.hackingchinese.com/phonetic-components-part-1-the-key-to-80-of-all-chinese-characters/#comment-111953 Sat, 23 Sep 2023 03:31:41 +0000 http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=3948#comment-111953 […] down the word “chamomile” into its phonetic components—/kæməmaɪl/—we embark on a journey through aural landscapes. The initial /k/ sound, unvoiced and velar, emanates from the […]

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By: Are there any shortcuts for learning Chinese? - Hacking Chinese https://www.hackingchinese.com/phonetic-components-part-1-the-key-to-80-of-all-chinese-characters/#comment-103062 Mon, 24 Oct 2022 17:21:07 +0000 http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=3948#comment-103062 […] Understanding how sound components work in Chinese characters […]

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By: Olle Linge https://www.hackingchinese.com/phonetic-components-part-1-the-key-to-80-of-all-chinese-characters/#comment-84732 Fri, 22 Oct 2021 10:10:45 +0000 http://www.hackingchinese.com/?p=3948#comment-84732 In reply to 闪电54.

I’m working on a list of the most important ones and will publish something about that in the relatively near future (this year, hopefully, but I don’t think that’s the right way to do it. If you’ve already been studying for a while and have focused too little on phonetic components, seeing such a list can be very helpful as it might open your eye to how pervasive phonetic components are in Chinese. For most people, however, learning something like this from a list is not very good. In fact, learning words from lists in general is seldom a good idea. Most students do best by knowing about the existence of phono-semantic characters and roughly how they work, then pay attention to components and their pronunciation when learning characters. The really useful ones will stand out and be easy to see, the ones you have to look up in order to understand (such as 也 being the sound component of 他) are not necessary to learn, although it can help you understand the character and stop thinking about why the ancient Chinese associated the meaning of those characters with “he; him” (which they didn’t, because it’s not a semantic component).

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