16 Tips to Read Chinese characters efficiently

If you are only just starting to learn Chinese characters, you might feel a little bit lost. It is absolutely fine if the mandarin writing looks confusing at first, but once you understand the basics, it’ll become a lot easier. First, know that modern mandarin texts are read left to right and top to bottom just like English. But note that, the old Chinese texts were written in columns, right to left.

To answer the question of how to read Chinese efficiently, you might also find it helpful to first head to CCHATTY. You’ll learn the basics, such as 6 main types of mandarin characters and how to visualize a few of them based on their meanings.

Today I will dig slightly into that, but I will also explain how to read efficiently with Pinyin and other resources to help you understand to read mandarin.

How mandarin characters work?

However, the Mandarin writing system is not so simple. Since the mandarin characters are an ideographic or image-based system, characters are not broken up into sound components in the similar way that alphabets or syllabifies are:

That means that the basic components of the mandarin character don’t systematically represent sound in the similar way that every letter in English words does. For that reason, writing or reading mandarin doesn’t directly help you understand to speak the language.

For instance, this is the traditional mandarin character for the mother. It includes 2 radicals, one of which provides us a hint about the actual meaning and one which provides us a hint about the sound. Though we cannot always expect the radical on the left to tell us about the actual meaning, and the radical on the correct to tell us about sound. 

There’s no systematic way to understand which one contains info about pronunciation. And to make things very confusing, there’re often more than just 2 radicals.

Ideal Ways to read Chinese characters efficiently 

Start With Pinyin

A straightforward answer to the question of how to read Chinese efficiently is to start by learning the Pinyin system and then continue with the simplest Chinese characters. Afterward, you will understand more advanced characters and it’ll all become a lot easier.

First things first – what is Pinyin?

Pinyin is going to be your largest helper when you understand to read mandarin characters. it is a transcription of the mandarin characters into the Latin alphabet – the alphabet that I am using to write this important article.

The mandarin language does not have an alphabet per se, so if you try to search for the mandarin alphabet, most likely you will just find something about the Chinese characters, the similar goes for mandarin letters. There is no such thing, but Pinyin is as close as it gets to it. So back to the Pinyin system, as a transcription forms the mandarin characters to Latin alphabet, it is the best help for a new learner. Pinyin also includes all the tones, for instance -汉字, “Mandarin character” is transcribed as hànzì.

Importance of Radicals 

The building blocks of mandarin characters are radicals. Almost every mandarin character is composed of at least 1 radical. Traditionally, Chinese dictionaries were classified by radicals, and several modern dictionaries still use this method for looking up mandarin characters. Other classification methods used in CCHTTY Chinese dictionaries include phonetics and the several strokes used for drawings characters.

Besides their usefulness for categorizing mandarin characters, radicals also give clues for meaning and pronunciation. This is particularly helpful when characters also have a related theme. For instance, most Chinese words having to do with moisture each share the radical 水 (shuǐ). The radical 水 on its own is also a mandarin character, which translates to water.

Some radicals have more than 1 form. The radical 水 (shuǐ), for instance, can also write as 氵 when it’s used as a portion of another word. This is called 三点水 (sān diǎn shuǐ) that means 3 drops of water, as undeniably, the radicals seem like 3 droplets. 

These alternate forms are hardly utilized self-sufficiently since they don’t stand as Mandarin words on their own. Therefore, radicals can be a helpful tool for remembering the meaning of mandarin characters.

Here’re few instances of characters based on the radical 水 (shuǐ):

• 氾 – fàn – overflow; flood 
• 汍 – wán – weep; shed tears 
• 汁 – zhī – juice; fluid 
• 江 – jiāng – river 
• 汗 – hàn – perspiration 

Characters can be composed of more than a single radical. When multiple radicals are used, one radical is normally used to hint at the definition of the word while the other hints at the pronunciation. For instance:

汗 – hàn – perspiration 

The radical 水 (shuǐ) implies that 汗 has something to do with water that makes sense because perspiration is sweaty. The sound of the character is provided by other elements. 干 (gàn) on its own is the mandarin character for dry. But "gàn" and "hàn sound very same.

Word and Sentences Break Down

In a similar way some English words are formed, mandarin words often make sense when broken down. For instance, the English word ex-boyfriend is formed by 3 parts: “ex”, “boy” and “friend”.

A similar word in mandarin, 前男友 or 前男朋友 (qián nányǒu or qián nánpéngyǒu, “ex-boyfriend”) is formed the rightly similar way. 前 (qián) in mandarin means ex or before, 男 (nán) is male and朋友 (péngyǒu) means “friend or buddy”.

Let’s take a look at few instances of how you can guess the meaning of mandarin words –

• If you already know the mandarin character 四 (sì, “four”) and the character 月 (yuè, “month”), then you simply guess that 四月 (sìyuè) means 4th month, therefore meaning April.
• 星期日 (xīngqírì, “Sunday”) is a blend of 星期 (xīngqí, “week”) and 日 (rì, “sun”)
• 女孩儿 (nǚháiér, “daughter”) is shaped of 女 (nǚ, “female”) and 孩儿 (hái’ér, “baby/child”)  

Types of Characters 

The reason why the sorts of mandarin characters are not the very beginning of this article simple – you do not need to learn about them to be capable to read mandarin writing. But, it is vital to know how mandarin characters are classified and at the last of the day, the knowledge may come in handy when reading and analyzing the mandarin texts.

