Chinese

Hey! In this post I’m going to talk about one of my favourite languages, Chinese and the character system works for those of us who no nothing Chinese dialects such as mandarin. Chinese character have three elements to them, image (form), meaning and sound. There are six principles that are used to define and understand he characters which I’m going to talk about now:

1. Pictograms

These are words created by things we can see. For example a person, animals or objects. This was the start of how the use of characters began.

2. Simple indicatives

These are words that cannot be drawn, such as directions and numbers.

3. Compound indicatives

These are words meant to be understood clearly after the pictograph and indicatives are formed.

4. phono-semantic compound characters

This represents a word that is made from another word its similar to, with additional signs or characters added to make a new character. The word is pronounced like one of the original words.

5. Borrowed characters

This was originally borrowed from another word that was pronounced the same (a homophone)

6. Derived characters

Represent words that share the same root word or meaning

I really think learning how a language works before jumping into it gives you a solid foundation. After reading through these principles and elements. Mandarin doesn’t seem as impossible to learn. I hope this was some help and feel free to comment, if something wasn’t quite accurate. For last tip, build up your vocab.

^-^ thanks for reading!                                                            

source:http://courses.vivastreet.co.uk/language+hastingwood/mandarin-chinese-lessons-for-children-in-old-harlow--essex/93208144

http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/mandarin1/4535