Everyone feels learning Chinese is hard. Of course, there are other reasons but the biggest reason is we have to memorize thousands of characters. Even though it is hard to memorize them, but knowing how Chinese characters format will make you feel much easier to learn. There are 6 ways to format Chinese characters. Pictographic(象形), Simple indicatives(指事), Compound indicatives (會意), Phono-semantic compound characters (形聲), Borrowed characters (假借), Derived characters (轉注). Pictographic(象形) means imitates(象) the shape(形). So characters of pictographic are imitated of objective shapes or characteristic.

A cow A horse A seashell
The pictures above are examples of pictographic. Pictographic started a long time ago when people made letter. However, as the civilization developed, ancient Chinese cannot express their thought only from pictographic. So, simple indicatives system came out to express more feeling, information and so on. Simple indicatives(指事) means indicate(指) the works(事). It is kind of promise between people. It symbolizes the abstract things. For example, 上, which means ‘up, above’, is the symbolization of above of a line. However, simple indicatives also have a problem. Too much symbolization makes it hard to understand and learn. Compound indicatives (會意) means compounding(會) meanings(意). It combines two or more characters and create new meaning. For example, Sun(日) combines with Moon(月) to create new meaning Bright(明). This made Chinese character develop much more than before. However, when compound indicatives also became complicated, it also confronted the limitation. Phono-semantic compound characters (形聲), is a method which is a combination of character of meaning part and sound part. For instance, 淸, which means clean is combination of 水(clean water, meaning part) and 靑(sound part, qing). Chinese characters enabled to develop. And