Let’s have a look at the six types of mandarin characters –

Pictograms

Another vital grouping with mandarin characters is pictograms. These are characters that are meant to seem like the object or thing they represent. While the clear similarities have been lost over thousands of years, with a slight imagination as well as an understanding of mandarin culture, you can start to recognize meaning. A few instances of these include 高 gāo (tall), 人 rén (person), represent as a tall pagoda) and 山 shān (mountain).

Ideograms

Just like same to pictograms, ideograms are one more old and somewhat confusing part of Chinese reading. These are Chinese characters that were a pictographic representation of styles, rather than things, which have since been extremely stylized. A good instance of these is the character 互 hù, meaning “mutual,” which is a representation of 2 people holding hands. Such as mandarin characters are not normally understandable on first viewing, but a lot easier to keep in mind once the backstory is learned.

Composites

These are formed by combining 2 or more ideographs or pictographs. Their meanings are often applied by the associations of these elements. Some instances of composites are:

• 森 – sēn – jungle. This mandarin character combines 3 trees (木) to make a jungle. 
• 好 – hǎo – good. This Chinese character combines lady (女) with kid (子). 

Phonetic Loans 

As mandarin characters evolved, a few of the original characters were used to represent words that had similar sounds but different meanings. As these mandarin characters took on a new meaning, new words representing the actual meaning were devised. Here’s an instance:

• 北 - běi  

This mandarin character meant the back of the body and was pronounced bèi. Over time, this character has come to mean north. Now, the word for the back is represented by the character 背 (bèi).

Radical Phonetic Compounds 

These are mandarin characters that combine phonetic components. These represent almost 80 percent of modern mandarin characters. You’ve already seen instances of radical phonetics as discussed earlier.

Borrowings

Borrowings – is for characters that represent more than 1 word. These words have a similar pronunciation as the borrowed character but don’t have a character of their own. An instance of borrowing is 萬 (wàn) which actually means scorpion but comes to mean 10 thousand and is also a surname.

Some of these forms can be useful for you to understand as you learn to read written mandarin. For instance, pictograms, just like their name suggests, are images of words. As you can see above simplified pictograms do not look like their meaning a lot of times, but there’re certain exceptions.

The same goes with phonetic ideograms and phonetics, where the sound and meaning can be guessed by the way of look or by their radical component. Do not rely on this each time, but you can sometimes guess the pronunciation of a mandarin character is examine by the predominant component.

Some sneaky issues that might trip beginning readers 

Okay, so now that you understand how should be reading mandarin characters, it also vital to identify the common issues and mistakes that learners make when reading mandarin as a 2nd language.

No 2 characters are the same – avoid lookalikes characters 

One of the most common errors learners make is confusing 2 very same characters. These include Chinese characters that are almost identical.

Such characters pairs – for instance, 情 qíng (“feeling,” “emotion”) and 清 qīng (“pure,” “just”), often create more confusion by the fact that they’ve similar pronunciations. Another type of mandarin character similarity, such as that among 木 mù and 术 shù (“method,” “technique”) can happen when 2 mandarin characters different in meaning and sound have just one stroke of difference among them.

Watch out for Chinese characters with alternate pronunciations 

Another common mistake encountered by learners is caused by Chinese characters that have more than single possible pronunciation depending on their context. A few of the most common include 着, which can be pronounced as zhe and zhāo, and 重, which can be pronounced as chóng or zhòng in some circumstances.

Key tips to read unknown characters 

One last area of difficulty, where each learner without exception will encounter… is a text that just full of unknown characters. While it’s impossible to guess the meaning of each character, some handy hints can be followed. 

Nouns can be guessed by their radicals

With little understanding of grammar, it’s reasonably simple to tell which mandarin words in a given sentence are verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs. For the nouns, at least, it’s often possible to work out what sort of object an unknown character is, based on its radicals and knowledge of the content. 

For example, words with heart radical 心 xīn radically normally refer to feelings or emotions, while something with the goal radical 金 jīn is likely some sort of metal or element.

Identifying toponyms and names

Some of the most difficult-to-read words come in the form of toponyms. Often these can be fully unique – as in the case of the 峨 é 峨眉山 é méi shān – or otherwise highly rare. In several cases, like in the previous instance, it’s simple to tell this is a toponym by the fact that the word for a certain type of place is used.

In other cases, for the translation of a non-mandarin toponym, a very small group of Chinese characters is used consisting of basic phonetic sounds. Such characters are simple to read and identify if their true meaning is unknown.

So now put your abilities to the test – Get reading!

Now that you understand the Chinese characters along with their intricacies as well as difficulties, the next step is clear now.

You just start practicing. Read, read and read Chinese and then read and read more!