{"id":177,"date":"2021-08-23T10:51:36","date_gmt":"2021-08-23T08:51:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hackingchinese.com\/?p=177"},"modified":"2025-07-02T09:38:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T07:38:15","slug":"the-building-blocks-of-chinese-part-2-basic-characters-components-and-radicals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hackingchinese.com\/the-building-blocks-of-chinese-part-2-basic-characters-components-and-radicals\/","title":{"rendered":"The building blocks of Chinese, part 2: Basic characters, components and radicals"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Most Chinese characters are compounds, meaning that they consist of several meaningful components rather than being pictures that can’t be broken down. In this series of articles, we’re learning about Chinese characters, the components they consist of and how they fit together.<\/p>\n

As we saw in the previous article<\/a>, learning the building blocks is extremely important, because it changes the task of learning thousands of characters from learning unique symbols to learning to combine symbols you already know, which is much easier.<\/p>\n

In this article, we will look at the most basic level of the Chinese writing system, meaning the smallest, meaningful units. These characters that are not themselves composed of smaller, meaningful parts and can’t be broken down. We can call these the basic building blocks of Chinese. Technically, these can be broken down into individual strokes, but this is rarely helpful, in the same way that you don\u2019t gain any better understanding of the number 8<\/em> by breaking it down into two zeroes.<\/p>\n

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