Learning Characters, another useful book
urbandweller
November 06, 2008, 07:27 PM posted in General DiscussionHey guys
I was browsing the Chinese language section at Borders books the other day (again) and this one caught my eye. It was so interesting that it was hard to put down and i almost bought it that day!
here is the description:
Anyone have this one yet?? I will be buying it soon.
Tuttle Learning Chinese Characters Volume 1: A Revolutionary New Way to Learn and Remember the 800 Most Basic Chinese Characters (Paperback)
by Alison Matthews and Laurence Matthews
Aimed at helping students of Chinese learn and remember Chinese characters, including the pronunciation of characters, fast and effectively, Learning Chinese Characters Volume 1 is a systematic study aid to this difficult language.
Designed specifically to ease students into the daunting process of learning Chinese characters, Learning Chinese Characters Volume 1 incorporates the key principle of visual imagery. A book for serious learners of Chinese, it can be used alongside (or after, or even before) a course in the Chinese language. Concise, clear and appealing, this practical guide is well designed and includes an easy-to-use index.
I researched it on Amazon today and found that it has gotten rave reviews online. One of the reviewers acutally reccomends Cpod for more in depth grammar explanations etc.
flibberdie
January 01, 2009, 06:07 AMI bought the book a month or so ago and have given up on using it as a basic tool. The purpose of the system is to help the learner remember the meaning and pronunciation of characters. However, the system gets so convoluted, and not only because of the "stories". But, for what it's worth, here's a story that goes with the character 笑, xiao4, to smile:
"(The prince has married the princess from the neighboring kingdom and their first child is born. It is the custom to place a piece of bamboo in the baby's hand) If the baby ignores the bamboo it will die young, but the baby grasps it -- and the parents smile. / The two dwarf town criers have to trudge round the two kingdoms shouting out the good news."
I can't remember 800 stories like this. (And I don't think I would want to base my pronunciation of 笑 on how I say the word shout, either.) I'm interested in building my knowledge of radicals in characters, and am becoming more competent in reading, but this tool wasn't helpful to me. I think I am very dependent on context in my language learning. Surrounding words help me guess at or remember the meaning of characters. Likewise, typically surrounding words provide my best context for pronunciation, and often spur my remembering a word.
And if I do successfully commit a character to memory via an action picture, the "story" I invent is usually deeply personal. Thus more memorable. (Maybe my brain simply resists a set of tales involving a teddy, dwarves, a fairy and so on.)
I agree with urbandweller (above) that a variety of sources holds greatest potential for the long term. But this book's method is meant to provide a foundation, and while I'll keep it as a reference, I won't be using it as it is intended.
urbandweller
November 15, 2008, 02:02 PM@sue3
I have had the book now for only a week and am loving it too! I could go on and on about how great it is but i will try and keep it short. ha ha!
I find that there are no loose ends. They do a good job explaining everything and showing lots of stuff with funny pictures. I am a visual learner so this book helps me tremendously. I'm already working on the 4th chapter. This book acutally inspired me to start writing my characters properly with the disciplined stroke order. I really like the way it starts off with the most basic "easy" characters and builds into the more complex combinations. I acutally know most of the charcters at the start of the book but i am reading through and writing them anyways. For the first time, I am writing them properly though! The gradual progression really helps me to understand how these characters work. The review at the end of each chapter is really good too. I like the way it gives you the page number so if you forget one then just go back and do a quick review. Lastly, I have now set a new goal for my Chinese. I want to take the HSK eventually! I think with cpods help and using supplemental learning like this, I can accomplish that goal someday.
This is a great thing to do in addition to Cpod. Glad you like it too and I hope others will check it out.
-Adam
Sue
November 15, 2008, 07:09 PMHi Adam - in addition to all you mention, one thing I find really satisfying is the mnemonics for the tones: giant, fairy, teddy, dwarf and robot. I have tried SOOOO many ways to learn the tones and it always remained a hit-and-miss job up to now. In the end I almost gave it up because I found people understand me most times with my primitive Chinese. But now I finally think I've found the key to at least get 80+% right. So I like you am going to do all these characters again. On the one hand this will cement them into my brain and on the other it is exciting to use this new method. I am also a very visual learner so this really fits in with the way my brain works. Exciting !
simoncrosby
November 16, 2008, 06:15 AMYes, I have this book and I have learnt about 100 characters so far from it. I really like this books approach to splitting up the characters into their components and building a mnemonic story around them.
The approach of associating a one of the fairy tale characters to each tone works quite well as well, but when you are speaking remembering the stories is too slow. It is mostly valuable when you are trying to practice pronouncing words by your self but can't be bothered spending a minute looking it up in a dictionary to find the tone.
This is not a miracle approach however. It still does take a *lot* of time to learn and then constantly review the stories. But compared to the learn by rote approach it is a better way IMHO.
