Tips on learning Chinese characters?

simonpettersson

January 10, 2010, 10:52 AM

I totally draw the characters. I have piles of paper with characters on. When I do my flashcard practice, I draw them on paper, or sometimes just with mu finger in the air, if I don't have a pen and paper with me.

As to how to remember the characters, I use mnemonics. Knowing the radicals helps. Try to make every part of the character into something that's easy to remember. The parts you don't know what they mean, you can just make up something based on what they look like. Here's an example:

Take the word 喜欢 (xi3huan1, to like). I prefer to learn words, not characters by themselves. You can use this method with single characters, too, of course. So looking at the first character, it consists of 士 (scholar), 豆 (bean) and 口 (mouth). The scholar really likes putting beans in his mouth. Yum yum! You can even make a mental image of a scholar munching down that bean goodness with a content grin on his face. The second character has a right hand radical on the left, and let's say we don't (yet) know what the right part is. It looks weird. But using a bit of imagination, we can pretend it looks like something. I think it looks like a guy with a broken arm. So now we have the image of a guy with a broken right hand. We could add this to the image of the scholar to get an image of a scholar with a broken right hand who doesn't care, since he's got all these lovely beans to much on, or we could make to separate images, one of the bean-munching scholar and one of a guy who actually LIKES breaking his right hand.

That sort of mnemonics really helps. Well, at least it helps me a lot. Memorizing new characters actually gets easier the more characters you already know, since you'll recognize the parts of the characters more often.

xiaophil

January 11, 2010, 10:45 PM

Good luck doodlemonster!

orangina

January 10, 2010, 02:44 PM

For me, learning the characters is very important. I know not everyone feels this way, but I really think knowing the character well enough to write it gives me an anchor to pin the sound of the word and the definition of the word to. I actually feel like I can hear spoken language better if I know what it looks like, and what it feel like (to write it.) And I do like skritter, but nothing replaces pen and paper. (Unless you are a lucky dog and have a notepad computer. Even then, very tactile pen and paper are. Very nice.) Write the characters. Over and over.

But then I have friends who cannot read or write characters at all, but their spoken language skills are far better than mine. And part of me envys that. Afterall, I am learning chinese so I can talk with people!    sigh. one day...

One thing I did in my last apartment, and I am just realizing I have yet to do it in my current place, was label everything with hanzi and pinyin. Cuts out the translation step.

You don't need to know that 笔= pen,

you need to know that 笔=

And 笔 is a good one for simon's technique. The top part is bamboo, the bottom part is hair. How is traditional chinese writing done? Using a brush made of animal hair with a bamboo handle. So a very logical character. Not all will be so easy of course. But now that you know the radical for bamboo you can see it in other places like 筷子，chopsticks... also often made of bamboo.

Anyway, I love the characters. They are my friends... though some of them are a bit cantankerous and harder to get to know than others.

BEBC

January 10, 2010, 06:57 PM

Yes, lots of practice with pen and ink is necessary not only to write the characters, but to recognise them. If you want to reognise and retain the characters you have to do a lot of reading, but nothing too ambitious or you'll get discouraged....10 characters a week works for me. It's surprising how much you forget if you try to push it too much.

My solution was to work my way through the 2 volumes of "Read Chinese" (Far Eastern Publications. Yale University). Each volume introduces 300 characters, and is full of stories and sentences which constantly use old characters whilst introducing new ones.The text is set at a level which an Elementary/Lower Intermediate reader could cope with. Unfortunately, most of the text is in Traditional characters, so I had to convert the traditional characters into Simplified, which was quite a bit of work for someone who hasn't got time to learn both sets. I thought about posting all the lessons, transcribed into Simplified, here on CPod, but I'm not sure what the copyright implications are.....I don't fancy a lengthy spell lodging at Her Majesty's pleasure.

evgeniyazhu

January 10, 2010, 10:46 PM

Learning charecters is all about your photographic memory and using your imagination. The more you learn the better your photographic memory gets, yet the faster you learn later on. The only answer is just do it.

Personally, writing charecters on self-adhesive notes and sticking them on the wall in front of my desk really helps learning charecters, as I spend a lot of time sitting at my desk.

I agree that you shouldn't be too pushy with your self. Learning Chinese is like going to gym, it is always better to underachieve rather than overachieve. Working too hard will eventually take its toll.

加油 ! Good luck with your studies!

orangina

January 11, 2010, 01:14 AM

Definitely agree, stressing yourself out about it isn't ging to help. You need a pace you can maintain. Also don't worry if you sometimes don't study them at all. Forward progress is always good, even if it is slower than you want.

xiaophil

January 11, 2010, 02:28 AM

doodlemonster

I thought about this long and hard about three months ago. Just writing one character over and over is too boring. I also, and I feel bad for saying this, find that Skritter is just not as good as writing by hand (although can be very helpful for learning stroke order). My final solution was this:

Find a textbook that is at your level. One you are interested in is best. Make sure there is pinyin above or below hanzi. Having an English translation as well could be helpful, depending on you.

1. Cover up the hanzi and try to write down the whole line.
   
2. You will almost definitely miss at least one character, perhaps many. Just leave a blank or write in the pinyin for the ones you don't know.
3. After you write a line as best as you can, go back and write the characters you couldn't nail down at least once, more depending on how you feel about your progress.
4. Go to the next line and start the same process over.

Tip: If you find this a bit boring, put on some headphones and listen to some music. I find that I can start to daydream and the time goes by quickly.

