Albeit simplified, at first glance it’s true that Chinese characters are very intimidating for beginners. However, just a few explanations will make you believe that learning Chinese writing and reading is not insurmountable. Besides, keep in mind that you can speak Chinese without knowing how to write it and write it without knowing how to pronounce it. Given this you can optimize your learning according to your objectives and needs.

In Taiwan, knowledge of about 4,000 characters is necessary for reading a newspaper, while in mainland China only 3,000 may be adequate as several hundreds characters were eliminated under character reform. In 1952 literacy for peasants was defined as knowledge of 1,500 characters and literacy for workers as knowledge of 2,000 characters. 500 to 1,000 is a good target for a beginner.
Here is a list of the 1,000 most frequent characters (if your browser can’t display Chinese characters, click here).

To start with, each and every Chinese character is made of a number of unique and identifiable strokes.
The chart below shows you the most common strokes, giving the name and direction in which each should be drawn. In the examples, they are colored red to help you pick them out.

Chinese characters are made up of components called radicals which in turn consist of the above basics strokes.
Radicals are the 214 in the simplified system around which the Chinese writing system is organized. Some of these elements can stand alone as individual characters; others function only when combined with additional character elements. Here they are:

After learning these components, the memorization work will be a whole lot easier as you just need to remember each character is an organized combination of radicals, not a succession of strokes - e.g. the character for mamma is made up of 2 radicals: (female) + (horse). So, if you first learn how to write radicals, then writing characters will be very easy and natural.

You can now jump to:

• Pronunciation
• Grammar

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