Info on the Heisig method (used by this book):
http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2008/06/30/ode-to-heisig-and-rtk
(Somewhat similar) approach to learning the tones:
http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2006/12/13/mandarin-tone-tricks
user76423
November 16, 2008, 09:32 AMSomething similar, but in German and traditional characters (more than 1000 characters so far, free to use (CC license), many downloads, mindmaps, ...
taeglich.chinesisch-trainer.de
bababardwan
November 17, 2008, 12:52 PMurbandweller,
I read this post of yours a few days ago with much interest.I couldn't find the book in bookstores here to check it out thoroughly unfortunately.I did find a book by the same authors and publisher from the year before [2006] called the first 100 Chinese characters which is a good start but I'm sure not as good as the book above.I went online to amazon which lets you flick through a few of the pages.I like the concept of the giant etc as a way of remembering the tones.What I was uncertain about was whether the characters are broken down into their radicals and the etymology of the characters/radicals is given.I could see some pictures for example showing how the shape of the character could resemble the idea it was representing,but I was unclear if this was the origin of the characters,or just made up by the authors to make it easier to remember.I'd particularly like a book that sets out the etymology thoroughly.Can you shed any light on this? Thanks for your post.
blackjacksadie
December 05, 2008, 03:06 AMI have had this book for a long time. It is wonderful! The only deficiency is my own slackness in maintaining a regular study schedule...It is not related to the actual etymology of the characters, however. The stories are strictly memorization gimmicks. They are really good at being memorization gimmicks. If you want a book on etymology, I'm sure there are lots available, but I've never seen anything quite as thorough as this book at creating a system for memorizing characters.
bababardwan
December 05, 2008, 04:35 AMThanks for clarifying that blackjacksadie.
urbandweller
December 05, 2008, 06:03 AM对不起bababardwan
i forgot to answer your question...but i see sadie did it.
I am on currently finishing chapter 7 and have worked through almost 100 characters already.
Sue
November 15, 2008, 12:09 PMUrbandweller - I got this book after reading your tip. It is soooooooo good, absolutely ingenious! and I too - like someone says on amazon - just wish I had found this book when I first started Chinese. But at least it will give me ideas on mnemonics to use for characters I want to learn (only the first 800 are covered by this book, Vol 1 - I do hope they publish further volumes). I certainly feel that it will open up another door to learning for me. Thanks
martin16
December 10, 2008, 06:53 AMurbandweller,
You can use the 连。。。也。。。in the following way, for example:
周围连个人影也看不到。
Meaning: Not a soul was to be seen all around.
huai_houzi
December 20, 2008, 08:51 AMMaybe I'm the only one, but I feel like learning characters this way (attaching A LOT of information to each character) is really inefficient. Maybe I'm wrong, though. I don't have the book...I just browsed through the sample pages on Amazon and that's the impression I got from it.
Sample: How to learn ”一“(yi)
.......................Here's what I worry the book is like:
How to spell "the"...
T stands for Train.
H stands for Harmonica.
E stands for Entertainment.
To remember how to spell, "the", just remember the story about a man on a Train playing the Harmonica for everyone's Entertainment.
Is this what the book is like? lol
changye
December 22, 2008, 04:24 AMHi huai_houzi,
That's just hilarious. I didn't know at all that learning the character "一" would be so difficult, haha. Maybe you can see two/three unicorns in the page where you learn "二" or "三".
Ironically enough, some mnemonics are more difficult to memorize than their target words and characters. And basically the same goes for etymologies of Chinese characters.
Etymological approach is not so helpful for memorizing Chinese characters, partly because the modern meanings of some characters are very different from their original meanings (本义).
To make matters worse, a character often has several etymologies, in short, there is still no accepted etymology, which I think is the most attractive part of etymologies, though!
changye
December 22, 2008, 11:32 AMHi huai_houzi,
P/S. To make matters much worse, etymological approach is less helpful in memorizing simplified Chinese characters than in memorizing traditional ones. Simplification sacrificed etymological information in characters in exchange for simplicity.
urbandweller
December 23, 2008, 03:37 PMyep its a funny way to learn the characters but for some of us this method works!
i use this book along with cpod lessons, a chinese dictionary, flashcards, childrens books, countless other books and speaking with natives every chance i get!
i have been able to absorb much more information by taking a broader approach and learning from a variety of different sources.
It keeps things interesting...
RJ
December 25, 2008, 04:01 PMI have to agree with huai houzi that this is very inefficient. I dont want to memorize 3000 stories along with the 3000 characters I want to learn. Each story also includes a giant, fairy, and a unicorn or whatever. It seems keeping them straight would eventually become a huge problem. This might work if there were only 20 items to memorize but there are thousands. Good luck with this approach. At least you will have lots of bedtime children's stories to tell your kids.
georgebkeith
January 01, 2009, 04:57 AMI bought the book last summer when I first saw it. I found it to be very interesting. But after about fifty characters, all the stories started to run together for me. But then again I already knew the most of the characters. My wife took to the book right away and loves it. She went from no ability to read to being able to keep up in the same Chinese class as me. Then again the book was not her only tool. She also was using a flashcard program I wrote for her phone with all of the words and sentences in the class textbook. So I can't really tell which worked for her. Still, she swears by the book. There are two kinds of people, those that...
urbandweller
December 10, 2008, 01:54 AMcharacter #84 is 连 lian2 meaning "linked up". It also says that it can be used for the following combination:
连。。。也。。。lián A yě B even A is/ does B
what does this mean? can anybody help me figure out an example sentence??
Thanks
Sue
November 09, 2008, 06:12 PMSounds good. I've always used the Reading & Writing Chinese (also Tuttle, McNaughton + Li Ying). But the one you recommend sounds more exciting and "modern". Have you only seen Vol 1 (I couldn't find more in amazon but I suppose if there's Vol 1 there'll be more to come soon. Will certainly try it myself. A new book is always a good motivation. Thanks for the tip.