象形字解析

一、人This is a great building block to learn because it’s just so easy to recognise, even when surrounded by other characters. In ancient Chinese writing, this character resembled the profile of a walking person. With a little Chineasy magic, you can easily see how the curved strokes represent a person’s legs. 人simply means “person”, so you’ll come across it in phrases and compounds related to individuals and groups of people. Also, you’ll frequently see 人in component form, which looks like this: 亻.

Pinyin: 人ren2

二、口is one of the first Chinese characters a student will learn. Not only is it extremely easy to write and remember, it’s a very common building block; learning 口early is a great investment for any student of Chinese!

One thing to remember when using this building block is that there is a nearly identical character that means “surround”. 口(surround: wei2) is typically larger than 口(mouth) and can’t be used by itself. For example, 回(to return: hui2) has a 口(mouth) in the middle, and a 口(surround) around it. If you see 口standing all alone, it’s definitely a “mouth”.

Pinyin:口kou3

三、木This common building block character originally represented a tree (obviously!) with both branches and roots. In the modern form of the character that you see here, the roots look just like low-hanging branches, so feel free to remember them this way!

As a building block, 木is featured in a lot of compounds. Typically, if you see 木, you know you’re reading something about nature or wood!

Also, just like in English, trees can have connotations of stupidity or dullness; an easy way to remember this alternative meaning is to remember the insults: “as thick as two planks [of wood]”and “block head”.

Pinyin: 木mu4

四、火This building block looks like a person waving both arms, as if she or he were frantically yelling: “Help, help, I’m on fire!”. Originally, 火was just a pictogram in the shape of a flame, but I like to think of a person on fire instead! Everyone’s brain is a little different, so feel free to focus on whatever image best helps you remember the character! Pinyin: 火huo3

五、門This building block character originally represented a gate in ancient Chinese writing. The modern form of the character looks an awful lot like a pair of saloon doors from the Wild West! At least that’s how I remember it.

Because 門is such a common building block, you should definitely spend some quality time to practice writing it. We occasionally see a smaller component character placed inside of it like this: 間(jian1).

Pinyin: 門men2

六、大If a person stretched their arms wide, this person is saying, ‘it was this big’. 大This compound is a great one to learn. It’s pretty easy to recognize, and is very common. Originally, this character represented a person with its arms spread wide. You can imagine a person saying “this big…”and demonstrating with a gesture!

Pinyin: 大da4

七、日The current version of this ancient building block is quite interesting. It looks just like a window, which is quite handy for us learning Chinese, but why doesn’t this character look like a sun? I mean, it’s not especially hard to draw a sun, right? Well, it used to look a lot more like that burning star in the sky, but the Chinese language has been evolving for thousands of years and most characters have changed a lot. It’s just like “old English”, “middle English”, and “modern English”. The oldest form of Chinese that

we’ve found is the oracle bone script from c. 1400BCE. Back in those days, the character for sun was a circle with a dot in the middle. It looked much more like a sun than the current character! Over time, however, the character became more and more rectangular along with many other characters. Eventually, the dot in the centre became the horizontal line we see in the middle today and the circle became a rectangle. Cool, right?

Pinyin: 日ri4

八、山This is a ‘mountain’.

九、一

词的延伸

一、从‘A person’, If someone walk behind, that is ‘to follow’.

二、众A the old saying goes, two is company, three is a crowd.

三、囚The person inside the mouth, the person is trapped. He’s prisoner, just like Jonah inside the whale. Pinyin: 囚qiu2

四、呆This character combines the building blocks 口(mouth) and 木(tree). Just think about it, a talking tree would be pretty idiotic!

The original form of this compound depicted a child; you can still imagine 口as the head and 木as the body. This character's definition comes from the simple-mindedness of a child, so it can also translate to English words like “foolish”, “stupid”, and “boring”. Pinyin: 呆dai1

五、本This compound features the building block 木(tree), with the addition so a short horizontal stroke near the bottom. This lower stroke is what really tells us the meaning of the character. At the bottom of a tree are its roots, so we can call those roots a tree’s foundation. In addition to being defined as “foundation”, 本can also mean “origin”.

Pinyin:本ben3

六、林Have you already seen the compound 屾, which means “two mountains”? This compound has the same structure; we take the character 木(tree:mu4) and double it up like this: 林(lin2). Take note that its definition is “woods”or “forest”, and NOT “two trees”.

In Chinese, it’s very common to see sounds or character doubled up. Sometimes, many copies of the same character can be used in a compound. For example, take a look at this gnarly character: (sha1)!

Pinyin: 林lin2

七、森This character contains three of our tree building blocks all squished together. It’s structure is actually very similar to the character 焱(yan2), which means “flame”. Like western culture, the forest is sometimes associated with darkness in Chinese, so we can find this compound in phrases that mean things like “gloomy”, “eerie”, and “dark”.

I think forests are generally lovely places for adventures, but perhaps this wasn’t the case in ancient times!

Pinyin: 森sen1

八、焚This compound contains the building block characters 木(tree) and 火(fire). When we put two trees together, we get a forest or “woods”(林). Wood is a great fuel to use for fires, so it’s easy to remember that a forest (林) on fire (火) is burning (焚) Pinyin: 焚fen2

九、炎This compound uses two copies of the same building block to add emphasis. By itself, 火means “fire”. When we stack two fires together, it starts getting really hot! You can see the compound 炎used in the field of medicine as well; in that context it means

“inflammation”.

