Hi and everyone else! I'm brand new to Mandarin. I have a bit of experience with Japanese and was wondering about a similarity there (apologies if any terms are wrong!) - is there an "alphabet" in Mandarin that allows smaller kanji to be put together to form larger words and concepts? For instance, in Japanese there are two "alphabets" made up of characters for "a, i, u, e, o" and then "ka, ki, ku, ke, ko" etc.
Is there a similar alphabet in Mandarin or is it primarily made up of the more complex kanji?
Thanks! Hope I worded that correctly :-)