Building blocks of Chinese – Chinese strokes
Is it difficult to learn Chinese?
Of course it is!! It takes an average Chinese student a good 13 years (6 years of Primary + 3 years of secondary + 4 years of high school) to learn it.
Wait…. Isn’t that the same for an English student to learn English?
Exactly. So learning any language properly is never an easy job. But why is Chinese “especially difficult” for English speakers?
Here are some facts:
- Chinese doesn’t use alphabets – so where do we start?
- Chinese write with Chinese strokes which must be rendered precisely, because the change of length of a stroke can mean completely different things!
- There are a lot of homophonic characters or even words in Chinese – how do we make out the meaning of what we hear?
- Chinese uses “radical” system, which contains more than 250 radicals – that’s A LOT more than 26 alphabets in English!
- Chinese do not conjugate their verbs – how do we express various tense?
- Chinese use a lot of Cheng-Yu (idioms) in their speech and writing – how do we learn all their historical meanings?
- There are very few instruction books written with the mind-set based on the Chinese language system
OK. Let us work at one thing at a time. While it is true that Chinese do not use alphabets, there are some basic elements that make up each character – Chinese STROKES. There are mainly 8 basic Chinese strokes (that’s a lot less than 26 alphabets!!):
點
橫
豎
撇
捺
提
折
勾
Diǎn
Héng
Shù
Piē
Nà
Tí
Zhé
Gōu
Dot
across, horizontal stroke
vertical stroke
left-slanting downward stroke
downwards-right concave stroke
tick, upwards stroke
bent stroke
hook
點 Diǎn
Dot
橫 Héng
across, horizontal stroke
豎 Shù
vertical stroke
撇 Piē
left-slanting downward stroke
捺 Nà
downwards-right concave stroke
提 Tí
tick, upwards stroke
折 Zhé
bent stroke
勾 Gōu
hook
Now let's practice
We have prepared some practice sheets for you, from each single stroke to putting them together in characters. Download the PDF and practice. There is a saying 字無百日功, which means that it will take at least 100 days for a student to see improvements at penmanship. We invite you to share your work on any of our social media platforms.
我們會經常為大家探討漢字和語文的課題。
要是你有特別的相關課題希望我們探討，歡迎您告訴我們。
We discuss Chinese language and culture related topics on a regular basis.
If you would like us to discuss certain topics about Chinese, please let us know.
更多教養支援 SUPPORT FOR YOU
很多家長都已是我們 Facebook 群組【講媽 · 講爸園地】 的成員。歡迎你也加入我們，一起互相鼓勵和支持，共同為孩子的學習而努力。
Many parents are already part of our Facebook Group. If you’d like to take advantage of the collective wisdom of your fellow parents, please join us.
We’d love to hear from you.
Sagebooks Hongkong promotes independent reading and life-long learning by nurturing the child’s confidence, autonomy and self-teaching abilities. Since 2006. Find out more About Us.
© 2020 Sagebooks Hongkong. All rights reserved.
Sagebooks Hongkong promotes independent reading and life-long learning by nurturing the child’s confidence, autonomy and self-teaching abilities. Since 2006. Find out more About Us.
© 2020 Sagebooks Hongkong. All rights reserved.
Sagebooks Hongkong promotes independent reading and life-long learning by nurturing the child’s confidence, autonomy and self-teaching abilities. Since 2006. Find out more About Us.
© 2020 Sagebooks Hongkong. All rights reserved.
