Memorizing Thoasands of Characters

The Memorization of Chinese Vocabulary 

          Within the Chinese language there is over 50,000 different characters, each with its own meaning. To read a newspaper, a person must know between 2,000 - 3,000 characters. An educated Chinese speaker will know a total of 8,000 or more characters. This is one of the most intimating parts of the Chinese language. This is yet another very challenging part of Chinese, and is a reason why most aren't interested or motivated to learn the language. Like most things in life, this requires hard work, dedication, and motivation. 

          To better understand what a character is, we must first discuss the origins of these symbols. The origins of Chinese writing, date back to before 1200 BC. Due to this long period of existence, Chinese characters have had plenty time to develop; hence the creation of more than 50,000 characters. Characters begun as pictures of the object or subject they represented. To make character writing quicker, more efficient, and easier, the characters became more simple over time. Today Chinese writing is done with what is called Simplified Chinese. Below is a picture of the progression of the character for horse. 

Progression of the Character for Horse. AP Worldipedia, apworldipedia.com/
     index.php?title=Key_Concept_1.3_The_Development_and_Interaction_of_Early_Agricult
     ural,_Pastoral_and_Urban_Societies. Accessed 1 Feb. 2018.

          As seen in the illustration above, the progression of Chinese characters has been dramatic over time. This much older style of writing is now called, Traditional Chinese, and is used more for an art rather than for a practical use.

          Now that the history of characters is clear, one must understand a character's composition. The individual parts of a character are called radicals. Each of these radicals have a different meaning, and when put together they make a character. When compared to the English language, a radical is like a letter. Letters make up words, and those make up sentences, and so on. The same goes for Chinese radicles.  Some radicles can make words on there own, but are often used in combination with others to define a word together. Below is a chart of the different radicals, their meanings, and pronunciation. 

"Chinese Radicals." AllBusinessTemplates, www.allbusinesstemplates.com/template/
     JCSQJ/chinese-radicals/. Accessed 1 Feb. 2018.

          Taking the history of a character, and the individual components that make a character up is the first step of Chinese character learning and memorization. It is important to know what radicals make up a character to better understand its meaning. It is highly recommended that a person memorizes these before they learn characters. When finished memorizing these radicles, one can then move on to the memorization of the characters and their meaning. If a Chinese learner has these skills, new characters will be easier to learn, and "decode" because of this.

Click here to learn more about Chinese characters and their history!