{"id":14968,"date":"2021-08-16T21:24:40","date_gmt":"2021-08-16T19:24:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hackingchinese.com\/?p=14968"},"modified":"2025-08-30T08:13:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T06:13:11","slug":"the-building-blocks-of-chinese-part-1-chinese-characters-and-words-in-a-nutshell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hackingchinese.com\/the-building-blocks-of-chinese-part-1-chinese-characters-and-words-in-a-nutshell\/","title":{"rendered":"The building blocks of Chinese, part 1: Chinese characters and words in a nutshell"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Learning to read and write Chinese characters is a unique challenge. To be able to read normal text in Chinese, you need to know around 3,500 characters, even though the exact number depends on what you are reading, and there\u2019s more to reading than just knowing characters. It should be clear to anyone that this is not an alphabet, then, and that Chinese characters do not represent sounds the way our letters do.<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean that Chinese characters are pictures, though, even if it is true that many basic characters started out as such. It\u2019s not too hard to imagine that \u6728 (m\u00f9<\/i>) shows a tree, or that \u4eba (r\u00e9n<\/i>) is a sideways view of a person.<\/p>\n

The letters in our alphabet had similar origins, but we only use them to represent sounds these days. In contrast, there\u2019s nothing in \u6728 or \u4eba that hints at their pronunciation. You just have to learn that, just like you need to learn that the numeral 6 is read \u201csix\u201d and that $ is read \u201cdollar\u201d, you can\u2019t know that by just looking at the written form.<\/p>\n

Tune in to the Hacking Chinese Podcast<\/a> to listen to the related episode:<\/em>
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