Experiments in Chinese Language Study: Learning the Alphabet

furyougaijin, wow, this is a great insight into your journey towards mastery. Breaking stuff down into managable chunks not of your choosing but what the language demands seems to be the way to go. I was focused on using mnemonics at a character level and building stories around them but I now see it is important to look at the bigger picture too and the grouping of characters based on shared pronunciation and target them as a group. Using the radical and anything really that can get you to the meaning of the character without mixing it up with other similar looking, similar sounding ones is a real cerebral workout. But through rote learning and imaginative mnemonics you seem to have been able to achieve something very worthwhile and a great foundation on which to build. .

yes, green --> frequency no. < 2000 orange --> frequency no. < 4000 brown --> frequency no. < 6000 blue --> frequency no. < 9930 red --> frequency no. > 9930 (rare) It is supposed to facilitate the identification of vocab that are valuable with respect to the current learning target. I also create separate CSV-files for those that I can directly pug into my (offline) Flashcard-program.

I rarely read posts of this length, but this was like a good book you can't put down! Very interesting approach furyougaijin, thanks for sharing this with us.

Thanks for the good feedback! :-) I actually did use the groups approach - that's the only reason this task is manageable. I have been aware of how phonetic elements work for a long time now, from my Japanese studies. But in this particular exercise I have used T.K.Ann's book 'Cracking the Chinese Puzzles' - he's done all the break-down in groups, etc.

My first reaction was: "I want to get out and buy these books (5 volumes)", but a quick search on Amazon stopped me..it seems to be out of print and 450$ for a used version is a bit too steep for me. But I am sure there must be similar sources one could use. Any ideas??

It's freely sold in at least two bookstores in London but be prepared to pay around $250 for the 5 volumes. There is an abridged 1-volume edition which excludes all the examples, etc. Alternatively, some analysis via zhongwen.com, zdic.net (character lookup by pinyin) and frequency tables can produce similar results but is more time-consuming.

Furyougajin you are my hero. I wish I had that many brain cells. Thanks for sharing that with us. I'm always interested in how others attack this daunting task. It's good to have you back on C-pod and please keep updating us on your approach to learning Chinese. If anyone finds a site for these phonetic groupings, please let the rest of us know. This sounds like a job for Bazaa!

I see that Henning has started posting some notes on groups in a separate post. This project might be too big to fit in a conversations thread, though. One tip for those exploring groups through Zhongwen and the - truly excellent - pinyin lookup in Zdic: the same phonetic component often changes just the initial sound. So if you're looking up something on 'jian', make sure to look for the same component on 'xian' or 'qian'. It's also quite interesting to trace relationships between Chinese readings and Japanese on-yomi, although it's less clearly defined as the latter were borrowed from different Chinese dialects and time periods.

I think you make a great point that I have come across in my own language studies, not just chinese. Is that studying by yourself and book learning, does not necessarily benefit your listening or speaking abilities. I have studied German for years without aid of a teacher or class, just all book learning. I finally met my first good friend that is semi-fluent in german, and hear is where I realized just how almost useless all this book learning had been. If you don't expose your ears and mouth to a language, you are really robbing yourself, if not semi wasting your time. We do study languages to speak with other people right??? I was skeptical of the Audio only approach that the Pimsleur program put forth, but have found it to be perhaps the best approach I have ever used, Rivaled only by the approach of the Rosetta stone company which uses pictures to engage your eyes also in a way that makes for real world associations. Chinese Pod is a fantastic site which I have been very thankful for, worried that my education in Mandarin would be over after the 2 weeks of Pimsleur I took, not being able to afford over 300 dollars for the second part of their level 1 product, or rosetta stones similairly priced products. CPod is reasonably priced and equally useful.

Did you learn these alphabetically based on pinyin transcription, or did you effctively use these groups as a basis for study. And if so, what was your main source of learning to know about their existence? I don't know if my memory stretches that far, but as an analytically enclined person, I feel there is something to be said for your method. Marc

I'm also impressed by your efforts, but (please pardon me) skeptical of the idea that you can truly "learn" 6,000 characters in a mere 4/5 months (that includes non-productive periods). Will you have retained all 6,000 one year from now? 10 years from now? How do you define "learned"? Perhaps I'm jealous of the fact that I'm unable to eclipse a pace of 3 or 4 fresh characters a day, 3-4 days per week. That would put me near 6,000 characters about a decade down the road.

