[hangonhn]

The bit that helps me a lot with Chinese is that once you known the characters, you can deduce the possible meaning of the words, especially in the context of the sentence.

For example, 手機 is "hand", "machine", 飛機 is "fly", "machine" which you can guess means airplane. 鐵路 is "iron/metal", "road" which you can guess could mean railroad. 火車 is "fire", "chariot" which I guess can be a little confusing but it narrows it down to either a car or a train (it's train).