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Chinese Alphabet Concept
Is There Such A Thing?
There
are so many people on the Internet looking for Chinese Alphabet; we
received a lot of inquiries asking
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.

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