又 yòu again

This is an easy character to write and it's a very useful character. Then you can write another character 友 [yǒu] which means friend as in péngyou. There are a whole lot of characters incorporating this graphic element and I've plotted them on a character map. Contact me for more details. christophermccoll@yahoo.co.uk

山 mountain

Imagine a range of mountains with the one in the middle higher than the other two. Then we can combine this character with ones we've already learnt to make:

山口 shānkǒu=mountain pass

山林 shānlín=mountain forest

The logic and word order is often the same as in English.

Learning Strategies for Learning Chinese Characters

1. "Train your brain" to recognise:

- Common features.
- Small differences.
- Component elements.

e.g.温=氵+曰+皿

Methodologies:

1.1 Identifying a given graphic element within the overall appearance of characters. ("Graphic element recognition exercises")

1.2 Differentiating similar graphic elements. ("Graphic element differentiation exercises")

1.3 Differentiating similar characters. ("Similar character differentiation exercises")

2. Learn meanings of graphic elements (meaningful ones) e.g.氵=water (-Geographical water features (nouns)) ("Meaning-graphic correlation exercises")

3. Learn to identify phonetic elements of characters e.g. 召[zhào]>chao/shao/zhao etc. ("Graphic-phonetic correlation exercises")

4. Adopt a logical learning sequence, starting with simple characters and accumulating graphical knowledge, but at the same time paying attention to the relative frequency of use of characters.
e.g. Learn 日before 是

5. Learn graphically similar characters together.

e.g. Learn 力 and 九 together.