Chinese Characters

Chinese characters are one of the oldest writing systems in the world. They have been used for over 3,000 years. Each character stands for a word or part of a word. There are tens of thousands of Chinese characters. Kids in China learn thousands of them in school.

How Characters Work

Chinese characters are not like the letters in English. Instead of spelling sounds, each character shows a meaning. The character for 'tree' actually looks a little like a tree. The character for 'fire' looks like flames. Long ago, these characters were even more like pictures. Over time, they became simpler shapes.

Learning Chinese

To read a newspaper in Chinese, you need to know about 3,000 characters. To read books, you need even more. Chinese kids practice writing characters by hand every day. Each character must be drawn with strokes in the right order. Chinese characters are also used in Japan and Korea for some words.

Fun Facts

• There are more than 50,000 Chinese characters in total.
• The word for 'good' in Chinese is a woman and child together.
• Chinese is the most spoken first language in the world.

Did You Know?

A long time ago, Chinese was written from top to bottom and right to left. Today, most Chinese is written left to right, like English.