阅读理解。
People often have the impression that Chinese characters are extremely difficult to learn. In fact, if
you were to try to learn how to write Chinese characters, you would find that they are not nearly as
difficult as you may have imagined. And they certainly qualify as forming one of the most attractive,
beautiful, logical(合乎逻辑的), and scientifically constructed(构造) writing systems in the world. Each
stroke(笔画)has its own special significance. If you are familiar with the rules of Chinese characters, you
will find it very easy to remember even the most complicated looking character, and never miss a stroke.
The earliest known examples of Chinese written characters in their developed form are carved into
tortoise shells and ox bones. The majority of these characters are pictographs. Archaeologists of various
countries have learned that most early writing systems went through a pictographic stage, as did the
Egyptian hieroglyphics. Most writing systems, however, eventually developed a phonetic(表示语音的)
alphabet to represent the sounds of spoken language rather than visual images observed in the physical
world.
One notable feature of Chinese characters is the "radical." "Radical" in English means "root". For
example, the characters yu "language," shuo "talk," i "discuss," "opinion," and lun "discuss" all share the
yen radical, which means "language," and gives the reader a clue to the meaning of the character as a
whole. The characters hsiu "rotten," shan "cedar," " t'ao "peach," and lin "forest," all contain the mu
"wood" or "tree" radical, indicating one of their shared key characteristics. If you know the radical of a
character, you can usually get a general idea of the meaning of the character it is a part of. Although there
is a theoretical total of almost 50,000 written Chinese characters, only about 5,000 of these are frequently used; and the total number of radicals is only 214. So learning to read and write Chinese is not nearly so
formidable a task as it may at first seem.
1. According to the author, Chinese characters are _____
A. extremely difficult to learn
B. as difficult as you may have imagined
C. difficult to remember
D. scientifically constructed
2. Which of the following statements is TRUE according to the passage?
A. All the Chinese characters are pictographs.
B. Some strokes are more important than others.
C. There are rules in forming the Chinese characters.
D. Some writing systems eventually developed a phonetic alphabet.
3. The passage is mainly about _____.
A. the Chinese writing system
B. the strokes of the Chinese characters
C. pictographs
D. the radical of the Chinese characters
