Most Chinese characters are grouped as compound characters, meaning they are composed of at least two distinct radicals. For instance, the radical讠is used in words such as 语, 说话 meaning language and to speak respectively. Other radicals are not, but they may provide meaning cues for the character. Many radicals are single characters on their own (such as radicals 一, 二, 三 above). For example, radical 一 contains one stroke, radical 二 contains two strokes, radical 三 contains three strokes, and so on. The simplified Chinese radicals contain 214 radicals, ordered according to their number of strokes in the traditional Chinese radical table. While English words are composed of alphabet, Chinese characters are composed of radicals. For the most frequent 100 words, 63% or 63 characters are the same for both the simplified and the traditional forms. You can also see which characters are the same for both forms and which ones are different. This list shows almost 3000 frequently used Chinese characters ranked according to popularity (how often they are used). Some characters are the same for both forms. The simplified form was created in 1949 to boost literacy by making the characters simpler. The former is used in Mainland China and the latter in Taiwan. Today Chinese writing is either in the simplified form or the traditional form. The pictograms or ideograms can then be combined to form new characters based on associative ideas. Chinese characters are derived from pictures of objects and symbols, known as pictograms and ideograms. What are Chinese characters? The closest equivalent to Chinese characters are words. When learning Chinese, learning how to write Chinese characters is imperative. Upper-right and inside dots come last.Introduction to the Writing of Chinese Characters:.Upper-left and upper-center dots come first.In vertically symmetrical characters, the center comes before the outside.And the lower-left stroke in 没 and 冷 is written from the lower left corner towards the center. Also note that the top stroke in characters like 看 and 千 is a right-to-left diagonal. Right-to-left diagonals come before left-to-right diagonals.If there is a bottom horizontal stroke on the enclosure, it is written after the contents. Enclosures are written before the contents, starting with the left vertical, then the top and right in a single stroke.Examples: 件,十,事 ,弗 (Technically, the vertical stroke in 事 is a hook stroke, but the same principle applies.) The vertical stroke (or strokes) is often the finishing stroke. When horizontal and vertical strokes intersect, the horizontal stroke (or strokes) comes first.If the character has two or three components, like 谢, then start with the component furthest to the left, then the middle one, then the right one. This can be seen in characters like 二 or 首. If you have two horizontal strokes, then the top one comes first. Horizontal strokes go from left to right. Characters should generally be written from top to bottom, left to right.Just remember the following rules and practice, practice, practice! That being said, stroke order is very predictable in Chinese, so you don’t need to know the pronunciation, meaning or even the radical to know the proper stroke order. Using the wrong stroke order will usually confuse the dictionary and it will not show the proper Chinese character, even though the character you drew looks very similar. However, you should use the proper stroke order so that the dictionary will recognize your handwriting. Additionally, if you are looking up a character in your smartphone's Chinese dictionary, handwriting input is much faster and easier than searching by radical. Using the proper stroke order will create attractive, well-balanced Chinese characters. To learn Chinese characters for long-term retention, it is necessary to write them by hand and if you are going to write by hand then you should learn to write correctly. While you will often use a computer to type, this pinyin input method only requires you to be able to recognize the Chinese character you don’t create the character from memory when typing on a computer. First and most importantly, writing Chinese characters by hand is absolutely essential if you want to memorize them well. The 8 Rules of Chinese Character Stroke OrderĮven in today’s electronic age, it is still important to learn proper stroke order for handwriting Chinese characters.
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