The Logic Behind Chinese Words

Today let’s talk about the logic behind Chinese words!

If you’ve just started learning Chinese

and when you look at Chinese articles,

you might find it hard to tell

where one word ends and another begins.

Unlike English, where word boundaries are easy to spot

because of the spaces between them,

Chinese text doesn’t have these spaces.

So today,

let’s explore the characteristics of Chinese words

to help you understand the language better

to learn it faster!

Btw, I’ve created a handout

listing the important concepts from this video

with additional examples.

You can get it by joining my Patreon for free.

If you'd like to access exclusive podcasts,

daily learning resources,

feel free to explore the membership options in my Patreon.

Now let’s talk about the logic behind Chinese words.
Generally speaking, in Chinese, one syllable,

such as “bà,” “nǐ,” or “rén,”

can individually correspond

to one Chinese character (e.g., 爸, 你, 人)

Chinese characters are the basic units

in the Chinese writing system,

Unlike English, where written text is segmented into words,

Chinese written text is segmented into characters.

So, what’s the relationship

between Chinese characters and words?

That’s a good question! As previously mentioned,

in Chinese, syllables can individually

correspond to Chinese characters.

And a character is usually a morpheme,

which is the smallest unit that carries meaning.

Morphemes exist in every language,

like in English, “unlikely” has three morphemes

“un- + like + -ly”,

all three of them are smallest units

that carry meaning, so they’re morphemes.

In Chinese, many morphemes can stand alone as words,

such as “我 (I)”, “吃 (to eat)” and “不 (not)” etc.

These are all one-syllable words that carry specific meanings

and can be used independently in sentences.

我 I 不 not 吃 eat 水果 fruit - I don’t eat fruit.

So, there are quite a lot of one-syllable words in Chinese.

In fact, one-syllable words were the most common

in classical Chinese, meaning that in the past,

most Chinese words had only one syllable.

However, as time progressed,

more and more new things and concepts

needed to be expressed,

so Chinese started forming more words

by combining morphemes,

for example, 飛機, 飛 has the meaning of flying

and 機 has the meaning of machines,

these two morphemes are combined to express “airplane”,

a machines that can fly,

makes a lot of sense, right?

Here is another example, as society advanced,

more and more types of transportation appeared.

Many of their names were created by

combining the root word 車 (car; vehicle)

with other syllables, for example,

火車 (fire-vehicle) is “train”,

公車/公交車 (public-vehicle/public-transport-vehicle) is “bus”,

and 單車 (single-vehicle) is “bicycle”, etc.

You can see all these words are related to vehicles,

and they all have the root word 車 (car; vehicle).

So in Chinese, nowadays,

around 80% of common words are multi-syllable words,

most of them being two syllables,

and the remaining 20% of these common words are one syllable.

Now we know that

the majority of Chinese words are two-syllable words,

and many of them were created by combining two existing syllables

that have their own meanings.

So if you want to learn Chinese words faster,

having a general idea about the meaning of individual characters is important.

But how can I do this?

You can download an app called Pleco (*this is not a sponsorship).

When learning a Chinese word, for example, "年輕" (which means "youthful"),

you can type "年" into the app.

It will show all the meanings associated with this character,

such as "year," "age," and "period in one’s life."

This helps you understand that it is related to concepts like time or age.

Then, you can click on the "WORDS" section

to see other words that use this character.

The second character in "年輕" is "輕,"

which also has multiple meanings.

It conveys ideas like "light" or "small in number or degree."

With this understanding,

we can infer the meaning of "年輕" quite easily:

"年" relates to age,

and "輕" implies being small or light in number.

Together, "年輕" means youthful.

Just a heads up, not every word is easy to understand

by its individual character’s meaning.

However, understanding the general meanings of characters

will still benefit you in learning Chinese words.

Even as native Chinese speakers,

we have to learn the meanings of individual characters

and the words they form when we’re in school.

For example, this is a piece of learning material

for first-grade elementary school students in Taiwan.

You can see that they learn individual characters,

their meanings, and the words these characters are used in.

So the concept of 字 is very important in Chinese language learning.

Previously I mentioned that nowadays,

there are many two-syllable Chinese words,

and many of them are formed by combining two syllables

that have their own meanings.

However, there is also another way two-syllable words are formed,

which is by adding a prefix or a suffix,

for example, 桌子 (table), 鞋子 (shoes), 箱子 (box)

they’re all two-syllable words with a root word plus a suffix “子”.

By knowing common prefixes and suffixes in Chinese,

it can actually help you better understand the parts of speech of these words.

For example, Chinese words with the suffix -子 are normally nouns,

like we saw, 桌子 (table), 鞋子 (shoes) 箱子 (box)

Chinese words with prefix “可-” are often adjectives,

such as 可愛 (cute), 可怕 (scary; terrifying), 可笑 (ridiculous) etc.

Alright, now let’s do a quick recap on the logic behind Chinese words.

In Chinese, one syllable typically corresponds to one Chinese character.

Chinese characters are the basic units of the Chinese writing system.

Each character is usually a morpheme,

the smallest unit that carries meaning.

Some characters can stand alone as words,

accounting for about 20% of commonly used words in modern Chinese.

The other 80% are formed by combining syllables,

most of which are two-syllable words.

Often, each syllable has its own meaning, as in 飛機,

where "fly" plus "machine" expresses "airplane."

Some two-syllable words are formed

by adding prefixes or suffixes to root words,

like 桌子 (table + suffix “zi” = table).

Now that you understand the typical size of a Chinese word

and how a syllable is usually represented by a single character,

it becomes clear that focusing on

the general meaning or usage of individual characters

can greatly enhance your learning efficiency.

Alright, I hope you found today’s content interesting and useful.

If you'd like to understand today’s concepts better,

with key takeaways and more examples listed out,

don't forget to download the handout from my Patreon.

And if you'd like to improve your Chinese

with my exclusive learning content,

while supporting me to keep creating,

feel free to check out the membership options on my Patreon.

Last but not least, if you want to learn some daily Mandarin expressions,

check out my instagram @gracemandarin

那我們下次見囉！拜拜！
那我们下次见啰！拜拜！
(I’ll see you next time! Bye!)