What are Mandarin characters?
Unlike the English language, which uses the Roman alphabet, Mandarin does not have an alphabet.
Instead there are Mandarin characters, called Check your connection, refresh the page and try again. hàn zì, and each character represents a word.
Each Mandarin character is made from different components.
What are the components of a character in Mandarin?
There are usually two components to a character:
Radical
The component that shows the overall meaning of the character, is called the radical.
For example, in the character Check your connection, refresh the page and try again. 尘ǎ meaning ‘mother’ the radical is Check your connection, refresh the page and try again. 苍ǚ (woman) because of the connection often made between mothers and women.
Phonetic
The other part of the character is called the phonetic (pronunciation).
In the ancient form of the language this showed how the character was pronounced and in modern Mandarin it can give you a clue about the pronunciation, eg the Check your connection, refresh the page and try again. 尘ǎ (horse) in Check your connection, refresh the page and try again. 尘ā (mother).
It is important to remember that the phonetic is only a clue, not an accurate guide.
For example, in the character Check your connection, refresh the page and try again. 办à苍 (to look at), the radical is Check your connection, refresh the page and try again. 尘ù (eye), which helps with the meaning, but the phonetic Check your connection, refresh the page and try again. 蝉丑ǒ耻 (hand) does not give any guide to pronunciation.
Also, sometimes the radical is the whole character, like in Check your connection, refresh the page and try again. 尘ǎ (horse), so there is no phonetic.
Mandarin characters do not tell you how to pronounce them - that’s what pinyin is for.
Mandarin characters started out more like ‘pictures’ but have changed over 4,000 years into the Mandarin characters used today.
This can be seen clearly in the development of the character for 'mountain' (Check your connection, refresh the page and try again. 蝉丑ā苍):
The smallest units of Mandarin characters are strokes.
Click below to download a template for practicing how to write Mandarin characters
Download the PDF and use the grid to help you practice writing Mandarin characters.
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