CHINESE
Chinese Characters
March 1975
Revised October 1975
DEFENSE LANGUAGE INSTITUTE
FOREIGN LANGUAGE CENTER
Preface
The purpose of Chinese Characters II and II is to provide you with a foundation in the written
language through the presentation of 600 carefully selected characters. The character
forms introduced are those being used today in the People's Republic of China, where
many of the traditional forms have been simplified to make the task of character
learning easier.
You will find the study of Chinese characters to be both fascinating and rewarding.
Learning to read one of the world's most "exotic" written languages will not only give
you a great sense of personal satisfaction, but will also provide you with an important
tool for vocabulary building.
As you learn some of the combinations in which a character recurs you will
gradually develop the ability to infer the meaning of new words containing that
character.
Additionally, learning these 600 characters will thoroughly acquaint you
with the basic principles of Chinese character structure which you need to know in order
to look up unfamiliar characters in a Chinese-English dictionary.
Thus, the characters that you learn will serve as the point of departure for
exercises in dictionary use. For this purpose, a character index system has been
provided at the end of this book. This particular indexing system is the one used in the
Chinese-English Dictionary of Modern Communist
Usage, which will be a standard reference for looking up characters both
here and in the field.
Lesson 1
Lesson 2
Lesson 3
Lesson 4
Lesson 5
Lesson 6
Lesson 7
Lesson 8
Lesson 9
Lesson 10
Lesson 11
Lesson 12
Lesson 13
Lesson 14
Lesson 15
Lesson 16
Lesson 17
Lesson 18
Lesson 19
Lesson 20