Ideogramology (continued 3):

According to the standard rules of written language, Chinese characters are generally recorded as monosyllabic morphemes, so modern Chinese characters can be called morpheme characters. Chinese ideographic characters are not the same as syllabic letters as alphabetic letters in phonographic languages. Chinese is a tonal language mostly with 4 basic tones: first (flat tone), second (rising tone), third (dip tone), fourth (falling tone), plus a fifth (neutral tone). Each syllable in each word has one of these tones and the tone is indicated by the marks above the vowels in Pinyin. Pinyin (pin 拼 = spell, yin 音 = sound) is the official romanization system for standard Mandarin Chinese used to teach Mandarin in China and around the world. 

Chinese ideographic characters, with a long history and culture, are rich in orthography with multiple meanings for each word with different tones. For example, the syllable “jian” with different or even the same tone can be represented by characters such as “見 jiàn , 件 jiàn, 间 jiān, 键 jiàn, 贱 jiàn, 建 jiàn, 箭 jiàn, etc”. If only one morpheme is used, it is difficult to express the meaning of these more than 20 morphemes in ancient and modern Chinese. The best way to find the right word for the right situation is to check it in context, or a “meaning group” (意群), or a regular combination of words. Most Native speakers of Chinese are able to figure out the correct words instinctively through their first language acquisition during their childhood.

(To be continued)