Many people may think that writing in
Chinese is hard, but that is not the case. In this lesson,
I will be showing you the basics of Chinese writing, and
how it is not hard as some people may think.
The difference between English and Chinese writing is:
English is alphabetic while Chinese writing is based on
characters.
Chinese characters are developed based on six basic
principles. In this class, I will show you four of them.
You could then get a general idea of how Chinese
characters are generated.
In the class video, I
will show you how to write the example words by
using different principles.
The first principle is called Pictographs （象形).
The character is kind of like a graphical picture of
the object it denotes. For example, 日 (sun)，月
(moon)，木 (wood)，山 (mountain)，人 (person)，鸟 (bird).
The second principle is Self Explanatory (指事). The character represents an abstract notion
in a self explanatory way. For example, 三 (three)，上
(up)，下 (down).
The third principle is Associative Compounds (会意). In
a associative compound character, two or more parts are
used for their meaning together to yield a composite
meaning that is applied to a new character. For
example, 明 (bright) and 休 (rest).
The fourth principle is Pictophonetic. In the
pictophonetic character, there are two parts - one
part indicates the meaning and the other part
indicates the sound of the character. For example, 妈
(mom)，饭 (food).
So you see, writing in Chinese is not as hard as you
may have thought. As long as you know some basic
principles of Chinese writing, it will be fun.
