Tangut is a collection of nearly 5,800 characters similar to Chinese characters (hanzi) but more complicated.
Most are made of more than 4 strokes, even up to 20.
There are few indications of sound and meaning.
In some cases characters that only slightly differ shape or by a few strokes have completely different sounds and meanings.

Tangut characters can be divided into two classes: simple and composite.
 The latter are much more numerous.
 The simple characters can be either semantic or phonetic.
None of the Tangut characters are pictographic, while some of the Chinese characters were at the time of their creation; this is one of the major differences between Tangut and Chinese characters.

Most composite characters comprise two components.
A few comprise three or four.
A component can be a simple character, or part of a composite character.
The composite characters include semantic-semantic ones and semantic-phonetic ones.
A few special composite characters were made for transliterating Chinese and Sanskrit.

There are a number of pairs of special composite characters worth noting.
The members of such a pair have the same components, only the location of the components in them is different (e.g. AB vs. BA, ABC vs. ACB).
The members of such a pair have very similar meanings.

The Sea of Characters (Chinese: 文海; pinyin: wén hǎi), a 12th century monolingual Tangut rhyming dictionary, analyzes what other characters each character is derived from.
Unlike Chinese, a component does not have a fixed semantic meaning or phonetic value, but rather the semantic meaning or phonetic value of the character that the component is derived from.
For example, the person radical 𘤊 can have the meaning of bird (𗿼 *dźjwow), as in 𗿝 *dze "wild goose" = 𗿼 *dźjwow "bird" + 𗨜 *dze "longevity".
But it is also used as a component to convey meanings of smoke, food, and time, among others.

Some components take different shape depending on what part of the character they appear in (e.g., left side, right side, middle, bottom).
Tangut is a collection of nearly 5,800 characters similar to Chinese characters (hanzi) but more complicated. Most are made of more than 4 strokes, even up to 20. There are few indications of sound and meaning. In some cases characters that only slightly differ shape or by a few strokes have completely different sounds and meanings.
Tangut characters can be divided into two classes: simple and composite.  The latter are much more numerous.  The simple characters can be either semantic or phonetic. None of the Tangut characters are pictographic, while some of the Chinese characters were at the time of their creation; this is one of the major differences between Tangut and Chinese characters.
Most composite characters comprise two components. A few comprise three or four. A component can be a simple character, or part of a composite character. The composite characters include semantic-semantic ones and semantic-phonetic ones. A few special composite characters were made for transliterating Chinese and Sanskrit.
There are a number of pairs of special composite characters worth noting. The members of such a pair have the same components, only the location of the components in them is different (e.g. AB vs. BA, ABC vs. ACB). The members of such a pair have very similar meanings.
The Sea of Characters (Chinese: 文海; pinyin: wén hǎi), a 12th century monolingual Tangut rhyming dictionary, analyzes what other characters each character is derived from. Unlike Chinese, a component does not have a fixed semantic meaning or phonetic value, but rather the semantic meaning or phonetic value of the character that the component is derived from. For example, the person radical 𘤊 can have the meaning of bird (𗿼 *dźjwow), as in 𗿝 *dze "wild goose" = 𗿼 *dźjwow "bird" + 𗨜 *dze "longevity". But it is also used as a component to convey meanings of smoke, food, and time, among others.
Some components take different shape depending on what part of the character they appear in (e.g., left side, right side, middle, bottom).
Tangut script