Difference in Learning Chinese Writing and a Western Language

In the modern Chinese writing system, each character is a form of its own, representing a particular sound and at least one meaning.

Each Chinese symbol in other words is a unity of form, sound and meaning.

To learn chinese writing at Chinese school in shanghai, you need to know each Chinese symbol or character individually. To understand 90% of what you read you will need a vocabulary of at least 3,000 characters.

In the modern context a vocabulary of 4-5,000 characters allows you to understand almost everything written in Chinese. Most of them are ancient symbols and no longer in use although there are more than 60,000 characters listed in the largest Chinese dictionaries.

Out of Chinese characters- some 300, only a very small proportion perhaps- are simple representations of natural objects; all others are composite signs.

Two components are there in each sign generally: a phonetic component, which gives some idea of the pronunciation and a graphic component (which represent a man, woman, tree etc.).

Learning Chinese writing is quite different from learning a Western language.

To learn a Western language like English you need to know a whole series of sounds. It would lose its meaning altogether if you take an English word apart, separating it into its many phonetic syllables.

It is not a simple case of da "big" plus xue "school" although the meaning of da xue has to do with da and xue. It does not mean "big school".

If you were to take the English word "university" and based on the meanings of the five syllabic components u/ni/ver/sit/ty you try to figure out its meaning, you would not understand anything because they mean nothing.

So, in learning Chinese writing in Chinese schools shanghai the Chinese character forms the basis whereas for learning a Western language the word or sentence forms the basis.

In English it is the word which serves the same purpose whereas in Chinese writing, the symbol is the unit carrier of meaning.

Chinese characters appeal to the eye and are essentially pictures. Western letters and words in comparison are based on sound rather than sight.