How Chinese characters were formed 1? 12 basic radicals/characters
I have been using picture representing Chinese characters (象形文字 Xiang xing wen zi）to teach my students. After the last couple of years’ teaching, I now can put them together with the method I have developed and I call it 象形图像识字法 Pictogram-Visual Chinese character learning method.
You will be be able to learn 150 Chinese characters within 5 hours if you follow my method.
Let’s start with 10minutes to learn 12 characters and have a look of the drawing I made.
It contains 12 ancient Chinese Characters. You can spend a couple of minutes to guess what they are. Lets see if you have got them right.
In the sky, we have sun, moon, cloud, rain and the flying bird.
This is a sun 日. We read it in pinyin: rì
This is a moon 月. We read it in pinyin: yuè
This is cloud 云. We read it in pinyin: yún
The ancient character of “云” resembled cloud in the air with cloud layer above and cloud cluster below.
It rains.
This is rain 雨. We read it in pinyin: yǔ
The original pictograph showed rain pouring down from clouds. The horizontal stroke indicates the clouds, and the seven short lines hanging down indicate the raindrops. Later, another horizontal stroke was added above, most probably to indicate the “sky”.
There is a bird flying in the sky as well.
This is flying 飞. We read it in pinyin: fēi
飞 looks like a bird bearing the extended meaning of “fly”.
On the ground, we have mountain, water, field, tree.
This is a mountain 山. We read it in pinyin: shān
This is water 水. We read it in pinyin: shuǐ
The original pictograph showed rain pouring down from clouds. The horizontal stroke indicates the clouds, and the seven short lines hanging down indicate the raindrops. Later, another horizontal stroke was added above, most probably to indicate the “sky”.
Chinese people grow rice in the rice field.
This is rice field 田. We read it in pinyin: tián
田 represents the checkerboard of rice paddy fields.
This is a tree 木. We read it in pinyin: mù
There are people living in the house.
This is a door 门. We read it in pinyin: mén
门 （門） door is a pictographic showing a set of double doors. The ancient Chinese doors usually have a solid doorframe which is joined together by several pieces of square timber. Nowadays, doors have turned from two-leaf doors to single-leaf ones.
This is a person 人. We read it in pinyin: rén
People use fire to cook.
This is fire 火. We read it in pinyin: huǒ
It is a pictographic representation of flames.
But most of my students like another explanation—-
It looks like a person with arms on either side, and yells: “Help, I am on fire!”
So we have learnt 12 basic Chinese characters. We call them radicals. Image the radicals are bricks, we use the radical bricks to build door, window frame, wall eventually a house. In my next post, I will show you how to start to build the house a bit by bit.