I’ve gotten a few questions about learning to read and write Chinese script, so since I’m sitting on a train all day today traveling to Beijing, I might as well take the chance to write another informational piece before things get crazy again.
Old men writing Chinese calligraphy with water on the plaza pavement. Everyone has a hobby.
The Basics
Chinese language does not have a corresponding alphabet, but instead is written in characters that are neither phonetic nor pictorial, though there are hints of both. This means that characters that look similar often have similar meanings or pronunciations, but not always.
An example: Meet the female radical; it looks like this: 女 By itself it forms a character that means “woman”. However, you will often see this shape as a familiar component of other characters. For example, the words for “sister” contain it: 姐姐(older sister) and 妹妹(younger sister). The pronunciations of these other words are unrelated, but the pictorial element remains for helpful association.
Now let’s look at the word for “horse”: 马 (pronounced ma). This radical reappears in other characters as a phonetic component.
Now let’s look at one more word: 妈妈. Just based on what we know of the character components, it will not be a surprise to learn that this word means “mother” and is pronounced as mama.
That’s not to say you can read characters or meanings you’ve never learned before, but it does mean that there are hints of rhyme and reason in the script. Also, complicated characters are easier to write and remember since they contain familiar components.
With few exceptions, each character has one pronunciation that is one syllable long. A Chinese word can consist of one or more characters, but you’re not getting any hints there since the script is written without putting spaces between words. Two characters may have separate meanings by themselves, but form a new word when combined.
Example: The Chinese word for “immediately” is written 马上 (mashang). 上by itself means “up” or “previous”. The only way to know that the characters belong together as one word is the context.
Pinyin: Filling the gap between reading and speaking
The life-saver for foreigners learning Chinese is Pinyin. This is a relatively new invention and serves as a substitute phonetic guide to pronouncing Chinese words. Pinyin is simply a consistent (and I mean 100% consistent) system for mapping Chinese sounds to the Roman alphabet. Whenever you see Chinese words spelled out, this is what you are actually looking at. If you try to pronounce these words with English spelling rules you will probably say it wrong, but if you know the rules of Pinyin and the tone is marked, you will always say it right!
Pinyin is not a substitute for the Chinese writing system as different words/characters often have identical pronunciations. However, Pinyin is what makes it possible to type Chinese characters on a QWERTY keyboard, so Chinese people use the system daily even though Pinyin is never read as a script itself.
Example: Below I’ve written the simple sentence “Today I’m going to Beijing.” in both Pinyin and Chinese characters. The Pinyin helps show which characters should be grouped together to form longer words and provides the correct pronunciation (though I can’t add the tones on my keyboard), but does not guarantee the unambiguous meaning that the Chinese version does. The Pinyin version is also what I typed on my computer to produce the Chinese characters.
Jintian wo qu Beijing.
今天我去北京。
Words and Characters out in the Wilds of China
So, suppose you’re out in the wilds of China, perhaps trying to communicate with your Chinese little brother, and you come across the pronunciation of a word you’ve never heard before, or perhaps you do know it but have never seen the character written down before. What do you do? Well, based on the pronunciation you can look it up in your Chinese dictionary by searching the Pinyin pronunciation. Just based on an accurate pronunciation of the word and a little bit of context, you can find the corresponding Chinese characters and the English translation. Whew. That was easy enough!
But now suppose that you come across a Chinese character you’ve never seen before, maybe you found it on a street sign or menu. You can’t look it up based on Pinyin, in fact you can’t even ask what it means in a direct way since you have no idea how to pronounce it.
Never fear, though, because this is surely the problem that touchscreen computers were invented to solve! The Chinese dictionary app of choice for foreigners is called Pleco. Using this app, not only can you look up words based on English input and Chinese Pinyin, you can also literally draw out the character that has you stumped and look it up based on shape.
Example:
A wild Chinese character appears! You can guess what it means, but you want to make sure your guess is right and actually learn now to say the word.
Transcribe the mystery character. Even if you’re sloppy, the app is good at guessing.
Now you’ve got the pinyin (including tone), character, and translation! For nuts like me you now have the option of saving the dictionary entry as a flashcard to study and practice writing later.
Reading vs. Writing
The glory and convenience of pinyin and modern technology, though, is also a problem. The truth is that it’s much easier to recognize characters than it is to produce them from memory. Using a pinyin keyboard is fast, but it reduces the opportunity for writing practice. As a result, I (like many foreigners) can type and read much better than I can write. This is partly preference, though, as I prefer to put my efforts into speaking practice rather than writing practice.
If you want to go totally overboard on writing Chinese, there’s always calligraphy!
The texts reads “杭州你好” /Hangzhou ni hao (Hello Hangzhou). The beautiful top sheet is Wendy’s handwriting, the wobbly bottom one is my novice attempt. The blue one is my Chinese name (a gift from Wendy).
So, there’s a peep into what it’s like to learn to read and write Chinese. It’s not easy of course and it’s a slow process, but it’s also not impossible.
Let me know if you’d like me to do more of these informational pieces and what topics you’re interested in. I like doing them but this is the first one I’ve done since arriving in China.
