The Logic of Chinese Characters
Move beyond rote memorization by decoding the internal architecture of Hanzi. Learn to predict the sound and meaning of thousands of characters using radicals and phonetic components.
Like Duolingo, but for The Logic of Chinese Characters. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
20 levels across 3 sections, about 40 minutes end to end, roughly 8 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Decoding the Blueprint, Strategic Recognition, and Advanced Structural Logic.
Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android
Key ideas in The Logic of Chinese Characters
- Radicals as a taxonomic system
- Radical as the genus
- Shared conceptual roots
- Left-side compression
- Water radical mutation
- Recognizing mutations
- Categorizing characters into conceptual families
- Structural adaptation and mutations
- The standard structural layout for ~90% of characters is semantic-left, phonetic-right
- Top-bottom characters usually place the semantic anchor at the top (e.g., 艹 for plants)
- Radicals act as a taxonomic classification system
- Identifying the left/top component first is the most reliable heuristic for guessing a new character's meaning
- The 'meat' radical (肉) drifted over centuries to look identical to the 'moon' radical (月) in modern script
- Recognizing compressed radical mutations
- Characters related to body parts or organs almost always use the 'meat-moon' (⺼) variant
- Contextual meaning is the only way to distinguish between these two historically distinct radicals in modern Chinese
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives The Logic of Chinese Characters the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
Picture this: you encounter a character you've never seen. What does its semantic radical tell you about its identity?
Get it right to open this lesson and 19 more in the app.
Where The Logic of Chinese Characters takes you
- 1
Decoding the Blueprint
- The Semantic Anchor
- The Phonetic Blueprint
- 2
Strategic Recognition
- The Art of the Educated Guess
- Visual Discrimination
- 3
Advanced Structural Logic
- Ideographic Logic and Metaphor
- The Logic of Simplification
3 sections · 6 units · 20 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
Tomo is in ChatGPT
Tomo is also a ChatGPT plugin: the same playable courses, built and played inside your chat.
Add Tomo to ChatGPT- What to ask
- “Make me a Tomo course on black holes.” “Turn this chat into a Tomo course.”
- What you get
- Quick questions with instant feedback, hearts and stars, ready to play in about a minute.
- Where it goes
- No sign-up to start. Connect your Tomo account and your streak carries on in the app.
You pick the voice
The Logic of Chinese Characters is taught in the The Storyteller style: every lesson is a story. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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Start The Logic of Chinese Characters today.
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