How to build your vocabulary and learn radicals

Once you've learnt a few basic elements of characters you can start putting them together in different ways to make other characters and combining characters to make words like 人口(population). You'll need to work on learning the radicals. There is a complete list on Wikipedia:

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Index:Chinese_radical

Start with the easier ones with fewer strokes and gradually work your way through the list using the learning techniques I've outlined before. The radicals are used in Chinese dictionaries to index the characters in the dictionary. You'll need to learn how to count the number of strokes in a character for that.

How to Start Learning Chinese Characters

1. Start with easy characters that look like their meaning:

人[rén] person 口[kǒu] mouth 木[mù] tree

2. Then you can learn the multiple characters

从[cóng] from 众[zhòng] crowd 品[pǐn] article 森[sēn] wooded 林[lín] wood

3. Then learn combinations of the characters you have learned

人口[rénkǒu] population 森林[sēnlín] forest

4. Learn characters using combinations of the graphic elements you have learned.

杏 [xìng] apricot

5. As you learn new characters play games with them. Practice spotting them in texts and compare new characters with ones you already know. Look at the differences and similarities.

6. At first characters may seem difficult, but don't despair. As you learn more you will find that the graphic elements start to repeat or new characters will be similar to ones you already know. For example we can take the character 人and add a horizontal line through the middle to get 大[dà] meaning big. Imagine a man holding his arms out to demonstrate that something is big, like a fisherman explaining the enormous fish he has just caught.