If the foreign students want to have a better understanding on Chinese language, they need to pay much attention to Chinese characters. In Chinese language, even though the phonogram has the function of indicating the pronunciation and meaning reasonably, the pity thing is that the meaning and pronunciation indicating function of meaning indicators and sound indicators of phonogram are relatively not so obvious. Since Chinese characters evolve from pictograph, the meaning indicating feature is more obvious but has no direct relationship with the sound indicating.

In the structure of Chinese character, there are no symbols that marking the pronunciation according to the syllable classifications. Therefore, it can’t be spelled out directly just like that in the alphabetic writings. As a result, many foreign students in Mandarin language courses in China feel confused when they see the characters but there are no pronunciation symbols. As a matter of fact, the sound of Chinese phonograms is showed from the phonetic indicators which indicate pronunciation. Therefore, if you want to read out the pronunciation of the whole character, you need to know how to articulate the phonetic element.

Accordingly, to a certain degree, we can say the pronunciation of Chinese characters needs to be memorized firmly. In addition, there are many sound indicating symbols in phonograms and most of them are difficult to master many parts are rarely used. For instance, among more than 60 phonograms with the pronunciation of bi, there are many sound indictors such as 必、比、毕、匕、畀、皮、百、弊and辟and so on.

There are also many examples of such type. Let’s take the sound indicator 台as an example to explain to the students who attend to Chinese school to study in China. In some characters, it has the pronunciation of tai such as 抬、胎、苔、跆、邰and鲐. Even though the characters like 怡、贻and饴have the element 台, they are articulated as yi. Such type of characters is difficult for the overseas learners to pronounce correctly.

The problems still exist in the aspect of indicating the meaning. For instance, the characters with 虫are related to insects, but the characters 蛇、蛙、蚌、蜥 and蛋have nothing to do with insects. The existence of those characters makes it more difficult to remember in pronunciation.