This is the lesson attached to the Chinese learning game Peace of Mind. Compare and match Chinese characters no matter what style they are written in. Play with 8 different styles including simplified and traditional characters! Play the FREE version of the game or join us and get the full version!
The Chinese script consists of over 40,000 signs although you need only a few thousand for everyday life.
Those signs are called characters and are either pictograms, ideograms, or signs that indicate sounds. You can also find phono-semantic compounds, which are combinations of pictograms/ideograms with sound indicators, contained in one character.
Contrary to popular belief, pictograms make up only a small portion of Chinese characters. Conversely, ideograms and phono-semantic compounds represent the largest group of characters in Chinese.
Each character is written inside an imaginary square, giving the script a very regular pattern. No extra spacing is required between words or group of words in order to maintain this perfectly regular pattern. Harmony and balance are important concepts in Chinese.
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Sentences are traditionally written in vertical columns starting at the top-right hand corner. This is why you read a Chinese novel from the «last page» and then backwards to the «first page.»
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Example
Nowadays, the familiar Western layout of horizontal rows from left to right (and from top to bottom) with indentation for paragraphs has become more popular.
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Example
There are numerous styles in which characters can be written. Like ancient Egyptian which evolved from hieroglyphs to hieratic and then to demotic (faster forms of the script), the Chinese characters evolved from detailed pictograms to abstract forms.
The very first characters were written in what is called the Oracle Bone style, which faithfully depicts the silhouette of objects or animals. The Oracle Bone Script has been so named because writing was mainly used for fortune-telling at first. A heated poker was applied to an animal bone to make it crack and the predictions inferred from the cracks were then carved into the bone.
The succeeding styles tend to favor greater abstraction. The Seal script is still in use today but only in the carving of artistic seals, hence the name.
the Semi-cursive Script is used for handwriting. The Regular Script is mostly used for printing purposes, and the Cursive Script or Grass Script is a purely artistic calligraphic style.
The Simplified Script was invented in the mid-1950s and is used only by the inhabitants of Mainland China. The simplification process affects just a handful of characters. It is possible to recognize a simplified character from its traditional form, but the reverse is less likely.
All Chinese characters are written using a few basic strokes. The strokes in the Chinese writing system have names and are to be written in the correct order.
It is this particular order that determines the shape of the character in cursive and stylistic styles, which is why it is IMPERATIVE that you learn the correct order of the strokes for each character.
