Chinese does not have an alphabet like English or Spanish. Instead, it is written with characters called hànzì (汉字).

Chinese characters can be classified according to several principles of formation and use. Here are the five most important types:

Pictographs

These characters began as simplified drawings of objects or visible things. Examples include 人 “person,” 日 “sun,” 月 “moon,” 水 “water,” and 木 “wood.” Some can also serve as components or radicals within more complex characters.

Simple Ideographs

They represent more abstract ideas through a simple visual symbol. Clear examples include 上 “up,” 下 “down,” and 中 “middle” or “center.”

Compound Ideographs

They combine two or more related components to suggest a new idea. A classic example is 明 “bright,” made up of 日 “sun” and 月 “moon.”

Phono-semantic Characters

They are especially important for understanding how modern Chinese writing works. One part usually provides a clue about meaning, while another gives a clue about pronunciation. For example, 妈 [mā] “mother” contains 女 [nǚ] “woman” as its semantic component and 马 [mǎ] “horse” as its phonetic component. The pronunciation clue may not match the modern pronunciation exactly, but it is often still very close.

Phonetic Loan Characters

In some cases, a character was used to write another word with a similar pronunciation. A traditional example is 來, which was originally associated with “wheat” but was borrowed to write the verb “to come.” Later, “wheat” came to be written as 麦 [mài] (麥 in traditional Chinese) to distinguish the two uses.

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