After the appearance of Chinese characters in the form of shell bone script, they continued to develop and have now formed approximately 90,000 characters. However, since the Han Dynasty, very few new characters have been added to the Chinese character dictionary. In contrast, English has approximately 600,000 defined words and continues to add 800-1000 new words each year. It is said that among the texts of various languages in the United Nations, Chinese text uses the fewest characters.
Why is it that only a few Chinese characters can express all meanings, while English requires tens of thousands of words? Why have Chinese doesn’t need to create new characters?
Some may say, "What about new Chinese vocabulary such as tanks, lasers, and the Internet? These are new words, but they are all made up of existing Chinese characters. What I am referring to are the smallest units of the Chinese language: the characters.
So how did Chinese characters manage to avoid the need for new characters? Let's take a look at the development of Chinese characters and the Chinese language.
The development of Chinese characters can be roughly divided into three stages: pictograms-象形字, ideograms – 会意字 (associative compounds), and phrases – 词组 (including idioms).
For example, the character for fire (pictogram) evolved into characters such as 火-flame, 焚-burn, and 灾- disaster (ideograms), and then into compound words like 火苗- flame, 火柴 - match, and 火车- train, as well as phrases like 炎热- hot, 焚烧- burn, and 水灾-flood (phrases composed of individual and combined characters).
Pictograms (which are similar to Indicative character - 指事字) generally represent objects with a specific shape, such as fire – 火 (which has a visible flame), mountains – 山, trees – 木, cars – 车, earth – 土, water – 水, horses – 马, and cows – 牛.
Ideograms (which are similar to phonograms and semantic-phonetic compounds) are made up of two or more pictograms and are used to express adjectives and verbs without shape. For example, the ideograms mentioned earlier, such as hot – 热, burn – 焚, and disaster – 灾, as well as many others like red – 红, good – 好, smell – 闻, open – 张, run – 驰, drunk – 醉, and dizzy – 晕.
The transition from pictograms to ideograms was the first leap in the development of Chinese characters, expanding them from being able to only represent concrete nouns with a specific shape to being able to represent verbs and adjectives without shape, greatly enriching their expressive ability. Ancient Chinese was composed of Chinese characters and was very concise and refined.
However, Chinese characters have too many homophones, which can easily cause misunderstandings in spoken language contexts. Furthermore, some things require very detailed distinctions, such as big horse/small horse, red cloth/blue cloth, planting melons/planting vegetables, etc. It is not feasible to create a new character for every meaning, which would be difficult and time-consuming. Thus, phrases were created: two or more characters combined to express complex meanings. Phrases with more than two characters also greatly reduce the misunderstandings caused by homophones. For example, the character for rat – 鼠might be heard as 数 - count，暑 - heat，蜀 (ancient state in Sichuan)，黍 - broomcorn millet，沭 – A river name，叔 – uncle，曙 - dawn, while the phrase for mouse – 老鼠immediately eliminates any misunderstandings. This also explains why phrases in vernacular Chinese far outnumber those in classical Chinese, as vernacular Chinese originates from spoken language and phrases can reduce misunderstandings in spoken language.
The entry of Chinese characters into phrase expression marks the second leap in the expression of Chinese characters. It enables Chinese characters to cover the vast majority of meanings and express even the smallest differences in a very precise way, such as deep red – 深红, light red – 浅红, dark red – 暗红, and so on.
The other advantage of phrases is that they can be assembled. When new things appear, people can assemble phrases based on their meaning to express them. For example, in ancient times, there were no trains. When trains appeared, people added the character for "vehicle"- 车 behind "fire" – 火 to create the new word "train" – 火车 without the need to create a new character specifically for "train." Lighters – 打火机did not exist in ancient times, but they can be assembled 打，火，机 into 打火机- "lighter" to express them. Modern new nouns are all formed by assembling existing Chinese characters into phrases to express them, such as computer – 计算机, refrigerator – 电冰箱, airplane – 飞机, satellite – 卫星, laser – 激光, email – 电邮, car – 汽车, cancer – 癌症, diabetes – 糖尿病, insulin – 胰岛素, insecticide – 杀虫剂, and so on. No matter what new thing it is, Chinese characters are sufficient to assemble new phrases to express it based on its meaning. English, on the other hand, has some combined words to express new things, such as Wash-machine, Super-market, High-way, etc. but it also has to create new words to express new stuffs, which results in the need for English to constantly expand its vocabulary, especially in the fields of medicine, chemistry, biology, and computer science. Chinese characters, on the other hand, are sufficient to assemble phrases by using the Chinese characters left by the ancestors.
How many pictographic independent characters are there in Chinese? There are about more than 400, and there are probably only dozens of indicative characters. Therefore, all Chinese characters are composed of these approximately 500 characters. First, about 90,000 associative and phonetic characters were formed, and then words were composed using them. By being unchanging and adapting to everything, they can fully cope with the constantly emerging new world.
