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In traditional etymology, Chinese characters are classified into six different methods of character composition and use these six categories are called the Liu Shu.
The Liu Shu categories are:
， (1)pictographs xiang xing;
， (2)ideographs ji shi;
， (3)compound ideographs hui yi;
， (4)compounds with both phonetic and meaning elements xing sheng;
， (5)characters which are assigned a new written form to better reflect a changed pronunciation quan qu; and
， (6)characters used to represent a homophone or near-homophone that are unrelated in meaning to the new word they represent jia jie.
There is a theoretical total of almost 50,000 written Chinese characters; only about 5,000 of these are frequently used. Among these 5,000, if you learn about 200 key words that are most often repeated in daily use, then you can say you know Chinese. Really learning to read and write Chinese is not nearly so formidable a task at all. |
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