Hi Everybody! 大家好！

Chinese Pod is an awesome service. Unfortunately, they don't provide much help in the learning how to write characters area. How do you practice Chinese characters? Do you use any service, or do you have a home-made way? Thank you for your help!

KEVIN 凯文

 I picked up some handwriting paper in Atlanta's sorta Chinatown. I wanna use it to help me keep my radicals actually apart of the character. I open the book up to start practicing and I realize I have no clue how to use this. There's three horizontal lines, and then a row of squares (like the game Four Square), and then another three lines and it continues alternating like that. Do I write the characters on the horizontal lines or on the squares?

Hi,

I'm new to chinesepod, but I've previously spent a year studying Mandarin Chinese in college. In the old style of learning, we would have homework due nearly every day. The part I found helpful, at least when learning the characters is concerned, was the constant character recognition drills and numerous worksheets. We studied traditional characters, so the assignments became more and more difficult over time, but I found it rewarding.

I don't expect chinesepod to be exactly like class, but I was curious how everyone else has accomplished character learning.

Thanks!

Saul

Who among us is studying spoken Chinese AS WELL AS Chinese characters? For those who are studying characters, what method works best for you when you are learning the characters? Anxious to hear from you all!

Jordan

By looking at the elements in an character i learn faster and remember the characters longer. This is what i do:

. Take the new character e.g.

The character is ān, peace, calm etc. the two left pictures are the pictograph of the character.  This I look up in an Character dictionary. The bottom part is a woman and she is under a roof =A woman under the roof of a house is something that will bring the man peace. It was the woman who cared for the household

Now, by looking at the radical here, the roof part (mián) we can find many other characters with this as a radical such as:

字  letter, character, word (zì) If we break down this we get a Child (子 zǐ) under the roof = word.  A child in the family leads to communication. In this character the roof part is the radical and the child part is the pronunciation part.

Like this we can go on and look for other words with the same pronunciation part such as 仔 (zī) responsibility. Person and child = it is a persons/parents responsibility to take care of the child.

We can also go the other way and find words with this character such as:

安排 ānpái to arrange; to plan

安全 ānquán safe; secure; safety; security

平安 píng'ān safe and sound; well

I usualy concentrates on words that are on the top 2000 list when breaking down the characters. The words i get from on line dictionaries.

After a whort while we will notice that most characters can be traced down to a few elements. There is only 214 radicals in simplified Chinese. All characters has an radical so it might be a good idea to learn the radical in the character. Since the radical tells us something about the meaning of the character it is an vital part to know. My brain needs the sort of structure. Just learning to paint the character does not work for me. I need to know the structure. This is my structure:-)

Character Practice

Arch Chinese (http://www.chinese.com) is a good free tool for learning Chinese characters.

Hi..

I have now just started to write Hanzi on a daily basis. I am using the Hanzi Helper program made by a poddie, his name starts with "col" but I can't remember the other 3 letetrs in his username right now. Anyway, the point of this post is to ask a really basic question: How can I tell which direction the stroke shoulod be written.

I can use the Animated GIF website to show me the stroke order but I am wanting to be sure I am also making the strokes in the correct direction as well, as I am sure this will aid me later on. When I look at a character that is using a decently rendered font, I can see there is a thin end and a fat end of each stroke.

I am assuming that the fat end is the end of the stroke and the thin end is the start of the stroke, only because if I was using a brush, I would end up with a fat end at the end of a stroke; or if I was doing one of those tiny strokes, I would end up with a tapered stroke with the tip of the brush pointing towards the thin end of the stroke.

Just really wanted to confirm that I had this correct.

I'm trying to do 10 to 14 characters a day, writing them out 10 times each. Not using any context at this point because I am just really getting used to writing. Next month a new book will be released called "Remembering The Hanzi Book 1", so when I get that I will take more of a structured approach to Hanzi learning.

Here is a commonly asked question.This was recently discussed here

Hi guys,

I have by now purchased - and extensively used 3 iPhone apps:

1) Flashcards (by ChinesePod competitor - ChineseLearnOnline.com)

Nice and simple - flashcards and a count of how many you have learned. Good start - but I hope to see new versions wth more functionality (e.gg. characters by category)

2) MyWords-CN

Each day it gives you 10 new characters with pinyin and sound. I am disappointed with this. Slow, clunky interface, rudimentary capabilities

3) iChinese

I love this one. Basically you learn characters by writing them and  this app checks them using recognition algorithm and takes you through multiple memorization stages. It uses characters and phrases from Practical Chinese Reader - but only first 12 lessons :-( (app comes with 4 lessons and you can buy 8 more separately). There is also a speech module.

What other iPhone apps have you used and can recommend?

