Vocabulary.
The following Prezi introduces you to how vocabulary works in Chinese by looking at one character and lots of words that are built around it. To navigate the presentation, click on the arrow underneath. Once you've gone through the entire presentation, you can move around it on your own by clicking on a object.
Note that all of the examples are two characters. Most Chinese words consist of two characters. In many cases, each character has some meaning, and it lends that meaning to the word. However, many characters cannot be used alone. 朋友 means friend. Each character means friend, but neither is ever used alone. Some relatively common words, in fact, contain characters that are used nowhere else (though this list is quite small, what is interesting is that the words are not uncommon). 葡萄 pútao 'grape' and 尴尬 gāngà 'embarrassed' both contain characters that, in modern Chinese, occur nowhere else.
Because Chinese prefer two character words, sometimes characters are added on to make a one character word two characters. That is the case with 子 zi, which is appended onto many nouns but has no meaning (子 zǐ can also mean 'son' or 'child,' but there it is 3rd tone and also occurs with other characters to form words.) Examples include 桌子 zhōuzi 'table' and 狮子 shīzi 'lion.'
It should also be noted that many two character words are actually contractions of four character terms. For example, 电邮 diànyóu is a contraction of 电子邮件 diànziyóujiàn and means 'email;' 北大 běidà is a contraction of 北京大学 běijīngdàxué, and means Beijing University; 超市 chāoshì is a contraction of 超级市场 chāojíshìcháng, and means supermarket; 科技 kējì is a contraction of 科学技术 kēxuéjìshù, and means science and technology.
New Words
New vocabulary is normally created by putting characters together that describe the meaning of the term. For example many relatively new words begin with 电 diàn electricity, such as
电话 diànhuà electric speech = telephone
电车 diànchē electric car - tram
电脑 diànnǎo electric brain = computer
Another example is
手机 shǒujī hand machine = cell phone
Loan Words
Chinese does not easily accept loan words, simply because there is no accurate way to reproduce the sound of a foreign word, because there is no alphabet. They do exist, however:
咖啡 kā fēi coffee
卡 kǎ card
酷 kù cool
沙拉 shā lā salad
派对 pài duì party
汉堡包 hàn bǎo bāo hamburger
沙发 shā fā sofa
可乐 kě lè cola
幽默 yōu mò humor
瑜伽 yú qié yoga
卡路里 kǎ lù lǐ calorie
逻辑 luó ji logic
巴士 bā shì bus
吧 bā bar
咖喱 gā lí curry
卡通 kǎ tōng cartoon
吉他 jí tā guitar
布丁 bù dīng pudding
维他命 wéi tā mìng vitamin
吐司 tǔ sī toast
麦克风 mài kè fēng microphone
高尔夫球 gāo ěr fū qiú golf
保龄球 bǎo líng qiú bowling
比萨 bǐ sà pizza
柠檬 níng méng lemon
派 pài pie
迷你裙 mí nǐ qún mini skirt
迪斯科 dí sī kē disco
盎司 àng sī ounce
A few Chinese words have made their way into English as well. Perhaps the most interesting is not a Chinese word, but Chinese way of saying something. The term 'Long time no see,' which is not grammatical English, is actually a direct translation of the Chinese 好久不见 hǎojiǔbùjiàn. It came from Chinese workers who spoke ungrammatical, or Pidgin, English based on their Chinese. Chow, meaning food, probably comes from the Chinese word meaning to stir fry, 炒 chǎo. Kowtow, to bow down to someone, comes either from 磕头 kētóu or 叩头 kòutóu, which mean the same. And of course tea comes from some dialect's pronunciation of 茶 chá, tea.
Recommended Reading
https://cjvlang.com/Writing/writchin/ciandzi.html