Chinese Characters and Words: How Chinese Writing Works

Chinese has no alphabet

English spells words with 26 letters that stand for sounds. Chinese is written with characters, and a character stands for a unit of meaning with its own syllable. There is no small set of letters to learn first; instead you learn characters one by one, and they start repeating sooner than you expect.

What looks like a Chinese alphabet in textbooks is pinyin: Latin letters that show how a word is pronounced, tones included. Pinyin is a learning and typing tool. Signs, books and messages in China are written in characters.

• 人

  rén

  person

• 山

  shān

  mountain

• 好

  hǎo

  good

What a character is

In most cases one character is one syllable and carries one piece of meaning: linguists call such a piece a morpheme. 学 is "study", 生 is "born, living". Together they make 学生, "student": someone living by study.

This is a rule of thumb, not a law. A few characters have more than one reading, and a few words use characters only for their sound, as you will see below.

• 学生

  xuésheng

  student

  学 study + 生 living.

• 电脑

  diànnǎo

  computer

  电 electric + 脑 brain.

• 火车

  huǒchē

  train

  火 fire + 车 vehicle: the steam train.

A character is not always a word

A Chinese word can have one, two, three or more characters. Many of the most common words in modern Mandarin have two. Chinese text puts no spaces between words, so part of reading is seeing where one word ends and the next begins.

Some characters almost never appear alone in everyday speech. 葡萄 means grape, but neither 葡 nor 萄 means anything useful on its own. Loanwords work the same way: 沙发 is "sofa", chosen for the sound.

• 葡萄

  pútao

  grape

• 沙发

  shāfā

  sofa

  Borrowed for its sound.

Two skills: knowing characters and knowing words

Knowing the characters 电 and 影 does not automatically tell you that 电影 means "film". Knowing the word 电影 by sound does not mean you can read it. That is why the HSK levels count words and characters separately: you build a vocabulary of words, and a set of characters you can read, and later write.

The good news is that the two skills feed each other. Once you know 电 from 电脑 and 电影, a new word like 电话 (telephone) is half familiar before you have even looked it up. See how each level counts words and characters on HSK levels explained.

• 电影

  diànyǐng

  film, movie

• 电话

  diànhuà

  telephone

How characters are built

Only a small number of characters are pictures of things, and most of those have become very stylised. The majority combine two kinds of parts: one that hints at the meaning and one that hints at the sound. The meaning part is often called the radical.

The sound hint is approximate and often keeps only part of the syllable, so it helps you remember rather than pronounce. The stroke order of every character is shown in our stroke order tool.

Common beginner mistakes

• Not: 我喜欢电。

  But: 我喜欢电影。 Wǒ xǐhuan diànyǐng.

  电 alone is electricity. To say you like films you need the whole word 电影.

• Not: 我有一个朋。

  But: 我有一个朋友。 Wǒ yǒu yí ge péngyou.

  朋 is only half of the word 朋友 and is not used alone for "friend".

• Learning characters in isolation for weeks before learning words: learn words, and notice the characters inside them.
• Relying only on pinyin: after the first weeks, read the characters and use pinyin as a check.
• Treating the sound part as exact: 河 hé does not sound like 可 kě, it only rhymes loosely.

Practice

1. Characters

   How many characters does the word 朋友 (friend) have?

   1. two
   2. one
   3. three
   Show the answer

   Answer: A, two.

   朋友 is one word written with two characters, 朋 and 友.

2. Meaning

   电 means electricity and 脑 means brain. What is 电脑?

   1. a computer
   2. a doctor
   3. a lamp
   Show the answer

   Answer: A, a computer.

   An electric brain: 电脑 is a computer.

3. Characters

   河 (hé) means river. Which part hints at the meaning?

   1. 氵, the water part on the left
   2. 可, the part on the right
   3. both parts equally
   Show the answer

   Answer: A, 氵, the water part on the left.

   氵 is the water radical. 可 (kě) hints at the sound.

4. Meaning

   What is pinyin?

   1. a way to write the pronunciation of Chinese in Latin letters
   2. the Chinese alphabet used for writing books
   3. a simplified kind of character
   Show the answer

   Answer: A, a way to write the pronunciation of Chinese in Latin letters.

   Pinyin shows sounds and tones. Chinese itself is written in characters.

Characters in the HSK levels

Reading characters comes first at HSK 1. Our level pages add optional writing practice from HSK 1 (a Mythic Mandarin method, not an official HSK requirement), and every character in the dictionary links to its stroke order.