Skritter

I couldn't find it mentioned anywhere on ChinesePod, and so I had to spread the word about this tool for learning to write characters, that John recently mentioned on Sinosplice.

It's amazing!  It is highly interactive, and fully automates the learning process.

One thing I love about it is that you don't need specialized hardware like an IPhone or a SmartPhone or Nintendo DS or a Wacom Tablet: a computer with a regular mouse works great!

On the Skritter website, they call ChinesePod  "the best online service we've found for learning spoken Chinese."  I wholeheartedly agree with that: I'm a huge ChinesePod fan!  But, I'll say that IMO Skritter is the best online service I've found for learning written Chinese.  Of course, the two complement each other perfectly!

What do you guys think?

I have a role as an internet activist and I get quoted in the press a bit recently, but this is the first time I've come across my name in an article in Chinese. It was in the illustrious Epoch Times (presumably not accessible from the mainland) - http://is.gd/iiaL .

I was very interested to see my name rendered - 杰考布 for 'Jacobs':

澳洲电子前沿基金会副主席杰考布.....

(The article is about the Australian government's plan to censor the internet, which my organisation, EFA, opposes.)

I like the choice, obviously, since 杰 has a meaning of hero, but don't take it too personally. I assume this is a standard. Is there some list Chinese journalists can consult to find the most appropriate transliterations of Western names?

I've just discovered something that has never crossed my mind about learning Chinese.

Last week, my friend bought me a Chinese book for my birthday - it's all written with characters and no pinyin.  Initially I thought "awesome - it's about time I paid some attention to hanzi".  After all the excitment of opening presents, I turned my attention to understanding what the characters on the front cover said, so I grabbed my Chinese dictionary and was immediately shocked to realise something I've never considered before about learning Chinese - how do you look up characters in a dictionary if you don't even know the pinyin to begin with?

I am actually quite shocked that I've not considered this before.

How do I even begin to look words up in a Chinese dictionary when I've only got the characters and have no idea what the pinyin is?  Is there any simple way of doing this?  How do Chinese people do this?

Howdy

I want to learn how to write characters more efficiently.  I have tried the following:

1. Copying other people's work
2. Writing my own essays
3. Writing new words over three times (or so)
4. Memorizing radicals so it is simpler to assemble characters later

I can't figure out which is best.  Do any of you have an ideas?

Thanks.

Just found the following link in the Skritter forum:

http://chinanewswrap.com/2009/08/20/state-officials-claim-amendments-to-44-chinese-characters-will-not-affect-life/

Which is based on:

http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2009-08-20/024518470557.shtml

I am familiar with the technique of Chinese 'spelling' but I would like to describe any character in words, where the spelling communication technique might fail.

I would love a lesson (or series like the pinyin series) on talking about characters.  I would like to be able to describe any character I meet in words, particularly complicated or unusual characters (such as some family names!)  heng, shu, na, pie, ti, dian, zhe etc, and how to put them together, heng gou, heng zhe, shu gou, shu zhe, etc. What order do I use in talking about how the character is written? Or has this already been done - is there a reference anyone can point me to?

And BTW is there a way of representing these parts of characters using the computer?  My Windows input system does not seem to do the job.

Just when you think you got enough of them under the belt for a kid's book, you open that 唐老鸭 comic book of your 4year old and read about 庀兄弟。Over and over again.

哎哟！ 我知道什么? 我知道个"庀"！

Can I have some tips on learning the characters please. I'm starting slowly to learn some and use pre-printed flashcards.  I find that I can memorise them pretty well, except that if someone asked me to write them, especially the more complicated ones, I don't think I could. What do other poddies do when learning the characters? Do you write them out?

Ken recently said that in all his time living in China he has never really had to write characters so I'm wondering if I should skip that part and just familiarise myself with being able to read them.

Isn't this a cool character? But is it real?  (I got this off Wikipaedia tonight).  

Phonetic substitution

Made up of 57 strokes, the Chinese character "biáng" is one of the most complex Chinese characters in contemporary usage, although the character is not found in modern dictionaries or even in the Kangxi dictionary. Because the Chinese character for "biáng" cannot be entered into computers, phonetic substitutes like 棒棒麵 (bàng bàng miàn) or 梆梆麵 (bāng bāng miàn) are often used.

Mnemonics

There are a number of ditties familiar to Shaanxi residents used as mnemonics to aid recall of how the character is written.  One version runs as follows:

A friend just told me there is a character that if you learn how to write i, you can write any other charater. But she does not know what it is. Has anyone else heard this? More importantly, does anyone know what it is?

I'm enjoying the lessons and trying to follow both newbie and elementary. Can anyone provide advice on how to type Chinese characters for the lesson exercises? Is there an add-on or tool that I'm missing?  Thanks