i am currently learning chinese mandarin, and i do not know how to write the language...
i can look at the letter A and know how to start it, but when i look at a chinese character, i dont even know how to start, WHERE do i even start? how am i suppose to know where it starts and ends???
H. M. C
Favorite Answer
It goes top to bottom and right to left [for traditional Chinese book page]. On the web, or more recent publication from Mainland China, it goes from left to right, top to bottom ..
Chinese characters are also made up from 'components' .. Give you an example .. 錢 is money. 金 is the leftmost component, which means gold. 戈 is the component on the right, one on top another, meaning weapons .. The typical fortune cookie writer would have jumped on this opportunity to say that Chinese is incredibly deep ... associating gold with wars .. Who knows .. but people love to exploit what they thought was there on the surface ..
Just think how a Chinese must feel when he/she first laid eyes on English .. man, how can we remember so many different words with so many combinations of the 26 alphabets .. It is endless, how can they remember the combination and not make a mistake ?
You see, we each have our crosses to bear ..
begnoche
There are customarily a minimum of a dozen methods to swiftly write Chinese on desktops. The slowest means, that is the simplest for westerners or individuals no longer expert in a quicker means, is to kind the romanization, after which to pick the right individual from a record of the ones with the equal pronunciation that pops up. There are a lot quicker methods, situated on such because the preliminary stroke of the individual, and many others.
Jennifer Zhu
I would, if I were you, follow the book and try to learn the characters as they are presented to you by your material. What you want to do is take each character and imprint it in your mind in a way that, simply by glancing on it, you are reminded of it's meaning.
Ideographic characters are different from Latin alphabet because each character portrays a meaning: you probably already knew this. But, that is the key to learning them deeply. Also, where possible, try not to focus on very similar characters too early. Yearn for contrast, and the subtle nuances will come later, once you're already more familiar with those characters at a glance.
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If what you want to know is how to write any single character, the usual rule is left to right and top to bottom and horizontal lines before vertical lines. (Note: There are exceptions of course.)
When you look at a chinese word, you will be able to see different components that make up the word. Apply the same principles to each component and you won't be too far from getting it right.
?
Oh, I have the same experience with you. But I don’t think it is so important to know the order of witting a character. As long as I can write the character, I think it is ok. It is just my personal idea.