3 ms·

Um, no. If you're talking about radicals (of which there are generally considered to be 214), yes, but you can't read / write in general if you only know those.

by vitus 2y ago

Um, no. If you're talking about radicals (of which there are generally considered to be 214), yes, but you can't read / write in general if you only know those. Also, of those 214, a good chunk aren't standalone words. You're never going to see 疒 or 丶 by itself. You won't have the words for "I" or "you". You might be able to read "melon" but not "fruit". You could read "papaya" and "corn" but not "vegetable". You could read "beef" or "lamb" but not "chicken". You could read "small" but not "few". You wouldn't be able to read "hello" or "goodbye", "happy" or "sad". But you'd be able to count 1, 2, 8, 10, 11, 12, 18, 20...

duskwuff 2y ago
The fact that characters are made up of radicals does make them easier to learn, though. There are ~2000 characters in the core vocabulary, sure - but it's not like you have to learn to write every one of them individually, just like you don't have to learn the spelling of every English word from scratch. There's common patterns.
otabdeveloper4 2y ago
The vast majority of Chinese characters are phonetic compounds, not ideograms. There are only a few hundred ideograms.
- vitus 2y ago
  That's understating the actual number of distinct components you need to know, but even so, just memorizing the individual ideograms still isn't enough to allow you to read Chinese with meaningful fluency. Since the sound changes that had taken place over the two to three thousand years since the Old Chinese period have been extensive, in some instances, the phono-semantic natures of some compound characters have been obliterated, with the phonetic component providing no useful phonetic information at all in the modern language. For instance, 逾 (yú; /y³⁵/; 'exceed'), 輸 (shū; /ʂu⁵⁵/; 'lose', 'donate'), 偷 (tōu; /tʰoʊ̯⁵⁵/; 'steal', 'get by') share the phonetic 俞 (yú; /y³⁵/; 'agree') but their pronunciations bear no resemblance to each other in Standard Chinese or any other variety. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classification#Phono-semantic_compounds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classificati... Or, consider 亭 (ting2), 叮 (ding1), 成 (cheng2), 打 (da3) which all supposedly derive their sound from 丁 (ding1) per the analysis at https://github.com/cjkvi/cjkvi-ids/ https://github.com/cjkvi/cjkvi-ids/. You can't just memorize the components and read all of these as "ding". And beyond that, that doesn't help with being able to write. You can't just say "oh, I don't remember exactly how to write this word, but I'm just going to throw in some ideograph with the right phonetic component next to the radical and my reader will just know what I mean." You can't just take 瓦 (pottery) + 平 (ping2) to invent the word for vase. 瓶 (ping2) instead uses 并 (bing1), not to be confused with 井 (jing3).
DiogenesKynikos 2y ago
Learning the radicals is maybe the first 10% of the effort in learning how to read and write Chinese. After that, you still have to learn how to combine the radicals in pretty much arbitrary ways to form several thousand characters. The way you combine them is sometimes related to the sound and/or meaning of the radicals, but it's not systematic at all. The grandparent comment is massively downplaying the difficulty involved in learning to read and write Chinese.

by vitus 2y ago

duskwuff 2y ago

The fact that characters are made up of radicals does make them easier to learn, though. There are ~2000 characters in the core vocabulary, sure - but it's not like you have to learn to write every one of them individually, just like you don't have to learn the spelling of every English word from scratch. There's common patterns.

otabdeveloper4 2y ago

The vast majority of Chinese characters are phonetic compounds, not ideograms. There are only a few hundred ideograms.

vitus 2y ago
That's understating the actual number of distinct components you need to know, but even so, just memorizing the individual ideograms still isn't enough to allow you to read Chinese with meaningful fluency. Since the sound changes that had taken place over the two to three thousand years since the Old Chinese period have been extensive, in some instances, the phono-semantic natures of some compound characters have been obliterated, with the phonetic component providing no useful phonetic information at all in the modern language. For instance, 逾 (yú; /y³⁵/; 'exceed'), 輸 (shū; /ʂu⁵⁵/; 'lose', 'donate'), 偷 (tōu; /tʰoʊ̯⁵⁵/; 'steal', 'get by') share the phonetic 俞 (yú; /y³⁵/; 'agree') but their pronunciations bear no resemblance to each other in Standard Chinese or any other variety. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classification#Phono-semantic_compounds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_classificati... Or, consider 亭 (ting2), 叮 (ding1), 成 (cheng2), 打 (da3) which all supposedly derive their sound from 丁 (ding1) per the analysis at https://github.com/cjkvi/cjkvi-ids/ https://github.com/cjkvi/cjkvi-ids/. You can't just memorize the components and read all of these as "ding". And beyond that, that doesn't help with being able to write. You can't just say "oh, I don't remember exactly how to write this word, but I'm just going to throw in some ideograph with the right phonetic component next to the radical and my reader will just know what I mean." You can't just take 瓦 (pottery) + 平 (ping2) to invent the word for vase. 瓶 (ping2) instead uses 并 (bing1), not to be confused with 井 (jing3).

DiogenesKynikos 2y ago

Learning the radicals is maybe the first 10% of the effort in learning how to read and write Chinese. After that, you still have to learn how to combine the radicals in pretty much arbitrary ways to form several thousand characters. The way you combine them is sometimes related to the sound and/or meaning of the radicals, but it's not systematic at all. The grandparent comment is massively downplaying the difficulty involved in learning to read and write Chinese.