Picture Characters

Many of the most common Chinese characters started as drawings. Over three thousand years the drawings became brush strokes, but the pictures are still there if you know where to look. Tap a character, then the picture it came from. You will hear each character when you select it.

Why this works

A character carries its meaning in its shape, not in its sound. That is why speakers of different Chinese dialects — and, for centuries, scholars in Japan, Korea and Vietnam — could read the same text while pronouncing it in completely different ways. Once you know a few picture characters, you start to see them everywhere as building blocks:

• 木 tree → 林 woods → 森 forest
• 日 sun + 月 moon → 明 bright
• 人 person leaning on 木 a tree → 休 rest
• 口 mouth appears in many words for speaking, eating and drinking: 吃, 喝, 叫

Want the theory behind this? Read our essay Alongside English: Why Chinese May Become Humanity’s Second Language.

Play it again

Each round picks six of the twelve characters at random. Turn off the word hints for a harder round, and see if you can finish with no mistakes.