Chinese For Dummies (10 page)

zhū
猪
(
豬
) (
pig/pearl
)

zhú
竹
(
bamboo
)

zhǔ
主
(
master
)

zhù
住
(
to reside
)

Chapter 2

The Written Word: Checking out Chinese Characters

In This Chapter

Familiarizing yourself with the Six Scripts

Using Chinese radicals as clues to the meaning of a character

Getting a handle on character type, writing, and order

Knowing how to use a Chinese dictionary

M
ake no bones about it. (Oracle bones, that is.) China has literally hundreds of spoken dialects but only one written language. That's right: When a headline hits the news, people in Shanghai, Chongqing, and Henan are all yakking about it to their neighbors in their own regional dialects, but they're pointing to the exact same characters in the newspaper headlines. The written word is what's kept the Chinese people unified for over 4,000 years.

This chapter gives you the low down on how Chinese
wénzì
文字
(wuhn-dzuh) (
writing
) actually began, how characters are constructed, and which direction they're going in when you read them. I describe how you may be able to identify the basic meaning of a character by looking at a key portion of it (called the radical) and how characters used by people living in Taiwan are different from characters used by people in mainland China. And because Chinese has no
zìmǔ
字母
(dzuh-moo) (
alphabet
), I show you all sorts of ways you can look words up in a Chinese dictionary.

Chinese has the multiple distinction of being the mother tongue of the oldest continuous civilization on earth as well as the language spoken by the greatest number of people. It arguably has one the most intricate written languages in existence, with about 50,000 characters in a comprehensive Chinese dictionary. To read a newspaper with relative ease, though, you only need to know about 3,000 to 4,000 characters.

Perusing Pictographs, Ideographs, and the Six Scripts

You already know that Chinese words are written in beautiful, sometimes symbolic configurations called
characters.
But did you know that you can classify the characters in a variety of ways?

During the
Hàn
汉
(
æ¼¢
) dynasty, a lexicographer named
Xǔ Shèn
许慎
(
許慎
) (shyew shuhn) identified six ways in which Chinese characters reflect meanings and sounds. These designations are known as the
liù shū
六书
(
六書
) (lyoe shoo) (
the Six Scripts
). Of the six, four were the most common:

Xiàngxíng
象形
(shyahng-sheeng) (
pictographs
):
These characters resemble the shape of the objects they represent, such as
shān
å±±
(shahn) (
mountain
) or
guī
龜
(gway) (the traditional character for
turtle
; the simplified character for turtle —
龟
— doesn't really look as much like a turtle). Pictographs show the meaning of the character rather than the sound.

Biǎoyì
or
zhǐshì
表意
or
指事（
byaow-ee
or
jir-shir) (
ideographs
): These characters represent more abstract concepts. The characters for
shàng
上
(shahng) (
above
) and
xià
下
(shyah) (
below
), for example, each have a horizontal line representing the horizon and another stroke leading out above or below the horizon.

Huì yì
会意
(
會意
) (hway ee) (
compound ideographs
): These characters are combinations of simpler characters that together represent more things. For example, by combining the characters for
sun
(
日
) and
moon
(
月
), you get the character
明
míng
(meeng), meaning
bright.

Xíngshēng
形声
(
形聲
) (sheeng-shuhng) (
phonetic compounds
):
These characters are formed by two graphic elements — one hinting at the meaning of the word (called the radical; see the following section), and the other providing a clue to the sound. More than 90 percent of all Chinese characters are phonetic compounds.

An example of a phonetic compound is the character
gū
蛄
(goo). It's a combination of the radical
chóng
虫
(choong) (
insect
) and the sound element of the character
gū
古
(goo) (
ancient
). Put them together, and you have the character
蛄
, meaning
cricket
(the insect, not the sport). It's pronounced with a first tone
(gū)
rather than a third tone
(gÅ­).
So the sound of the word is similar to the term for
ancient,
even though that term has nothing to do with the meaning of the word. The actual meaning is connected to the radical referring to insects.
Table 2-1
summarizes the Six Scripts.