Are you studying Chinese? There are many rules for Chinese learners to memorize the Chinese characters.

In Chinese, two “人” (ren, “people”) characters written together gives us the character “从” (cong), which depicts one person walking behind another and means “to follow”. When three “人” characters are written together, we get the character “众”(zhong, “many people”). Two “木” (mu, “wood”) characters are written side by side yields the character “林” (lin),meaning “many trees”, when three “木” are put together, we get “森” (sen), meaning “forest”.

All of the components of these characters denote meanings related to that of the character itself. Characters formed in this way are known as associative compounds. If we liken pictographic and self-explanatory characters to static pictures, then the combination of these pictures, as associative characters, can be regarded as “animations”. Take “休”(xiu, “rest”) as an example, the components “人” and “木” depict a person and a tree respectively. When written together, we get a picture of someone leaning against a tree and resting, thus denoting the meaning of “to rest”.

Other associative characters are even simpler. All you need is to read aloud the components of which it is composed, and you know the character’s meaning. For example, the character “歪” (wai, “slanted”) means “不(not)+正(straight)”.