When you begin to learn Chinese characters, remember that the Chinese script evolved very differently from scripts used in the west. Though the Chinese language is truly ancient, it actually uses systems that have been superseded by the systems used in other scripts.  What I mean by this is that the Chinese language, instead of using combinations of a very small number of symbols to form an infinite variety of words, instead uses complex pictograms, or characters called hanzi. This pictograms are a combination of an image, a meaning and sometimes they even contain a key to the pronunciation. This is an important point to remember when you start to learn Chinese characters.

The key to the pronunciation is crucial because pronunciation is really a basis of the Chinese language, with words that have a very similar structure having a very diverse meaning based on how they are pronounced. This is why a Chinese character not only gives one an idea or image of what a word means, but also a hint of how it’s pronounced. This is important to remember when you learn Chinese characters. Of course there are about sixty thousand words in the Chinese language that you would have to know in order to be on par with an educated Chinese, and these sixty thousand words are formed using about three to six thousand characters that you will have to learn if you want to be literate in the Chinese language.

The best way to learn Chinese characters is to actually learn to use the hints that they give you as to sound and meaning. Remember, the image portion of a Chinese character usually represents either an image or else an abstract idea. Try to see the relation between the word and the image and associate a picture in your head with the character. This will help you to remember exactly what a character means, and this association is fundamental to retaining Chinese characters in memory. Of course, learning Chinese characters also involves an almost infinite amount of practice. Who has not seen movies of Chinese teachers in ancient times teaching Chinese calligraphy to their students, both master and student writing the characters on tables of sand, writing and erasing them again and again, hundreds, if not thousands of times, until the student knows the character perfectly.

This is still a perfectly valid method used to learn Chinese characters today. Of course, one may no longer use tables of sand, but writing and rewriting the Chinese characters thousands of times is by far the best method of retaining them in memory. The second important characteristic of the Chinese characters is the sound. In time you’ll see how the same tonal system is reused in different characters. The important thing when studying Chinese is to not overwhelm yourself.

Remember that the real key to success when you learn Chinese characters is to study at a reasonable pace and to be steady about it. You must start with simple characters, concepts and words and not to go beyond them until you know them thoroughly. It is a grievous error to try to do too much when studying the Chinese language. If one does so, one is liable to be overwhelmed by its complexity and to be come depressed and disheartened rather easily. A good online Chinese language course, especially if you choose it carefully, is one of the best ways of learning Chinese characters.

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