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Chinese Primary Words- Open Sesame of Learning Chinese Language

Remembering new words is a very important but somewhat boring aspect of foreign language study, there is no exception in Chinese learning.

I choose Chinese poetry as the breakthrough point to help non-Chinese speakers to learn Chinese language and culture because it is based on the basic characteristics of Chinese primary words.

Since the Shang Dynasty (14 century B.C -11 century B. C.), Chinese people have created 91,251 characters. The biggest book of Chinese charactersChinese Ci Haihas 87,019 Chinese characters in it. Using these characters, people have created over 2 million words and phrases.

However, in the course of our ordinary life and work, we never need to use so many Chinese characters. According to the 2006 Zhongguo Yuyan Shenghuo Qingkuang BaogaoChinese Language Life Situation Report (2006) by the Ministry of Education of China in August 16, 2007, 9,231 characters and about 2 million words were in use in China as of 2006.
Of the 9,231 Chinese characters, 591 of them covered 80% of content, 958 of them covered 90% of content and 2,399 covered 99% of the whole of the content. Of the 2 million words and phrases, 12,207 were used in 2006. They were made of just 2,663 Chinese characters and they covered 90% of content.

Here we have two interesting numbers, 591 and 958. This means as long as a Chinese learner masters 591 or 958 Chinese characters, he can express or understand 80 or 90 percent of Chinese.

So, what kind of characters they are? They are just Chinese Primary Words. Most Chinese Primary Words are just single Chinese characters.

Chinese Primary Words have 3 main characteristics:

Universality: they were used by all Chinese speakers;
Stability: they have been used since they were created;
Prolificacy: they are the roots of new words.

There are not too many primary words in Chinese language, but they are the core of Chinese, therefore if we master the Chinese primary words we will have the key to open the door of the Chinese language.

Almost all Chinese primary words were invented in ancient China and Chinese classical poems were mainly written using Chinese primary words. Therefore, learning Chinese classical poetry is the best way to encounter Chinese primary words and to open the gate of Chinese language and culture.

With this in mind, I have been working on Chinese classical poems, I have translated them into English, created music for them, painted Chinese paintings for them and wrote articles on them, explained all of the Chinese characters in these classical poems one by one and made recordings of them.

What I wanted to do is to help you and other non-Chinese speakers to master the Chinese language by starting with Chinese primary words.

I really hope my effort will be of some help for you in learning Chinese culture and language.

If you have any questions or comments, you are welcome to contact me via www.ebridge.cn or write to shirley@ebridge.cn directly. I am looking forward to hearing from you.

Shirley Yiping Zhang
April, 2013