The Chinese Alphabet - Is There Such A Thing?
By: Rosie Wang
There are so many people on the Internet looking for Chinese Alphabet; we received a lot of inquiries asking about the Chinese alphabet, questions like “Can you publish the Chinese alphabet online?” or “Where can I find the Chinese alphabet?” etc.
You can stop your search now because there is no such thing as Chinese alphabet.
The English word “alphabet” comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet (alpha and beta) because it was the Greeks who adopted this writing system from the Middle East and spread it to the rest of Europe.
Every alphabet system consists of a rather small number ( 20 - 50 ) of letters that represent sound values used in spoken language.
Each of the letters of the alphabet represents a sound that generally has no particular meaning. Using the letters of the alphabet, one can write down the words of spoken language.
There are no letters in Chinese and therefore, there is no alphabet in Chinese writing.
The earlier form of characters developed from the graphic representation of certain objects, for example, the shape of a moon was used to write a moon.
As time went on, it became much more complex or even possible at all to represent words in graphic. The majority of the symbols today do not have a direct link between shape and meaning. What stays in common is that they all represent a concept and not a sound.
Chinese characters represent concepts, ideas or objects. Although there are some relationship between the structures of each symbol and its pronunciation, the symbols can’t be broken down into smaller components to construct a new word.
Rosie From Learn Chinese Language Online (http://www.chinese-online.info)