Analyzing graphic structure of phono-semantic characters: A Vietnamese method of teaching and learning Chinese characters

Abstract

From the perspective of graphological structure, this article examines Vietnamese methods of teaching and learning Chinese characters by analyzing their phonetic and semantic elements. The selected sample for the survey is taken from characters collected from Thiều Chửu’s Dictionary of Chinese Script with Sino-Vietnamese Reading—the most useful dictionary in Vietnam in nearly 100 years. The resulting statistics reveal that, out of the 14,950 characters in this dictionary, there are 931 phonetic elements in which 455 are strong ones, producing 10–20 phono-semantic characters. This article argues that analyzing the relationship between the characters and their phonetic elements read in Sino-Vietnamese pronunciation is a good method for Vietnamese people to teach and learn Chinese characters. The method of learning Chinese characters has been applied in teaching Chinese characters for more than 1000 monks and nuns at the Vietnam Buddhist Academy in Hanoi. The experimental results show that students were able to improve their vocabulary very quickly, and could apply this to learning and teaching Chinese characters.