Nobody knows exactly how many Chinese characters there are, but the biggest Chinese dictionaries list about fifty thousand characters, even though most of them are only variants of other characters seen in very old texts. New pronunciation and meaning of cognate word Transformed cognates, zhuan zhu (转注), or characters that used to be different ways of writing other characters, but have later taken on a different meaning.口 mouth ( interjections and particles often have this radical) Yes-no question marker (word that ends the sentence of a yes-no question) The semantic radical 女 means female/woman/girl, since the word's meaning is related to the radical, and even though the meaning of the phonetic radical 馬 / 马 mǎ has little to do with the word's meaning, if any at all, it sounds similar to the word 媽 / 妈 mā,so it is used to help the reader remember the word's pronunciation. For example, the character 媽 / 妈 mā means mother, and the character is made of 2 radicals, 女 and 馬 / 马. Most Chinese characters are these kinds of characters. Semantic-phonetic compounds, xíng shēng (形声), are characters where at least one radical hints at the word's meaning and at least one radical hints at the word's pronunciation.Therefore, it is safe to say that these characters were chosen only because the pronunciation of each character sounds similar to the syllables of the English name of the country.
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.