FOUNDATION IIIChinese Characters

Chinese writing system is based on Chinese characters. While each Chinese character is unique, many are formed by combining various components. This concept is very similar to combining prefix, root, and suffix to form an English word. It is very helpful to first identify familiar components when encounter a new character.

Let’s observe the elements and their respective positions in each character. Do

you see the component shared by many others? In many cases, the shared component is the root of that character, also called radical in Chinese. Do not worry about meaning of each character below. Let’s only practice identify shared component here first.

女妹好

姐 媽門

開關

間 問

心思怎

想 忘口

叫哪

喝 吃

Now, let’s examine the Chinese characters below to see if there are any two words that share one component. Draw a line to link the two characters if you identify a shared component between the two.

連連看 Match the same radical

(A)

冰 ・ ・ 回

花 ・ ・ 茶

飯 ・ ・ 餓行 ・ ・ 渴圓 ・ ・ 冷涼 ・ ・ 後

(B)電 ・ ・ 紹吃 ・ ・ 說姐 ・ ・ 叫

請 ・ ・ 雲紅 ・ ・ 媽

FOUNDATION IVMandarin Chinese in Use

Q & A with Peter

The Chinese language you are learning is called Hànyù or Zhōngwén. It’s also called Pŭtōnghùa or Mandarin Chinese. How can it have four different names? Hàny& refers to the language used by people of Han tribe in China, the largest Chinese ethnic group, which composes about 90% of the population. China is slightly smaller than U.S. in total

geographical area but has close to 5 times of the U.S. population! There is a total of 56 ethnic groups, according to the Fifth National Population Census in 2000. Each ethnic group has its own dialect of the Chinese language. In order to communicate efficiently, Hàny&, the ethnic dialect of Han tribe, has been chosen as the official Chinese language. Zhōnggúo is China; therefore, Zhōngwén is the language spoken by the Chinese people. The term Pŭtōnghùa literally means “common language”, while Mandarin Chinese refers to the Mandarin dialect. Isn’t it amazing? All these four names refer to the Chinese language you are learning.

Who Uses Chinese in Our World?

Currently, Zhōngwén is used as national language by people in mainland China, Taiwan, and Singapore. Zhōngwén is also used wherever there is a large population of Chinese people, such as

Chinatowns all over the world. Althoughthey might use different dialects of Zhōngwén, such as Cantonese in San Francisco, CA, USA.

In ancient times, many nations in Asia used Chinese characters as their written language, such as Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Today Japanese still uses kanji, borrowed Chinese characters, as part of their writing system. As for modern Korean and Vietnamese, they’ve since developed their own spelling systems and no longer use Chinese characters. According to The World Almanac, there are more people on Earth who speak Chinese than either Spanish or English. It’s also one of the six official language used by the United Nation, along with Arabic, English, French, Russian, and Spanish. Based on the trend of language learning in schools around the world, there will be more people using Chinese as time goes on.

How Many Characters Must I Learn?

That depends on what you want to do. Honestly, you really only need about 3,000 characters to do everything in your daily life, such as watch TV & movies, reading newspapers, magazines, novels, etc. Some characters are used more frequently than others, so you should start learning the high-frequency words first.

A Chinese college-graduate will probably master 6,000 to 7,000 characters. So, you might ask, what about the other 80,000 characters? The truth is that you will not see them unless you become a linguist of the Chinese language or a scholar of the ancient Chinese literatures.

How are Chinese and English different?

When I first came to the U.S., I had to learn English from the very beginning, starting with ABC. That was really difficult for me because English is so different from Chinese. For example, in Chinese, there is no gender-specific nouns, a chicken is just a chicken. We also don’t have singular or plural forms of nouns. The best part is there is no need to conjugate verbs. We never need to change a verb according

to person and tense. It took me a long time to get used to all these grammar rules in English. My friends told me there are even more of these changes in Spanish. Can you imagine how hard that must be! After we have mastered Chinese Pinyin and tones, we are almost ready to take off for a fun language adventure. Oh, one more thing, the Chinese language’s written form does

not use alphabet letters or spelling system. Pinyin is only a tool to teach you how to pronounce the sound. The written form of Chinese is based on characters (字 zì).

Now, let me invite you to join my friends and I on this amazing around-the-world journey with our Magic Compass.

Wait! I almost forgot. Let me introduce to you four of my awesome friends in the adventure of Magic Chinese. Now we are ready. Let the fun begin!

Lisa (麗莎) Linda (琳達)

Tom (湯姆) Reggie (瑞奇)