By the way, using multiple copies of a building block as components in a compound character is something you’ll certainly see again! There are many compounds with a similar structure to this one.

Pinyin: 炎yan2

十、焱One 火character all by itself means “fire”. Two stacked together looks like this: 炎, and means “burning hot”. With three 火characters we go from “very hot”to “on fire”! You will see 焱again in some phrases that translate to words like “blaze”, “raging flame”, “fireworks”, etc.

Don’t forget that even though the characters we just looked at all use the same building block, their pronunciations are completely different! 焱is pronounced like this: yan4 Pinyin: 焱yan4

十一、闩A door, put a plank inside the door, it’s a door bolt,

十二、问put a mouth inside the door, asking questions. Knock, knock. Is anyone home? This person is sneaking out of a door, escaping, evading.

十三、闪This compound character features the building blocks 人(person) and 門(door). This phrase can translate to “to dodge”, “to duck”, “to avoid”, “to evade”, etc. It also means “to flash”.

You can remember this compound by imagining an outlaw dodging arrest by bolting through the saloon doors!

Pinyin: 閃shan3

十四、出This compound contains two copies of the building block character 山(mountain). Usually, when we double down on a character, it adds emphasis. In this case, 出implies a far distance, more than one mountain away. In ancient China, political

opponents of the Emperor were often exiled, and this compound represents that distant place they were banished to. In modern Chinese, the compound means “to get out”or “exit”.

Pinyin: 出chu1

十五、十六昌、晶For us, the sun is the source of prosperity. Two suns together, prosperous. Three together ,that’s sparkles.

白、旦

词组：

一、人口Whenever we start talking about population, we begin to think about the resources needed to sustain it, especially how much food is required and where it will come from. This phrase combines the building blocks 人(person) and 口(mouth), which represents the way we think about population as mouths to feed.

Pinyin: 人ren2; 口kou3

二、大人Big (大) + Person (人) = Adult (大人)

The modern meaning of ‘big–size person’is adult.

In ancient times, ‘大人’was the term used by citizens to describe their local authorities. Historically the local or provincial authorities had incredible power over ordinary people (making a wonderful environment for corruption). In order to express their humility (mainly for the sake of avoiding trouble), citizens called those who were in power ‘big person’(大人) to demonstrate their own inferior place in the social hierarchy.

Pinyin: 大da4; 人ren2

三、大火Do you remember 'big' (大)? (A person stretches his arms wide saying: 'It was THIS big!'). I'm sure you recognise the character meaning ‘fire’(火) by now too.

Big + Fire = BIG Fire! Easy! Easy!

Pinyin: 大da4 ; 火huo3

四、大門This phrase contains the compound 大(big), and the building block 門(door). Traditionally, the front door of a house is built to be impressive and useful, so it’s usually big! The literal definition of this phrase is “big door”, which we can translate to “front door”.

Big (大) + Door (門) = Front door (大門)

Pinyin: 大da4; 門men2

五、日本In English, we sometimes call Japan the “land of the rising sun”. The Chinese phrase you see here is the common name for Japan, and is actually very similar to the English phrase.

The first character in this phrase is the building block 日(sun), and the second is the compound 本(foundation, origin). These two characters represent the sun’s origin, which is where it rises in the east. What country lies to the east of China? Why, Japan, of course!

This phrase is an abbreviation of 日本国(ri4 ben3 guo2).

Pinyin: 日ri4; 本ben3

六、日本人In English, if we want to create a proper noun that indicates someone’s nationality, we need to add a suffix like -ese or -an. For example: person from America = American. In Chinese, it’s much easier to create these nationalistic nouns. All we need to do is add the building block 人(person).

This phrase means “a Japanese person”, and contains the compounds 日(day) and 本(foundation, origin), which creates the phrase 日本(Japan). Then, we add the building block 人(person) on the end.

Pinyin: 日ri4; 本ben3; 人ren2

七、火山“Fire Mountain”sounds like a dangerous video game level, but actually it’s just the literal translation of this phrase’s building blocks: 火(fire) and 山(mountain). Sometimes I’m a little worried about the fact that the ground beneath my feet is part of a constantly moving set of tectonic plates resting on a bed of magma, which is constantly looking for a way to escape to the surface! Yikes!

Pinyin: 火huo3; 山shan1

八、火山口Each character in this phrase contributes to a part of the definition, which makes it very easy for you to learn! If we break it down, we can see that 火(fire), 山(mountain) and 口(mouth) combine to literally mean “fire mountain’s mouth”, or “mouth of the fire mountain”. 火山means volcano, and the mouth of the volcano is the crater at the top of the mountain where lava erupts! So, it’s very logical that the phrase 火山口translates to the English word “crater”. Note that this only refers to volcanic craters, and not craters made from asteroids or other objects.

Pinyin: 火huo3; 山shan1; 口kou3

九、出口This phrase contains the compound 出(to get out) and the building block 口(mouth). You can imagine someone telling you to get out!

If you travel to China or Taiwan, you’ll see this phrase everywhere; it’s used in public areas to show people where the exit is. Often you’ll even see it accompanied with an English translation: “exit”.

Pinyin: 出chu1; 口kou3