If you have no experience reading or writing Chinese, characters can seem a
little intimidating.
To help demystify them for you, we're going to analyze written Chinese from
several angles:
By the end of this section, you'll probably understand Chinese characters well
enough to explain them at your next family reunion or cocktail party.
A common misconception is that all Chinese characters
are meant to look like the things they represent. In fact, only a small
percentage of characters are "pictograms," and many of those have
evolved over time to the point that they only slightly resemble their subjects.
Does this character really look like a moon to you?
Centuries ago, it was written like this:
