How to learn Chinese characters more efficiently? Chinese Character Structures

Chinese Character Structures

汉字结构：hàn zì jié gòu

Chinese characters may look like squiggly doodles or intricate shapes to you. You know they have meanings, but you know nothing about it. Even when you want to learn Chinese, you feel intimidated by their exotic, mysterious and complex forms and do not have the courage to dive in.

Well, Chinese characters are not random doodles; they in fact have structural patterns. Knowing the Chinese character structures and radicals can help you visualize the formation of the characters, hence, to make memorization much easier.

The structures of Chinese characters roughly can be divided into two different kinds, which are the single component (独体字: dú tǐ zì) and the compound (合体字: hé tǐ zì).

The single component refers to the characters that have only one complete and independent component, while the compound refers to those characters that have more than one component.

Most of the Chinese characters are made up of two or more components and the major structures of these characters are left-right structure, top-bottom structure and enclosed structure. Characters of left-right structure and top-bottom structure count for about 90% of all Chinese characters.

Here is a list of main Chinese character structures:

1. Single component (独体字: dú tǐ zì).

Characters only have one independent component. They have fewer strokes than characters with compound components; therefore, they are usually easier to write and to remember. Examples: 目,小.

2. Left-Right Structure (左右结构:zuǒ yòu jié gòu)

Formed by two components side by side, left and right. For example: 你，好.

3. Top-Bottom Structure (上下结构:shàng xià jié gòu)

Formed by two components, top and bottom. For example: 爸，雪.

4. Half-Enclosed Structure (半包围结构:bàn bāo wéi jié gòu)

Two or three sides of a character are enclosed. For example: 还，看，爬，左，同，凶， 风.

5. All-Enclosed Structure (全包围结构: quán bāo wéi jié gòu)

All four sides of a character are enclosed. For example: 国，围.

6. Left-Middle-Right Structure (左中右结构：zuǒ zhōng yòu jié gòu)

Three components with the formation of left, middle and right. For example: 做，谢.

7. Top-Middle-Bottom Structure (上中下结构：shàng zhōng xià jié gòu)

Three components with the formation of top, middle and bottom. For example: 菜，鼻.

Above are the common Chinese character structures, there are also some special structures, such as :

8. Character 品（pǐn) Structure （品字结构: pǐn zì jié gòu ）

Three equal component formation, for example: 品，磊，鑫（xīn），森（sēn），淼（miǎo），焱（yàn）

9. Inlay Structure (镶嵌结构:xiāng qiàn jié gòu)

For example: 果，爽，幽，坐.

In order to memorize Chinese characters efficiently, you also need to know strokes and radicals. I will talk about those in separate articles.

Is It Necessary to Learn Pinyin when Learning Chinese

Chinese is a non-phonetic language; the pronunciation of a Chinese character is not linked to its written form. Pinyin (拼音：pīnyīn) is the official phonetic system for transcribing the Mandarin pronunciations of Chinese characters into the Latin alphabet.

So, is it necessary to learn pinyin when learning Chinese? The answer is yes. Here are the reasons.

• It is a great tool to help you pronounce Chinese properly. Pinyin shows you the standard pronunciation of Chinese characters. It is the most reliable way of knowing the correct pronunciation; even native Chinese speakers may sometimes forget or mis-pronounce Chinese words.

• Pinyin enables you to figure out the pronunciation of a new Chinese word quickly. When you encounter a new word and you don’t have anyone around to teach you how to pronounce it, just read the correspondent pinyin, and you will know how to pronounce it.

• You can use pinyin as an input to type Chinese on a computer. Pinyin input is the most popular way, majority Chinese use it.

Caveat:

Because pinyin is similar to English, many native English speakers find it very comfortable just to read pinyin, and ignore the correspondent Chinese characters that pinyin is marked for.

At first, this may seem to be a good thing, because you can start to pronounce Chinese words very quickly. However, your eyes are usually looking at the pinyin instead of the Chinese characters, you don’t get visual exposure to the Chinese characters; therefore, you will not remember and recognize the Chinese characters. In the long run, being overly dependent on pinyin will hinder your Chinese character learning. Chinese characters, instead of pinyin, are the building blocks of Chinese literacy. It is far more practical and fast to read the actual Chinese words than pinyin.

So, use pinyin wisely. It is great to use pinyin when you learn new words. Once you read pinyin and know how to pronounce the words, move your eyes to the correspondent Chinese characters. Read the new words several times without looking at the pinyin, this will eventually wean you from pinyin.

I will write another post about tips of memorizing Chinese characters.

Now, please try to learn a couple of new words using pinyin:

dà niú

大牛           (big cow, big ox)

hǎo rén

好人                     (good person)

míng tiān

明天           (tomorrow)

Ma Ma Hu Hu 马马虎虎

马马虎虎 (pinyin: mǎ mǎ hǔ hǔ ) is an interesting Chinese idiom, word-for-word translation is horse horse tiger tiger. It is used to describe something that is neither outstanding nor terrible, fair to middling. Depending on the situation, it can mean not so bad (but not so great either); fair, just so-so, or just passable.

Tā de xī bān yá yǔ mǎ mǎ hǔ hǔ.

他的西班牙语马马虎虎。(His Spanish is okay.)

When you are asked whether you liked something (a movie, a restaurant, or a book), and if you felt just ‘okay’ about it, you could say 马马虎虎.

Examples:

Question:     Diàn yǐng hǎo kàn ma?

电影好看吗？（How was the movie?）

Answer:       Mǎ mǎ hǔ hǔ.

马马虎虎。 (Just so-so)

Sometimes, 马马虎虎（mǎ mǎ hǔ hǔ）can refer to careless, carelessly.

Example:

Tā zuò shì qíng mǎ mǎ hǔ hǔ, jīng cháng chū cuò.

他做事情马马虎虎，经常出错。

(He does work carelessly, often makes mistakes.)

马马虎虎 can also be used when you are trying to be modest. If someone praises you about being good at something, you may reply “马马虎虎, 马马虎虎.”

Example:

Praise: Nǐ de zhōng wén hǎo bàng a!

你的中文好棒啊！ (Your Chinese is so good!)

Reply: mǎ mǎ hǔ hǔ, mǎ mǎ hǔ hǔ

马马虎虎， 马马虎虎.   (Just so-so, just so-so.)

People will interpret it as you’re being modest, and they usually like a response like this.

*Chengyu (成语; pinyin: chéngyǔ,) are a type of traditional Chinese idiomatic expression, most of which consist of four characters. An idiom is a group of words that have a meaning not obviously made through the individual words. Although some chengyu are abstruse, many are interesting, even amusing, and are commonly used in spoken Chinese. If you could use a couple of chengyu when talking to your Chinese friends, they would be surely impressed!