Characters

Chinese writing system is different from that of the European languages. The words for European languages are composed by letters while Chinese words are composed by characters.
 

ri sun	yue moon	shan hill	shui water	huo fire	tu soil	ren person	kou mouth

Each character is an independent writing unit which is meaningful and it is composed by strokes.

Strokes

A character needs to be written stroke by stroke. A stroke is a one-time movement of your pen on the paper. When your pen touches paper, that begins a stroke. When your pen leaves paper, that ends a stroke.

There are some basic strokes with variations. The examples are as follows:
 

Stroke Order

There are rules of writing characters. Stroke order must be followed. The basic rules are:

1. Horizontal first, then vertical, e.g.

2. Left falling first, then right falling, e.g

3. Top first, then bottom, e.g.

4. Left first, then right, e.g.

5. Outside first, then inside, e.g.

6. Outside first, then inside. Close finally. e.g.

7. Central first, then both sides, e.g.

Components and Radicals

Some characters are simple and indepent, some complex or compound ones consist of several components.

Simple:
 

wo I, me	kou mouth	zi child	nü female	li strength

Compound:
 

ni you	ming bright	lü a surname	he river	dao to arrive

One way to search a character in dictionaries is to use radical index. Radicals are components of characters. Characters sharing the same component are classified in the same category. The components used to index characters are called radicals. The number of radicals in Chinese vary from dictionary to dictionary. But there are 240 commonly used radicals. More detailed knowledge about radicals and methods of searching characters will be introduced later. Click here to see some radicals and how to write.