Introduction to

Chinese Characters
and Scripts
 Warming up
---What do you know about Chinese characters

▪ When did Chinese characters come into

being?
▪ Can you say something about the origin and
development of Chinese characters?
▪ How is Chinese character different from
English and Malay Language?
▪ Are Chinese characters pictographs?
 Current status and Future
▪ China has the largest population in the world
with approximately 1.4 billion people, so
learning to speak the Chinese language
means you will be able to communicate with
a gazillion people in the world!
▪ One-fifth of the planet speaks Chinese.
Learning Chinese is one of the absolute best
investments you can make for your personal
and professional growth.
▪ Chinese is a beautiful language and reflects
Chinese culture.
 When did written Chinese language
come into being?
▪ Chinese is among the world’s oldest written
languages. It came into being about 4
thousand years ago.
▪ Earliest form of Chinese characters can be
traced back to the Shang Dynasty (1766 to
1122 BC) when there were oracular
inscriptions on turtle plastrons or animal
bones.
▪ Thus earliest form of Chinese script was called
“Oracle bone Script” 甲骨文 . Chinese
characters evolved from pictographs into
characters formed of strokes, with their
structures very much simpler.
 Cangjie 仓颉 Created Chinese Script
▪ There have been legends about the origin of
the Chinese script, attributing it to a man
named Cangjie .
▪ enlightened by the beauty in nature, Cangjie
is said to have invented the first Chinese
characters.
▪ However, scholars regard that a person alone
was definitely not solely responsible for the
creation and development of Chinese
characters, it was the work of great masses
of people, over thousands of years.
General features:

▪ Square Characters 从 omposed by

strokes 笔画构成的方块字
▪ occupy the same spacing in printed
paper 同样大小
▪ Ideograph 表意文字
▪ Pictograph 象形文字
 composed by strokes 笔画构成
▪ All Chinese characters are built up from strokes.
▪ There are 8 basic strokes.

▪ A character may consist of between 1 and 64

stokes.
▪ 小 (xiǎo) 鱼 (yú) small fish
▪ 大 (dà) 鹰 (yīng) big eagle
 Square-shaped Characters 方块字
▪ The Chinese characters occupy the same spacing in
printed paper, whether “ 一 ” (yī) (one), “ 二” (èr)
(two), with one or two strokes, or “ 罐 (guàn)”(jar) with
over ten strokes.
▪ Characters diversify in posture, whether “ 田” (tián)
(fields) in upright and square type, or “ 瓦” (wǎ)(tile) in
awkward and askew style, all are printed out in
identical size.
▪ therefore, Chinese script is figuratively referred to as
“Square Characters”.
▪ The writing unit is character. Characters can be written
vertically or horizontally, from left to write, from right to
left, or from top to bottom
Ideograph 表意文字 Pictograph 象形文
字
▪ Non-phonetic: a character has no clue to its
pronunciation
▪ Ideographic or pictographic: characters are
derived from the pictures
 Tonal
▪ Chinese language is tonal （音调） .
Chinese character has four tones. The
same syllable, pronounced with different
tones, will become different words and
have different meanings.
mā má mǎ mà
妈 麻 马 骂
mother hemp horse to scold
▪ The total number of syllables is 432 if tones are not
taken into consideration.
▪ There are 1376 syllables if all tonal variation is taken
into account
 An interesting story written by Chao
Yuenren using one syllable
Shí shì shī shì shī shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī. Shì shí shí shì shì shì
shī. Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì. Shì shí, shì Shī shì shì shì. Shì shì shì
shí shī, shì shì shì, shǐ shì shí shī shì shì. Shì shí shì shí shī shū, shì shí
shì. Shí shì shì, shì shǐ shì shù shí shì. Shí shì shì, shì shǐ shì shí shì shí
shī. Shí shí, shǐ shì shì shí shī shī, shí shí shī. Shì shì shì shì.

