Free teaching tool
How it was made
The six ways a Chinese character is built, with real examples of each.
A pictograph traces the outline of a concrete thing until the drawing stiffens into standardized strokes. Over three thousand years the curves were straightened for the brush, so the picture is often hidden — but once you know the original image, the modern shape snaps back into focus. These characters are few in number but enormous in influence, because they became the building blocks (radicals) for the thousands of compound characters that followed.
Using it
- Method
- Switches between the six. Each shows characters built that way.
Characters are not arbitrary drawings. They were made by six describable methods — pictures, indicators, compounds, sound-and-sense pairs, and two kinds of borrowing — and once a learner can see which one they are looking at, a wall of characters turns into a system. Pick a method and the examples appear.
The six methods in fullOther tools
- Stroke orderWatch any character being written, one stroke at a time.
- Tone cardsThe four tones of one syllable, side by side, each with a word you can hear.
- Write itA 田字格 grid to write a character in, with the model behind it.
- Say itRecord a phrase and see the shape of your pitch against the model.
- MatchPair characters with their pinyin. Type your own list.