When the foreign students go to school in Kunming to study Chinese, they may be confused by the similar-root words. The reason for the puzzlement is that the words may have similar meaning as well the similar character pattern. Thus, when the foreign students are confronted with such words, they should deal with the words with carefulness and diligence to remember the respective usage of the words.

Let’s move to the first pair of words which are 信仰 and 相信. The pair has the similar word root 信. But the two words have different meanings and collocations. 信仰is a noun and refers to the belief and respect to some certain proposal, doctrine, religion or somebody. One can make the phrases like 信仰宗教or 信仰马克思主义. 相信is a verb and means the belief in something is right or true. One can make the phrases like 相信科学or相信真理. 信仰stress the belief even the respect to something and the expression of the tone is more strong while 相信 emphasizes the authenticity of something and the object of 相信inclines to person, organization and things.

Now the second pair of words include 高兴and 兴奋. Both contain the word root 兴 and they are all adjectives. 兴奋emphasizes the excitement of the mood and can not be reduplicated while the word 高兴is used to refer to the joyful mood and can be reduplicated into the form高高兴兴. And the reduplicated form can be used as a verb. One can say 你怎么哭了?是什么事使你不高兴? But one can not say the expression like 你怎么哭了?是什么事使你不兴奋?

The third word group is 兴建,修建and 创建. The three words are all verbs and they all can refer to the meaning to build. The object of the word 兴建is the project which is of large scale. the object of the word 修建 can be the things of large scale or the general size. The word 创建 attach more importance to the meaning of founding and the object of the word can be specific things or the abstract ones.

So when students are learning the rules of the words groups in the process of learning Mandarin Chinese, they should pay attention to the usage of the respective words. The words of similar word root are hard to acquire. But if the students can make great efforts and learn more about the specific examples of each word, progress can be made.