It is true that at the beginning of the century the Chinese had about 50 or 60 thousand characters. Currently, there are 10 thousand of them, but you need to know as only 3,500 to read a Chinese newspaper.
Counted as specialists in the field, the Chinese characters arose thousands of years ago on pictograms that were recorded on bones and tortoise shells. They appeared simplified spellings of the environment and the perceived context. Some time later, the entries began to be in stone, metal and bronze. Later came the ideograms, which were divided into simple or complex, the former being those formed by a component or idea and the latter is formed by associations between them.
Today, in most Chinese words are compounds logofonicos, ie consist of a logo, a main idea of that word, and a root or stem of the same word.
In addition, the Chinese language has phonetic loans, ie words phonetically suited to adapt and lexical names or foreign to his own.
On the other hand, it also tones used when saying something or saying a word are important in the Chinese language as a language is it considered “melodic. ” Thus, we must take into account what people say, intonation, if you say something soft, or angry, if you utter a prayer or if you ask a question.
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