This is the power and charm of Chinese characters. Our ancestors created pictographic characters for us, and characters are just pictures. They are the most interesting and easiest characters in the world. Then, by composing phrases, any needed meaning can be expressed by phrases, and new characters are basically unnecessary, keeping the total number of characters from increasing. In addition, Chinese grammar is very simple. There are no nominative case, accusative case, no verb tense in Chinese, and there is no effect of verb inflection on singular or plural, which is simple to the extreme.
Let us take an example. In English, the modal verb "be" group have "am," "is," "are," "was," "were," "will be," "have been," etc. However Chinese has only one word "是" (shi), which can mean "I am"- 我是， "you are"- 你是， "he is" – 他是， "we are" – 我们是， "it was" – 它过去是， "it is" – 它现在是， "it will be" – 它将是， and so on. Why don't we feel confused? Because we add an adverbial phrase, such as "I was there yesterday," "you will be there tomorrow," or "we will be there next week." English also adds adverbial phrases, but it changes the modal verb and tense, which is clearly a bit redundant. In Chinese, however, we only need to add adverbial phrases without changing the tense, making it very concise.
This design is so good that Chinese should have become the most interesting, simple, and easy language in the world. So, why has it become the most difficult and boring language to learn? Where did the problem occur?
First of all, we do not teach or study Chinese characters in their pictorial form. This means that we are giving up our strengths and abandoning our own martial arts, which results in only being able to memorize characters without truly understanding them. The harm of this disadvantage has not been recognized on the mainland and Taiwan because students there have not been greatly affected by this method of learning. Although memorizing characters by rote is not very effective, the Chinese language is reinforced constantly in the Chinese-speaking environment of the mainland and Taiwan through advertisements, TV shows, movies, slogans, novels, and magazines, so students are able to memorize the characters easily. However, the situation is different overseas, where there is not the same kind of consistent exposure to the Chinese language. Children who rely solely on rote memorization will struggle to learn Chinese characters. Even adults who were born in China but have been living abroad for a long time find that they are increasingly unable to write certain characters, and when they do manage to write them, they often doubt whether they have written them correctly.
Secondly, our Chinese language teaching begins with pinyin, and students quickly learn to say 你好！- hello, 谢谢你！ - thank you, and 再见！- goodbye. Parents are pleased, teachers are happy, and children feel proud. However, they soon encounter the problem of homophones in Chinese, which can make dictation an impossible task if the teacher doesn't limit the scope to the few characters that the students have just learned. For example, when dictating the character 写 - write, a child may hear it like 斜 – incline, 鞋 - shoe, 邪 – evil, 协 - help, 歇 – rest, 胁 – threat, etc. because the all pronounced Xie.
Students may be able to write within the limited scope of characters they know, but in reality, they will encounter Chinese characters without a specific scope, making it difficult for them to distinguish which character is which.
Not teaching Chinese characters in their pictorial form is akin to giving up one's strengths, and teaching Chinese language through pinyin from the beginning is only emphasizing its shortcomings. The only advantage left is the simplicity of Chinese grammar. However, since second-generation overseas Chinese are deeply influenced by English grammar, they may find it difficult to adapt to Chinese grammar, and this advantage is not so obvious.
Therefore, Chinese language education should focus on teaching single-body pictorial characters, making learning Chinese characters like learning to draw. This is "emphasizing our strengths," which are the pictorial characters of Chinese. Once you understand the meaning of each stroke, there is no problem with forgetting characters. Can anyone forget how to draw something they have learned? No. Once students have learned pictorial characters (which means understanding them, not just memorizing them), they can understand compound characters made up of these characters.
This approach avoids the problem of homophones because each character's strokes or drawings are unique, and there is no problem of multiple characters sharing the same sound. Of course, pronunciation should be learned, but once you have learned the characters and, more importantly, understood them, when you pronounce a character, the image of the character will come to mind, and you will be less likely to make mistakes. Once you have mastered Chinese characters, learning words and phrases will be a breeze. Only then can the advantages of Chinese pictorial characters be fully utilized, combined with the simplicity of Chinese grammar and words and phrases, making Chinese possibly the most unique, interesting, and easiest language to learn in the world.
Note: Update information
1, Amazing Chinese Characters blog has changed name to Learn Chinese with Pictography, and changed its URL address too, the new URL is
Learn Chinese with Pictography.blogspot.com/
2, Pictographic Chinese Calligraphy blog has changed name to Chinese Pictographic Calligraphy, and the new URL is
Chinese Pictographic Calligraphy.blogspot.com/
You are welcome to access the new sites for Chinese learning. Please update your bookmarks.
