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 Chinese
Language --- I,
II, III
 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. |
