Character Insanity @ 88Groups

Great Idea Mr JohnB.

I think these characters are too advanced for myself but I will try and follow as best as I can and time permits

Indeed, very good idea! However. it seems to be directed at an Intermediate lesson, which is fine with me. It is certainly not a starter for newbies. Suggestion: Maybe you even proivde sample audio sentences for dictation? BTW: Why is it artificially limited to 3000 and two years?

Man2Toe, cheers! Goulniky, where I can I'll provide example words (though some characters just don't have words, like 廖 in the first lesson), and I'm going to continue pointing to the ChinesePod dictionary so that I can take advantage of the dictation and examples that are there. Point taken regarding organizing the groups -- it's something we'll have to take a look at. Henning, that's true, it's not really for beginners. It's actually something of a selfish thing for me -- I need to learn to write all these characters, most of which I already can read, but I don't want to overwhelm myself so five per day seems like a good rate. The 3000 character limit is artificial (though after we get through it I'd be happy to keep going), but the time is just a function of doing five per day, five days per week -- it'll take just a little more than two years at that pace.

Cool, I'm there. :)

I'm there too. can you let us know how you go about selecting the first 3000? Are you going by some accepted frequency list, HSK or otherwise? uh, 廖 is maybe not the most obvious, has 广 (guǎng) as radical which is high frequency but 翏 (liào) as phonetic which isn't, and 廖 itself... well you probably know s.o. by that name

I just joined too. Let's learn and relearn characters together. Your collective character knowledge easily puts a Chinese (me for instance) in shame. Computer dependence has caused many of us to lose our grip of character knowledge and writing.

Goulniky, my selection methods are totally 科学! :) What I did was take the "Character frequency list of Modern Chinese" from Professor Jun Da's website (he's a professor of linguistics at Middle Tennessee State University), and took the first 3000. Then I grabbed a random number sequence from random.org to shuffle the list. I'm now going to proceed down the shuffled list, five at a time. All of the characters will come from that original list of 3000, and the difficulty should be fairly random, with some common and some uncommon characters in each lesson. According to Jun Da, the first 3000 comprise ~99.2% of all modern written Chinese. I figure most of what falls outside of that is such low frequency that learning it without an explicit need is a waste of time.

Great idea. I'm all over it.

Johnb, when they make statements like these 3000 comprise 99.2% I assume that includes all of the multiple character words that can also be formed with those 3000? That would mean tha you cant read 99.2% of what is written unless you also know the combinations. Many, if not most words, do involve more than one character and are completely different from the individual meanings of the characters. If I learn the first 500 cards in the tuttle set for example - each comes with 4 combos or a total of 5 words which gives me a vocab of 2500 words. When they say you can read the paper with 2000 word vocab do they mean characters or words? I shudder to think how many possible combinations are in those 3000. It is still a valid thing to do but I am just wondering if it wouldnt be more valuable to learn 500 - then the combos - then the next 500 etc. Or do we pick up the combos in our lessons and they stick well because we know the individuals? Just some thoughts.

I always have an issue with studying individual characters since they hardly ever appear alone, but if you approach them in context it's fine, i.e. always make sure to list a few words containing that character; and spend more time space on compounds than single hanzi. on the topic of 88groups now, I notice that the list of groups is fast growing, so I guess you should start organizing them in categories, use tags to describe and search them etc., otherwise the list will soon become unusable (which in a sense would show success but still)

RJ, maybe that's something the members of the group can explore in the comments to each lesson. In the beginning it's going to be difficult with only a few characters but soon it'll be possible to find many interesting combinations between the characters learned. I think it would be a good way to engage all members of the group and to help us learn the characters more efficiently.

Hey JohnB, I'm there too. I luvs Chinese characters, and actually for the individual learning of them too... as you can find meaning in just the character, usually multiple meanings you didn't realize from only studying words. Cool. Already posted there. :)

Cool! Count me in! I've seen plenty of frequency lists out there such as Jun Da's, but can't help but wonder if we would be better off progressing in a non-random, somewhat systematic fashion (even if only within that list of 3000) based on radical or other character components. For example, if we lumped: #15: 也 #30: 他 #118: 地 #846: 施 #1124: 池 #1330: 她 - [yikes what does that say about Chinese society if this is number 1330 versus number 30) #1382: 驰 #2341: 拖 Or we could follow some progressions mapped out by people such as McNaughton or T.K. Ann in their fine books. What do you think?

Lunetta- That's what I had in mind. I have some thoughts on how I'll approach each lesson then share with the group, and see what happens.

The group is so going to rock, I wish I'd thought of it. ;)

great idea. while this really is stuff for someone that is more advanced than I am, I will be there daily, but I won't be able to contribute much at this point. I'm sure it will still be useful for me. At this point, I consider myself to be a baby whose curiosity just can't get enough information and this will be another great source of stimulation.

起一个好主意毕竟简单，挑战就是每天编报道! 谢谢你的努力

想起一个好主意。。。

I'm all for it too, never mind what it really covers, when we're done with the first 3000 let's move on to the next 2000, and make sure we pickup as many compounds along the way as possible. what I always wanted to do was grow the circle of compounds exponentially from the characters already studies, I once suggested that Wenlin develop that feature - they already have 'all words containing that char', I would add -all words made up of chars I already know.