Chinese characters and their meanings. Chinese characters can be overwhelming at first glance. A bunch of squiggles and lines. It’s difficult to memorize them, let alone recognize them, when they look like some sort of secret code. When you start writing Chinese characters, you begin to see patterns within the characters that you wouldn’t normally notice just from looking at them. And once you memorize the stroke order for each Chinese character, you’ll be able to memorize
Chinese characters easier. If you don’t memorize the stroke order, it will be much harder to memorize. Don’t just read Chinese characters on your computer or smartphone and think they will be committed to memory. While this does help, writing Chinese characters helps much more. For example, take the character 好 (hǎo), which means “good” or “well.” The character is made up of two parts. The part on the left side of the character is a radical that means “woman.”
The part on the right side means “child.” It might be hard to remember this if you only saw the character one time. But if you practice writing this character several times, it will be easier to memorize. A big mistake people make when writing Chinese characters is that they don’t follow the correct stroke order. While you can still write the character correctly if you don’t follow the stroke order, it’s much harder to memorize. There is a reason there is a stroke order for each character.
It makes the character easier to write. When practicing writing Chinese characters, make sure to pay attention to the stroke order. Even with simple characters, write the character two or three times in the correct stroke order instead of writing it ten times incorrectly. It’s easy to incorporate writing Chinese characters into your daily study routine. Open a notebook and practice writing three Chinese characters you read the previous day. Look at the character for a minute or two, then try to write it. As you write the character, say the pinyin out loud and try to remember what it means.
This will help you commit the Chinese character to memory much better than just looking at it on your computer screen. It’s hard to memorize a Chinese character sometimes, no matter how many times you write it. If you’re having trouble, step back and try to analyze the character. Look at the different components that make up the character. If you don’t know what they are, look them up. Then practice writing the components. When you go back and practice the full character, you’ll find it’s easier to write. After a while, Chinese characters aren’t as difficult to read and memorize as they seem when you first start learning them.