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Learn Chinese is quite different from learning any other language. The way of learning is different. In learning a Western language, for instance, you swallow a whole series of sounds,lock,stock and barrel. If you were to take a word apart, separating it into so many phonetic syllables, it would lose its meaning altogether. In learning Chinese, however, what you have to do is exactly that, not into so many syllables, but into so many characters.
You learn first the characters, then the word. Take, for instance, the Chinese word 电脑 which means "computer". You first learn the words 电( meaning is electricity) and 脑 (meaning is brain) separately since 电脑 is formed by combining the two characters( you might call them elements of language ). In meaning, 电脑 has to do with both 电 and 脑, and yet 电脑 is not a simple case of 电 plus 脑. 电脑 is the Chinese countpart of the English word "computer". But if you were to take the English word "computer" and try to figure out its meaning based on the meanings of the three syllablic components com/pu/te, you would definitely get nowhere, because separately, there components have no meaning at all and certainly have nothing to do with what the word "computer" means.So, the character forms the basis in learning Chinese, whereas the word or sentence froms the basis for learning a Western language.
Each Chinese character has a form of its own, representing a particular sound and a particular meaning, one at least. In other words, each character is a unity of form, sound and meaning. Tht student of Chinese must call on every one of the individuals if he or she is to really know the personality of each.
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