Learn to read and write your first 100 Chinese characters
A new Mandarin course shows how 100 common characters are built and lets you practise writing each one.
What you can do now
- Learn characters in the order they are built: pictures, pointers, meaning plus meaning, meaning plus sound, and borrowed.
- See each character's radical and its parts, marked as meaning or sound, with the reason it was put together.
- Watch the stroke order, then write it yourself with your finger or mouse.
Why we made this change
Characters look random until you see their parts. Once you know that 好 is a woman and a child, and that 妈 borrows the sound of 马, new characters become guessable.