How do Chinese kids learn to differentiate between the various meanings of the same character in school?
A single Chinese symbol can mean “to hit,” “to fetch,” “to play,” or “a dozen.” How do seven-year-olds memorize dozens of definitions for one character? They don’t. The secret lies in how the language is structured and taught. Modern Chinese is overwhelmingly a language of compound words, not isolated characters. In school, students are rarely … Read more
