When we first start learning the language its easy to think..holy sh1t there’s all these words that sound the same but when we but them together the sum of the combined words is a word completely unrelated to the originals. I don’t think this is that different to English. Look at words like hereby, moreover for example.

A good example is red and read or here and hare (there are probably better examples out there) The pronunciation in seemingly the same, at least to a student, but the words are written differently. It is the same in Chinese. It’s sometimes good to think of Chinese as a series of sounds represented by different characters.. sorta like English. Also words like “contract” have many different meanings.. this is where we also rely on context in English.

Once you understand a little grammar and some characters It makes a little more sense, I’m definitely not at that stage yet though. My Chinese is passable, but like many I had the illusion that I didn’t need to learn characters and I have plateaued.

Did that make any sense? I haven’t had a Coffee yet because I forgot to turn on my magic water contraption and ended up pouring cold water into my mug of crap instant coffee.

Disclaimer: I don’t actually now what I’ talking about..