不良外人 (terrific name, BTW), first, very good job! :) I'm curious what SRS you used, and if you're using spaced repetition in your continuing Chinese studies. Also, are you maintaining your repetitions now that you've "completed" your study (I would guess you'd have to, unless you read a truly massive amount of complex Chinese constantly).

This was an amazing post. Keep the experiential diary going. I haven't had much interest in learning characters, but it seems a little more accessible now. I loved reading this post. thanks for taking the time to write it... and thanks to henning for 'nominating' it, i wouldn't have bothered without the referral. jcw

furyougaijin: Amazing, simply amazing! 我不如你．　天才啊！ So do you feel that learning 6,000 characters could make learning to speak an easier task, or do you feel it has had no bearing on will ever have any bearing on your verbal communication skills?

furyougaijin, I just incorporated another of your ideas: using frequency tables. It turned out that some of the coolest characters I found did not quite make the top 10,000. That should at least be marked for purposes of filtering....

There may be a clue to furyougaijin's remarkable speed and success above. Furyougaijin - do you already know Japanese?

Thank you, all, for a lot of meaningful feedback. Let me briefly respond to some points being raised. @ mikeinewshot: The method is in *creating* context for the shape, tones and meaning, context that helps one remember. As for actually *using* the material, you make a good point - it's not a good idea to go around inventing your own language. But this exercise does help a great deal in passively taking in the language around you. In fact, it's not a race against the time and one can be as thorough as one wishes. On many occasions I had to dive into Google and Baidu to find out how a particular character was being used. This is an excellent way to come up with live examples and a lot of meaningful context. Re Japanese: let's say that I have been a diligent student of it for quite a long time... (^_^) In terms of the advantages it gives - yes, you already know how characters stick together, how phonetics work and you know the meaning of a fair number of them but you're practically starting from scratch as far as readings are concerned. @ mandomikey: I actually said it was possible in mere *two* months although that would take exceptional dedication. 'Learnt' in my case was defined as 'successfully recognised on at least 3 consecutive occasions when prompted by the SRS system'. This is actually harder than when the same character is coming up in context. Repetitions are still on-going, of course, I plan to keep them up until all of the characters have been 'pushed out' of the repetitions cycle (which takes about one year with the current settings of the software I'm using - this is getting rather technical...). It's fair to assume that, as years go by, a certain number of infrequent characters will fade from memory but there is no saying now which ones these are going to be. @ johnb: I have been using iFlash which is a native MacOS application. I believe it's truly wonderful for the task, with great minimalist design. Its standard repetitions cycle is VERY demanding on the lower end though, with 12 repetitions spaced over roughly a year. I have 'completed' my study in the sense that I have got all characters on my list over a mark of 3 successful consecutive repetitions but I am definitely continuing my reviews, albeit with slightly less dedication that in previous months. I am using iFlash for my vocabulary studies as well - I may be able to describe that in a separate post if there is sufficient interest. @ xiaohu: I feel that the connection with speaking is a very vague one... I have not found that character knowledge improved my speaking in any way whatsoever. Where it *does* help, is in processing written information: i.e, making sense of it and memorising new words the way I described above. Interestingly, to some extent it helps decipher what you hear, given sufficient context. This morning I was in a meeting where someone (in English) mentioned the abbreviation 'CEE'. Now, this could potentially mean anything. Yet searching through the context, you realise it stands for 'Central and Eastern Europe'. The words *suggest* themselves. In a similar way, when listening to a Chinese text, some of the characters seem to fall into place provided there is sufficient context. I had never come across [ǒu tù ] before I heard it in a context where the meaning and the characters [呕吐] sort of *suggested themselves* and the word became completely transparent. I can only suspect that as one's vocabulary grows and more of the context becomes clear, more words can be recognised this way. For now, it is nothing but a curious observation. @ henning: Good luck with the project! I may have missed it somewhere - but what is the logic behind colour coding in your thread?

I am very impressed, but don't believe it would work for me. I find I can only retain characters, tones and meaning if I hear them in context. Certainly I am very wary of using anything that I have not heard used in context for fear of being unintelligable - this latter born out by experience.