English Alphabets vs qTRAILS Chinese Alphabets
English Alphabets
Alphabets are used in English language to form English words and English words can be broken down into alphabets.
Each alphabet appears in two forms – capital letter and small letter.
Each alphabet has a ‘sound’ that is they can be pronounced. You can spell (say the sound of an alphabet) an English word alphabet by alphabet.
You can look up an unknown word in a paper dictionary if you know the alphabetical order (A to Z).
Alphabets can be used to form prefixes and suffixes (incomplete words) that have meanings and are able to transform meanings of words when they are added (e.g. ‘cycle’ becomes ‘bicycle’ or ‘tricycle’).
Chinese Alphabets
A Chinese character is always seen as a whole – each character occupies a box.
Each character is formed by strokes interacting with one another in many possible ways.
Some characters are difficult to be broken down while others show distinct lines between parts.
The strokes in a character do not move orderly from left to right so it is difficult to distinguish the boundaries of parts
Traditionally Chinese characters are not seen as being made up of ‘alphabets’ as there are too many components involved in characters creation. Due to the different nature of English words and Chinese characters, the alphabets mentioned in these two languages behave very differently.
More differences between English Alphabets and Chinese Alphabets
1.Chinese characters are made up of alphabets and/or strokes. English words are made up by only .
2. There are no capitals in Chinese characters
3. Most Chinese alphabets cannot be pronounced unless they are also characters themselves. Hence, ‘spell’ Chinese characters by describing their features and not by pronouncing them.
4. As there are more than 200 Chinese alphabets, it will be difficult to remember them if they are arranged like English alphabets from A to Z. As such, they are grouped into 32 Stroke Patterns based on how they look.
For example, if English alphabets are arranged in this way, alphabets D, B, P, R will be in the same group. They all have a semi-circle and all facing the right.
5. Some of the alphabets are characters so they have meanings and sounds. Some are radicals which can be added to other characters or alphabets to form new characters.
