Enjoy Learning Chinese Characters: Discover their Hidden Meanings (HSK Level 1-3, Second Edition)

This is a new, highly visual, fun way - using pictures and jigsaw pieces - to learn written Chinese by learning the meaning of 235 characters that combine to form hundreds more. To say that characters are pictograms based on the shape of objects might make you think they must be memorized one by one. But as English has an alphabet, Chinese has about 300 basic and radical characters. Remember that you can combine these characters or use them to break down thousands of others so you can easily read, write and understand them. This book was written to help you understand the origin and usage of 235 Chinese characters. Now you can recall instead of memorize. By learning how these Chinese characters came to be, you can then also learn how adding a certain component changes the meaning.

Because Chinese characters are commonly known as pictograms, most Chinese learners wonder if they can possibly learn thousands of characters.Some give up altogether and choose to learn only Pinyin, the romanized form of Chinese characters and so their use of the language becomes very limited.However, considering that the people who devised the Chinese language and most of the people who write and speak it every day are not geniuses, we have found a shortcut, an easier way, that would help people appreciate and learn the Chinese characters. This book has been written to share that secret with you!Countries that still use Chinese characters in their vocabulary are China (including Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore), Korea and Japan. China, for obvious reasons, uses it most often. The simplified characters are used in China and Singapore, whereas Taiwan and Hong Kong use the original complicated characters. Japan uses a mix of both. Korea has her own alphabet Hangul, but up to 60% of the vocabulary has borrowed meaning from Chinese characters.Therefore, if you don’t know them, it is very hard for you to understand their true meanings. For these reasons, many researches on Chinese characters have been carried out mostly in China, Korea and Japan. We have taken into account the opinions of scholars from these three countries and shortlisted 3,500 characters, which outnumbers the 2,633 characters in the HSK Level 1-6 characters list. This book contains 1,160 characters that explain about the most frequently-used 856 characters including 623 characters in the HSK Level 1-3 list.Chinese characters are based on inscriptions found on bones and tortoise carapaces used in the 14th and 12th century B.C. centuries. In the 6th and 7th centuries, they were said to have been passed on to nations in the Korean peninsula at that time, and then passed on to Japan. All languages change with time and Chinese was no exception. The usage of Chinese characters in Korea and Japan retain the original form and meaning of when they were passed on, so it was very helpful to have the input of scholars from the three countries.This book is an attempt to compile the opinions of scholars from these three countries, and the authors’ personal interpretations of the inscriptions on bronze, bones and tortoise carapaces to explain the origin of the characters. The authors’ aim is to help our readers understand the characters, not to become scholars in their own right. But that does not mean this book is a pet project. It is intended to help readers further understand the meanings of allChinese characters.

Chinese characters are represented as pictograms which are based on the shape of objects. If you feel even slightly disheartened that you will have to memorize each one if them, then do not worry. Just as the English language learning system is based on alphabets (A, B, C, etc.) which are a set of characters that represent the phonemic structure of the language; similarly, Chinese language has about 250 basic and radical characters. Remember that you can combine these Chinese characters or break them in order to easily read, write and understand them. How must one learn the basic characters? This book is written to help you understand the origin and usage of each character. Now you can recall instead of memorize. To remember means to strengthen the synapses which connect your brain cells. Synapses can be strengthened by stimulating the five senses—smell, hearing, taste, vision and touch. When multiple senses are used together, the memory lasts longer. Better results can be achieved when such stimuli is coupled by unforced repetition. One good way of strengthening the synapses is to repeat the same stimulation. This book expands on the basic character by adding parts that give new meaning in a radical form. This means you are exposed to the same basic character multiple times. Learning that can be used immediately By learning how these Chinese characters came to be, you can also learn how adding a certain component changes the meaning. For example, the character "? [sè]" meaning 'color' depicts a person (?) on top of another person (?) in the act of sexual intercourse, which causes one to flush in excitement. Once you know that origin, you will be able to understand why "? [sè]" also means 'lust.'