Pictograms (see How to help children learn Chinese characters? (Method 2))and ideograms are both the simplest Chinese characters. They are easy to understand and memorize. Many ideograms, combined with pictograms, act as bushous or radicals or components in complex characters, thus help understand the meanings and structures of complex characters (see How to help children learn Chinese characters? (Method 3)).
One category of such complex characters is ideogrammic compound. Translated literally as logical aggregates or associative compounds, ideogrammic compounds symbolically combine pictograms or ideograms to yield a composite meaning, which is then applied to a third character.
For instance, doubling the chracter mù, a pictogram for “tree”, produces lín “grove”, while tripling it produces sēn “forest”.
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Similarly, doubling the character rén, a pictogram for “person”, produces cong “small group”, while tripling it produces zhong “large group”.
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In the example below, by combining the meanings of the character shou, a pictogram for “hand”, and the character fen, an ideogram for “separate”, an ideogrammic compound bai is created, meaning “separate with hands”.
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Here is another example. The Chinese character rén and tu are both pictographs. By putting the two together, a new character zuo for “sit” is formed.
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Other commonly cited examples include the character xiū “rest”, composed of the pictograms rén “person” and mù “tree”,
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and the character hǎo “good”, composed of the pictograms nǚ “women” and zǐ “infant”.
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Approximately 13% of the total Chinese characters are ideogrammic compounds, making it the second largest category. Considering the close assocations among pictograms, ideograms and ideogrammic compounds, my forth advice would be children should use pictograms and ideograms as bases to understand and memorize ideogrammic compounds.
Related posts:
How to help children learn Chinese characters? (Method 1)
How to help children learn Chinese characters? (Method 2)
How to help children learn Chinese characters? (Method 3)
How to help children learn Chinese characters? (Method 4)
How to help children learn Chinese characters? (Method 5)
Bilingual Baby, From Lina, Second Year | Lina | 
May 21, 2010 3:39 pm | 
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