LEARN CHINESE: WRITING CHINESE

Pictographic Characters

Based on the origin of Chinese characters, they have four main categories, the pictographic characters (象形字 ), the indicative characters (指事字 ), the associative characters (会意字 ) and pictophonetic characters (形声字 ). We will explain pictographic characters in this lesson.

Chinese characters have a history of over 3000 years, and the ancient characters are the pictographic characters, outlining the rough shape of things with simple lines. For example, to symbolize "人(person)", they used ""

Here we have some pictographic characters, can you match them with their today's versions?

1. a. 水 (shuǐ, means water)

2. b. 手 (shǒu, means hand)

3. c. 山 (shān, means mountain)

4. d. 月 (yuè, means moon)

5. e. 目 (mù, means eye)

6. f. 日 (rì, means sun)

7. g. 木 (mù, means wood)

From the examples above, we can easily see that pictographic characters are the single components (独体字) and they can only represent concrete things, but not things abstract in meaning or a part of a picture.

Answers to the question above:

1. ---> f. 日;
2. ---> g 木;
3. ---> e 目;
4. ---> c 山;
5. ---> a 水;
6. ---> d 月;
7. ---> b 手.

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