Chinese Characters

There is tremendous interest these days in Chinese characters. Chinese characters are useful in the study of both Chinese and Japanese. In addition to aiding in understanding these languages, Chinese characters provide tremendous insights into the culture that created them.

For most people, Chinese characters seem quite difficult to learn. A big reason for this is that students of Chinese and Japanese do not have a good method for understanding them.

The Chinese writing system is very different from the English writing system. Most students of Chinese or Japanese in their entire lives never come to realize the nature of the fundamental difference between English alphabetic writing and Chinese pictographic writing. Chinese characters are pictures, and as you learn to recognize the pictures within these pictographs, you will enter a whole new world of ability, understanding, and appreciation. It is tremendously easier to understand and recall characters when recognized as pictures than when memorized as a series of unrelated strokes of the pen.

In this section of the blog, I will offer insights into the Chinese culture, and I will introduce powerful techniques for understanding Chinese characters.

Hopefully, this will change your attitude about learning Chinese characters, and you will learn how to understand Chinese characters to a much deeper level than you considered possible.

I hope that this blog will enable you to develop a much greater appreciation of the Chinese language and culture, become much more motivated to learn about it, come to enjoy it much more, understand it much more deeply, retain your understanding much longer, and apply your growing ability with Chinese much more in daily life.