Tips that help you learn Chinese alphabets quickly

Chinese is a group of language varieties that form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages, spoken by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China. About 1.3 billion people (or approximately 16% of the world’s population) speak a variety of Chinese as their first language. 

When you learn Chinese, it can seem the most exotic and impenetrable of languages and that’s largely due to the Chinese alphabet. The Chinese writing system may appear to the uninitiated as both beautiful and mysterious in equal measure. Chinese writing is notoriously difficult to master. And if you’re thinking of taking up the language, you probably have many questions. To help, in this post, I’ll provide a broad introduction to the Chinese alphabet, explaining how it works, where it comes from and how you can learn it.

About Chinese Alphabets:

• The title of this post is actually slightly misleading because Chinese has no ‘alphabet’. Chinese doesn’t use letters, it uses characters.
• In Chinese, each character represents one syllable. And each has a distinct meaning. Some characters may be pronounced exactly the same way. But they’re written completely differently.
• For example, 不 and 步 are both pronounced bù, but you can’t replace one with the other. The first means ‘not’ while the second means ‘step’.
• One of the major differences between Chinese writing and a system based on an alphabet is that if you haven’t learnt a character, there’s no way of reading it. If you haven’t met a character before, you can’t tell its meaning or even know how to pronounce it.
• For example, if you know 木, you might guess that 林 has something to do with trees. But that doesn’t mean you know the precise meaning. And nor does it mean you know it’s pronounced lín.

What Is Pinyin?

• The pronunciation of the characters has been given next to them in Roman letters with some funny-looking accents. This is pinyin, and it will become a familiar friend as you take your first steps into the world of Chinese language learning.
• In Chinese, 拼音pīnyīn simply means ‘phonetic’, and it’s the official form of Romanisation in the People’s Republic of China. Pinyin allows you to write Chinese words phonetically. And those ‘accents’ are not accents at all – they’re tone marks telling you which of the four tones to use when reading a word.
• Chinese children learn pinyin to help them learn characters and correct pronunciation. And as a learner of Chinese, you will do the same before you even begin to look at characters.

Tip #1: Learn How Chinese Characters Fit Together

In modern Chinese, each character represents one mono-syllabic word or morpheme (unit of meaning).

They can also combine: the majority of words in modern Chinese are composed of two or more characters.

Some of the simpler characters are pictograms or simplified representations of real-world things.

Some oft-quoted examples are: 

• 木 (mù), which means “wood” and looks just like a little tree
• 口 (kǒu), “mouth.”

Tip # 2: Learn Pinyin

Hanyu Pinyin is a romanisation system developed for Mandarin in the 1950s, that represents the sound of each character.

Basically, it’s a way of writing Chinese using the Latin characters common to most Western European languages, so that you can read and pronounce words in Chinese before you’ve learned to understand Chinese characters.

Pinyin is phonetic, so once you’ve learned the system, it takes the guesswork out of pronunciation. Chinese children and second language learners both learn Pinyin as a stepping stone to learning Chinese characters.  

Tip #3: Tell Yourself Stories In Chinese

The wonderful thing about Chinese characters is that each one has a story to tell.

Since each radical carries its own meaning, using stories, or mnemonics can help you form connections and remember tricky characters.

Some of these are quite self-evident.

Tip #4. Repeat, Repeat, Repeat: The Right Way 

Repetition is an unavoidable part of making characters stick.

But you don’t have years to spend rote-learning characters as kids in Chinese elementary schools do: writing, reading, writing some more…

Learning to write Chinese characters is certainly important. When you’re starting out, writing forces you to consciously break down each character into its components. This enables you to actively produce and recognise them. 

Tip #5: Read Things You Care About In Chinese

Characters are the building blocks of language, and the more you use and encounter them in a meaningful context, the more they will stick. Learning in context is one of the best ways to learn Chinese characters.

This is no great revelation, but the key is motivating yourself to read in Mandarin even when it’s a challenge. So, find something you care about!

• If you’re starting out, this might mean finding a textbook or graded reader at your level with topics that engage you, or relatable characters  
• At intermediate or advanced levels, finding blogs, novels, stories or articles whose topics intrigue or excite you will make you more inclined to persevere.

Tip # 6: Get Social

Social connections are vital for improving your listening comprehension and spoken fluency.

But, nowadays a massive part of our social interaction happens in the digital sphere – which is useful for developing your reading and writing (well, typing) skills too.

Get Yourself Set Up On Chinese Social Media

• WeChat 微信 (wēixìn), which incorporates a chat function, a Facebook/Instagram type social feed, and more, is by far the most widespread Chinese social media app

Tip # 7: Keep Calm And Carry On

While there is no magic key to learn Chinese characters quickly, it certainly helps to be patient with yourself.

We all have moments of frustration. So it pays to focus on the progress you’ve made, rather than how much you still don’t know.

Language learning is a never-ending process, even for native speakers.

With the largest number of native speakers of any language in the world, knowing Chinese certainly opens a lot of doors.

Not only will learning Chinese characters take you on a fascinating journey through Chinese culture and history, it may even change the course of your life’s journey itself.

The only way to discover what’s on the other side is to open the door! 

Using the tips given in this post, you can learn Chinese characters in a way that works for you. And you can do it without spending hours copying them out or trying to memorise them all.

As you’ve learned, you can break down the characters to help you understand and remember them. Plus, you can use technology like spaced repetition flashcards, social media or even subtitles to help commit the Chinese characters to memory.

So time to get started!

All the best!!!