石室诗士施氏﹐嗜狮﹐誓食十狮。氏时时适市视狮。十
时﹐适十狮适市。是时﹐适施氏适市。氏视是十狮﹐恃矢
势﹐使是十狮逝世。氏拾是十狮尸﹐适石室。石室湿﹐氏
使侍拭石室。石室拭﹐氏始试食是十狮。食时﹐始识是十
狮尸﹐实石狮尸。试释是事。 ( 赵元任《语言问题》商务
印书馆 1980. p.149)
 Translation of “SHI” story
The poet Mr. Shi who lived in a stone house liked to
eat lions. He swore that he would eat ten lions. He
went to the market often to look for lions. At ten
o’clock, it happened that ten lions were in the market.
At that time, Mr. Shi happened to arrive in the market
too. Mr. Shi looked at the ten lions and he shoot the
ten lions with arrows. He picked the dead bodies of the
ten lions and returned to his stone house. The stone
house was wet. He made the servant to clean the
room. After the room was cleaned, he began to try to
eat these ten lions. Only by the time of eating, he
found that these dead bodies of lions were actually
stone lions. Try to explain this story.
 Is it hard to learn Chinese?
▪ Yes, the writing system is difficult. Unlike most
languages, which use phonetic writing, Chinese is
composed of pictograms and semi-phonetic
ideograms. BUT….
▪ But these characters are not random pictures, but a
reasonably organized system of radicals and
phonetic elements that isn’t too hard to understand.
In addition, a learner really only needs to know
2000-3000 characters to have a reasonable degree
of fluency.
▪ E.g. 日 月 明
 Is it hard to learn Chinese?
▪ Yes, the tones is difficult, BUT….
▪ With respect to tones, while important,
they are not necessarily critical to
understanding. In actual fact, Chinese
people tend to use context more than tone
to understand what you are talking about
in any given sentence.
▪ E.g. 你 (nǐ) 好 (hǎo) 吗 (ma) ？
牙 (yá)

Is it hard to learn Chinese?

▪ No, Chinese has simpler grammar.
▪ Chinese does not use different verb and tenses
to express the concept of time.
e.g. eating, ate , eaten 吃 (chī)
▪ Chinese has no singular and plural nowns.
e.g. tooth, teeth 牙 (yá)
▪ Chinese has no Accusative or Nominative
cases. Such as ‘me’ and ‘I’ are the same
e.g. He cries. 他 (tā) 哭 (kū) 。 Its him. 是 (shì)
他 (tā)
 Is it hard to learn Chinese?
▪ No ， Chinesa has less morphological
Changes
▪ Verbs do not need to change to match the
subject. For example, the verb " 去 "
(go) in " 我去 " (I go) and " 他去 " (he
goes) is totally the same.
▪ The basic order of Chinese language is
"subject-verb-object" (SVO). For example,
we will say " 我坐車 " (I sit car), but not
" 我車坐 " (I car sit) and " 車坐我 " (car sit
I).
 Four principles of ChineseCharacter
Formation 四书

1. pictographic characters 象形字

（ 4% ）
2. Indicative characters 指事字
3. Associative characters 会意字
（ 14% ）
4. pictophonetic characters 形声字
（ 80% ）
 pictographs 象形字
▪ illustrating the shape of things

▪ 瓜 (guā)

▪ 鱼 (yú) 刀 (dāo)
 Indicative characters 指事字
▪ to form a new word by adding a symbol
to pictographs
▪ e.g. 母 (mǔ) （ mother ） : The
character is formed by adding two dots
in chest of a woman to indicate breasts.

Blade
刃
(rèn)
 Associative characters 会意字
▪ combine two pictographs to create a new
word with new meaning
▪ e.g. put a blade 刃 (rèn) on a heart 心
(xīn) is 忍 (rěn) endure
Pictographic-phonetic characters
形声字
▪ made up of two part: radical (semantic
element) and phonetic element
▪ e.g. in the character 想 the meaning of
think is suggested by heart 心 and the
pronunciation is nearly the same as
that of 相 .
 Chinese Pinyin
▪ Pinyin was developed in the 1950s to help
improve literacy rates in the newly founded
People's Republic of China.
▪ Pinyin is a system for romanizing (writing
using the Roman/Latin alphabet) the
sounds of the Chinese language.
▪ It is a tool used to learn the pronunciation of
Chinese.
▪ E.g. 你 (nǐ) 好 (hǎo) 吗 (ma) ？
 Simplification of Chinese Characters
▪ 1956, China simplified the Chinese characters
by reducing the number of strokes and forms
to encourage literacy.
▪ They are officially used in China, Malaysia, and
Singapore. But traditional Chinese characters
are officially used in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

▪
 Tutorial Topik 1
Sila beri jawapan ringkas di GC ：
▪1.Mengapa anda berminat untuk belajar
BC?
▪ 2.Sejauh mana anda mengetahui atau
menguasai BC?
▪ 3.Apakah harapan anda mengikuti kursus
ini?
▪ 4.Adakah pengenalan ringkas BC ini
menarik? Sila beri komen.