HOW CHINESE WORKS 怎样读中文
Chinese characters are constructed of parts or pieces sometimes called "radicals" or "significs." For example, the character 李 is comprised of two simpler characters: 木 and 子 , one on top of the other . Can you see that? A lot of Chinese characters (like 木 tree) have ancient origins as pictographs. And Chinese is a very euphoneous language--it sounds great. These are the characters for ping pong: 乒乓 and they form a picture:
乒 -------------------------------- 乓
(See two people playing ping pong?)
汉字由“偏旁character components”和“部首key radical”组成。比如“李”字，
When Chinese characters are put into sentences, they can be arranged in any direction except bottom to top. For example, the sentence can be written--
| 我爱你 wo3 ai4 ni3 I love
you.
|
left to right, like English, OR |
| 你爱我 I love you. --> |
right to left like this (but be careful because without more of a context, this can also be read as "You love me"!), OR |
|
我 I 爱 love 你 you. |
top to bottom this this, with the complete sentences progressing either from left to right, or from right to left, across the page. |
It is important to know this because, for example, the full page of a typical Chinese newspaper will have headlines, subheads, and the text of articles running all of these ways, plus wrapping around pictures and illustrations, even within the same news story!
Mandarin has five tones: (First) high and level; (Second) high and rising; (Third) low and dipping; (Fourth) falling from high to low; and (Fifth) Neutral, no tone. We use numbers to indicate the tones.
Finally, there are two systems of writing Chinese characters. In Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, they use the traditional or old-style characters called 繁体字 fan4ti3zi3. In China they use the newer, simplified characters called 简体字 jian1ti3zi4. Just as there are different ways to write the characters, there are different ways to Romanize or spell Chinese words using the English alphabet. The usual standard method used throughout China is called Pin Yin (拼音), but you may also see older styles such as the Wade-Giles (WG) method commonly used in Taiwan. Sometimes the two systems are identical or similar, as in United States 美国 mei2guo2 (Pin Yin) and mei3kuo2 (WG)，and sometimes they are entirely different as in China 中国 zhong1guo2 (PY) and chung1kuo2 (WG). They can really appear different in some words, such as the geographical name 新疆 Xin1Jiang1 (PY) Hsin1Chiang1 (WG). The best thing to do is to learn the characters and their tones so that you are not dependent on any Romanization!
We use simplified characters and Pin Yin on this page. But don't let that stop you from learning others. The more you know, the more complete your Chinese education will be. Most Chinese computer programs and some Web browser will easily toggle back and forth between traditional and simplified characters. Other software programs operate as plug-ins to do the same thing. You can try it as you read this page.
