Preface

With 5000 years of history and with billions of users, Chinese characters is one of the most ancient and one of the most widespread written language worldwide. Although difficult to learn, Chinese characters have infinite vitality. Some would complain that Chinese characters are the most difficult written language to master. It is indeed difficult to read, to write and to memorize.

Why is it difficult to learn Chinese characters? The reason lies in the essence of the Chinese characters: they are ideographs. Whereas many other writing systems are based on phonographs with a direct link between the shape and sound, where a word can roughly be spelled by the listening, Chinese characters cannot be spelled from their sound, as there is no direct link between the shape and the sound. This is the main difference between ideographs and phonographs. Writing systems transmit messages through shapes and forms. Written Chinese is a system where every character functions as the basic unit for the reading and writing and for that reason Chinese characters have to be studied one by one.

This book first addresses the one-component characters ordered by the descending number of strokes. It then moves to the multiple-component characters with respective study on their ideographic and phonetic components. It gives relevant vocabulary related to a specific character to help the reader to recognize and read it. Finally it gives short text samples to help the reader improve reading skills. The reader's knowledge is gradually built through learning vocabulary and by reading meaningful texts step by step. While the reader learns how to read and write, he shall also practice listening and speaking to improve at the same time all the language skills necessary to master Chinese.

The statistics provided by National Media Language Center show that 900 Chinese characters cover 92.10% of a daily conversation. This book selected the 900 highest frequency characters based on “The Graded Characters and Words” compiled by Hanban, plus 2245 sentences and expressions made up from these characters.

I believe that once the learner makes the effort to master these 900 characters, 2245 expressions and the texts provided, he will be able to master Chinese characters and improve Chinese reading and writing.

Dong Yuguo

Beijing Language and Culture University

June 2017