Instead, Chinese differs from most other writing systems in the world in that it has both semantic and phonetic components in each character. That means that part of the character tells you how to say it, and the other part tells you what it means. Going back to the character "mother" 媽 mā, the semantic component comes from the component on the left side: 女 Nǚ "Female". The phonetic component comes from the right side: 馬 Mǎ “Horse”. These two components also stand alone as their own characters. If I didn't know the character 媽 but I knew from speaking experience that ”Mā“ meant "Mother", I could look at this character and guess that it meant "Mother" because the "Horse" component told me that the character would be read as "Ma", and the "Female“ component told me that the character referred to women. I can put it all together and assume that the character is referring to "Mother”. I hope you came away with some better insights about the Chinese language and writing system! I'm currently at the midway point of my semester now. Time flies by fast! Only another two months from this date and I will be flying back home. Can't wait to see what comes next!
