The Six Types of Chinese Characters

At first glance, Chinese characters can seem like a bunch of random and confusing symbols. But did you know there are actually six distinct types of Chinese characters which are formed and used according to a meticulous set of rules and methods? Read on to find out more.To get more news about china alphabet, you can visit shine news official website.

What are Chinese characters?
Chinese characters are logograms. This means that, instead of being written using the letters of an alphabet, logograms consist of characters or “pictures” that represent a word. Egyptian hieroglyphics are a good example of this.

Nowadays, the majority of the world’s languages have an alphabet system that’s used to write words. Chinese and other each Asian languages which make use of Chinese characters, such as Japanese and Korean, are the main languages that use logograms today.
Are all Chinese characters pictograms?
There is a widespread misconception that all Chinese characters are pictograms (also called "pictographs"), meaning that all characters look like the word or meaning that they are used to represent.

It’s common to see characters such as 木 (mù; wood or “tree”) and 山 (shān; mountain) used as examples to show the “easy” nature of Chinese character composition. This understanding of the language is sometimes used as a way to “sell” Chinese to new learners.

Introducing Chinese characters to beginners simply as pictograms is misleading, however. Although pictograms are fun and beginner-friendly, they only make up about 4% of all Chinese characters. In actuality, the formation of characters is incredibly complex. Pictograms represent just one relatively minor type of character out of a total of six different types.
Type 1: Pictograms (xiàngxíngzì)
(xiàngxíng) characters are pictograms. This method of forming Chinese characters is the easiest and most comprehensible form for beginners to learn. The characters are descriptive in nature and look like the object or phenomenon they represent.
Type 2: Phono-semantic characters (xíngshēngzì)
(xíngshēng) literally means to “form sound.” Over 80% of all Chinese characters are said to fall into the 形声 (xíngshēng) category.

Thus the vast majority of Chinese characters are phono-semantic compound characters. Phono-semantic simply means that generally both the pronunciation and the meaning of these types of characters can be inferred just by looking at them.
Type 3: Simple ideograms (zhǐshìzì)
(zhǐshì) can literally be translated as ‘pointing to matters.’ Characters that fall into this category are ideogramic characters. As their name suggests, they express an abstract idea in an iconic form, and are often regarded as “self explanatory characters.”
Type 4: Compound ideograms (huìyìzì)
(huìyì) characters are also quite self-explanatory. Usually, they are created by the combination of two or more pictograms or ideograms but they are more abstract.

characters “remedy” the limitations of using pictograms or simple ideograms to create characters. 会意 characters have a comparative advantage in that they can better express abstract meanings and provide a more robust method of creating new characters.
Type 5: Transfer characters (zhuǎnzhùzì)
(zhuǎnzhùzì) are characters with meanings influenced by other words. They are sometimes referred to as “mutually explanatory” characters.

In Chinese linguistics, transfer characters appear in three different styles: transference of character form , transference of character meaning (义转; yìzhuǎn), and transference of sound (音转; yīnzhuǎn).
Type 6: Loan characters (jiǎjièzì)
(jiǎjièzì) are 'borrowed” or “loan” characters. This term refers to a set of characters that were used to create other characters that sound the same or similar. In linguistics, these are referred to as homophonous or near-homophonous morphemes.

Although these phonetic borrowings created new characters, sometimes the original character’s meaning was completely discarded and a new character was created to convey its meaning.