While the third character 大 dà, which has the meaning 'big/large/great', seems to describe Canada well, since it is a big country, the first two characters 加 jiā, meaning 'to add', and 拿 ná, meaning 'to take', have no obvious relation to Canada. Sometimes, a new character is made for the original word to not have any confusion between the different words.Ĭommon examples of words using phonetic characters are the names of countries, such as Canada, which is pronounced Jiānádà (加拿大) in Chinese. For example, someone writes the sentence, 'I'll see you tonight' as '⊙ L C U 2nite'. These are called rebuses, or pictures/letters/numbers/symbols that are used to represent a word with the same pronunciation.

Phonetic loan characters, jiǎ jiè (假借), or characters that borrow a radical from other characters because they sound similar, not because they have the same meaning.

Examples include:Ī sun 日 and a moon 月 next to each other, indicating that tomorrow happens after the sun and moon passesĪ woman 女 and a child 子 next to each other, indicating that a woman with a child is good

Complex ideograms, huì yì (会意), or characters that use more than one radical to represent more complex ideas or abstractions.

Like 大, but one line above, so the greatest of the greatĪ tree 木 with its roots showing undergroundĪ tree 木 with one extra line on the top, so the very top Examples include:Ī person 人 holding out his/her arms as wide as possible Simple ideograms, zhǐ shì (指事): characters that use one radical, to represent abstract nouns, such as ideas and abstractions.Same as 日, but in the shape of a crescentĪ horse with a head, a mane, a body, a tail, and 4 legsĪ creature with a head and a wing with feathers Pictographs, xiàng xÍng (象形): characters that use a simple picture, or one radical, that directly represent concrete nouns, like persons, places, and things.To better explain the different purposes and types of Chinese characters that exist, Chinese scholars have divided Chinese characters into six categories known as liushu (六书 / 六書), literally translated as the Six Books. While many radicals and characters show a word's meaning, some give hints of the word's pronunciation instead.

Today, very few modern Chinese characters are pure pictographs, but are a combination of two or more simple characters, also known as radicals.

Most earlier Chinese characters were pictographs, which are simple pictures used to mean some kind of thing or idea.

2 Chinese characters in other languagesĬhinese characters are a type of logogram, which are written symbols that represent words instead of sounds.

Free printable chinese characters