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How to Learn to Read Ancient Chinese Writing Today

Learning to read ancient Chinese writing is something that all Chinese learners must tackle at some point in their studies. After all, not everyone is blessed with the talent of being able to read and understand Chinese characters effortlessly. Fortunately, with a little bit of patience and practice, even those who are not born to read can learn to do so efficiently and with little effort. In this article, we will discuss 5 tips on how to learn to read ancient Chinese writing today so that you can better understand what your teachers are trying to teach you!

1. Learn to Say The Letters Correctly

As we have discussed, learning to read ancient Chinese characters is a tricky business. To make things even more complicated, there are variations in how individual characters are pronounced and written. For example, the character for “good” can be pronounced as “wu” or “wu-jia”. Since this can be very confusing, it is essential that you learn how to say the characters correctly from the get-go. To ensure this, you should practice saying the letters aloud as much as possible. This will help you check for and correct any mistakes before they are ever committed to paper (or screen). If you are looking for a good sounding board, there are numerous tools online that you can use to practice saying the characters correctly. You should also look into getting a Chinese character dictionary so that you can find the correct pronunciation for any unfamiliar characters.

2. Learn To Spot Repetitions Of Letters

There are several characters in Chinese that are created by simply repeating a single letter or sound. For example, “ku” is a commonly used “r” and “g” sound in Chinese characters, and can therefore be abbreviated to “k”. Similarly, “gu” is another commonly used “r” and “g” sound and can be abbreviated to “g”. “R” and “L” are used to represent sounds that are similar to “r” or “l”, so a character with the letters “RR” is used to represent a sound that is pronounced as “r” in Chinese. “R” and “L” can therefore be used to spot repetitions of “r”, “l”, “n”, or “ng” in Chinese characters. You should practice flagging characters with these letters as much as possible when you are reading. This will not only help you identify and correct any repetitions, but will also improve your fluency in reading.

3. Remember: Reading Is Important

One of the biggest mistakes that beginners make is that they think that just because they can understand the words, they understand what the character meant. While this may be the case with beginners, this is certainly not the case with more advanced readers. Reading is a skill that you must learn and improve upon – it is not something that you “get” just because you have been studying Chinese for some time. Reading helps you identify and understand the characters, and in turn, enables you to read and understand the characters more efficiently. When you are reading, you should be making sure that you understand not only what the character means but how it is pronounced as well. This will improve your overall reading comprehension, and allow you to become a better, more efficient reader.

4. Get A Character Guide

If you are finding the process of learning to read and understand Chinese characters difficult, then it may be a good idea to get a character guide. These are books that are designed to help you read and understand Chinese characters quickly and easily. They usually feature detailed pronunciations for each character as well as a guide to help you determine the meaning of a particular character (if you do not know what it means). The best part about these resources is that they usually contain all the important and common characters so that you do not have to look up each and every one as you learn to read. Furthermore, getting a character guide enables you to understand and identify characters more easily, which in turn, will help you improve your reading comprehension.

5. Use Other Languages

Learning to read and write in any language is difficult enough, but learning to do so in Chinese is made even more complicated by the fact that there are no translations available for most words and sentences. One of the best things that you can do for yourself is to learn to read and write in other languages. If you are looking for a challenge, learn to read and write in a language that uses different characters – this will help you become more familiar with a larger number of characters, and expand your horizons. Learning a new language is not only fun but also very useful, especially if you ever want to travel to other countries and need to have someone be able to read and understand English for you.

Even though learning to read and write in Chinese can be difficult, it is definitely worth it in the end. Being able to read and write in Chinese will give you the chance to read and understand a larger number of books and articles, as well as contribute to the online world by leaving comments and questions.