Chinese Character 汉字

A Chinese character, also known as a Han character, is a logogram used in writing Chinese (hanzi), Japanese (kanji), less frequently Korean (hanja), and formerly Vietnamese (hán t?), and other languages. To learn to write Chinese characters, you need to know what's the strokes and radicals of Chinese characters.

Strokes 笔划

Chinese characters are made out of simple single strokes, Each stroke of his own name and a few written rules. It is very important to learn to recognize them.

	横 heng	horizontal stroke (written from left to right)	yi (one)
	竖 shu	vertical stroke (written from top to bottom)	shi (ten)
	撇 pie	down stroke to the left (written from top right to bottom left)	ba (eight)
	捺 na	down stroke to the right (written from top left to bottom right)	ru (to enter)
	点 dian	dot (written from top to bottom right or left)	liu (six)
	提 ti	upward stroke (written from bottom left to top right)	ba (to grasp)
	横勾 henggou	horizontal stroke with a hook	zi (character)
	竖勾 shugou	vertical stroke with a hook	xiao (small)
	弯勾 wangou	bending stroke with a hook	gou (dog)
	斜勾 xiegou	slant stroke with a hook	wo (I, me)
	平勾 pinggou	level bending stroke with a hook	wang (to forget)
	竖折 shuzhe	vertical stroke with a horizontal turn to the right	yi (doctor, medicine)
	横折 hengzhe	horizontal stroke with a vertical turn	kou (mouth)
	竖弯勾shuwangou	vertical stroke combined with a level bending stroke with a hook	ye (also)
	撇点 piedian	down stroke to the left combined with a dot	nu (woman)
	竖折勾 shuzhezhegou	vertical stroke with a double turn and a hook	ma (horse)

Stroke order 笔顺

Writing characters in the correct order is essential for the character to look correct. Two basic rules are followed:

1. Top before bottom

2. Left before right

These rules conflict whenever one stroke is to the bottom and left of another. Several additional rules resolve many of these conflicts.

3. Left vertical stroke (usually) before top horizontal stroke

4. Bottom horizontal stroke last

5. Center stroke before wings

6. Horizontal strokes before intersecting vertical strokes

7. Left-falling strokes before right-falling srokes

A final rule can contradict the others:

8. Minor strokes (often) last

Despite these conflicts between rules most students quickly acquire a natural feel for the proper stroke order.

Component Order

Most Chinese characters are combinations of simpler, component characters. Usually the two parts are written at top and bottom

or left and right

so that the main two stroke order rules readily apply. Occasionally these rules also conflict with respect to components. When one component is at the bottom-left, and the other at the top-right, the top-right component is sometimes written first.

When there are several components, top components are written first.

These rules usually imply each component is written in its entirety before another component is written. Exceptions may arise when one component divides another,

encompasses another,

or the individual components are no longer discernible in modern writing.

The radicals 偏旁

Almost all of chinese characters contain a particular component called "radical" or "side" (偏旁 pianpang). These elements were once characters themselves. Chinese dictionaries contain more than 200 radicals, but you will easily memorize the most common ones. There're at least three advantages for learning the radicals.

There is no need to learn all the radicals first before learning characters. The best way to use the following table is to look up the meanings of radicals.