Finally, since you are young, you have plenty of time to nail down Chinese. I agree there is no need to stress yourself out. However, a little stress is good if you want to be among the best, or you simply want to be your best. Don't dissuade yourself from working hard if you have a strong urge to learning Chinese. Remember, no pain, no gain. But again, don't kill yourself over it.

orangina

January 11, 2010, 10:49 AM

That is a very good idea! I tend to practice sentences, or groups of words, not just one character over and over. I like that in your method you are producing characters, not just copying them.I think I will try your way. I have a few books I can use already.

doodlemonster seems the self-mativated type, I think she will work hard and succeed!

sebire

January 10, 2010, 12:30 PM

Learning to read is reasonably distinct from learning to write. You have to write the characters. A lot. Using Anki in recall mode, try to write the character, not just picture what it looks like. When you're learning it, in recognition mode, write out the character several times before answering what the pinyin/meaning is. Then next time when you see it in recall mode it'll be easier.

Unfortunately, no way of sidestepping hard work! Just keep plugging away, it'll get easier.

WillBuckingham

January 11, 2010, 12:57 PM

I agree that Skritter is not a complete solution, although it's pretty damn wonderful. I write on Skritter with a tablet, but it doesn't seem quite the same as writing with a pen.

Having said this, once I've encountered a character in Skritter, it really doesn't take long to "firm it up", so to speak, with writing properly by hand.

I've recently taken to copying out chunks of text by hand - CPod dialogues are a good length for this - and surprised at how helpful this is. I too like your method, Xiaophil, so I may add this modification in my approach and see how it works.

Onward!

awesomechueng

January 11, 2010, 01:36 PM

one tip i really wanna share with your guys is go buy a witting paper.. i mean a practice paper with chinese character printed on it. also u will have a relatively transparent paper put between every two pages. facsimiling is the best to pratice even for chinese.

 

hope that would be helpful.

 

 

orangina

January 11, 2010, 01:52 PM

Yeah, I like using those books.

BEBC

January 11, 2010, 07:26 PM

Awesomechueng : Can you give us a rough idea of how many characters the average student in China is expected to learn in a year ? If you learn 500 characters each year, that would bring the student to about the 5000 level by the age of 14. Is around 5000 characters the number of characters which the average 14-year-old in China knows ?

Cheers.

EmmaLouise1

January 11, 2010, 08:13 PM

Awwww, thanks guys for all your help! ^^

I think I'll definitely be trying the pen/paper method a lot more from now on. I mean, Skritter was great and I loved using it with my graphics tablet ^^ but overall, I don't think I got an awful lot out of it. I mean, yeah, it was really good, especially for stroke order, but there was just something missing that doesn't quite compare to good old pen and paper.

I did try and dodge round the idea of having to learn to read and write Chinese for a while, but eventually, it was just holding me back so I just decided to drop myself in the deep end and go for it! ^^ While in Hong Kong, I bought a copy of one of my favourite (well it was at the time :P, now I'm just sick of it :P haha) fiction books but in Chinese (much to the confusion of the checkout lady :P). Let me tell you, the first time I opened that book, I think I died from fright! haha Not only was it the wrong way round (whole book was from the back to front) but all the writing was vertical rather than horizontal! And I'd never seen so much hanzi before in my life! Needless to say, it kept me very occupied for the remaining week of my holiday, much to the annoyance of my family :P (I also whipped my book out on the train and turned to a chapter and pretended to start reading :P I got so VEEERY strange looks from some elderly Chinese men! haha)

But what I did with my book was open to the first (proper) page and just skimmed it to see if there were actually any characters I recognised. To my surprise, there were! Considering I'd never actually sat down and learn any hanzi before, this was quite an achievement! I'd managed to recognise 我, 你, 的, and 九! After a bit of internet-savvy research, I'd learn that adding 们 to the end of 我 made 'we' ^^ So I just continued like this, translating sentence by sentence (using an online dictionary of course :P) along side the English version of the book (which was extremely similar, if not identical in translation to the Chinese version!) and meticulously writing down any characters and their meanings I didn't recognise. Some I did a bit more research on like 就 and made a note to look into at a later date on CPod since I found it was a devilish little character :P

So a little story there about what I did on my holiday :P I have to say, it did help my reading a lot. I'll admit, I'm still not past page one (hahaha!) but I'm getting there and starting to piece little chunks together ^^ I think before I was very sheltered and wary about exposing myself to 'too much' Chinese at once, worried that somehow my brain would explode and I'll never be able to learn Chinese again! hehe :P But for me, I think that little book translating exercise was extreeeemly helpful as it made me want to learn EVEN MORE so I could get that much better :P I've still got the Chinese book sitting on my shelf, and I think my ULTIMATE challenge would to one day be able to read it! I did start a post about the same book during the summer when I came back from Hong Kong about translating it. Some one suggested it could be an on-going thread? As in, I originally posted the first paragraph to ask for some help translating it and others suggested I could do something like posting paragraphs/chapters every now and then and everyone could have a go translating them. Perhaps a fun 'series' we can use to practice our reading and translating skills? Maybe I'll start a thread and see where we go from there. Who knows, I might one day buy another Chinese fiction book once I've finished the first! :P

P.S. xiaophil - I definitely like your idea! It's cost effective (free compared to Skritter :P) and it's something really practical and perhaps fun I could see myself doing. Who knows, I could even link it in with my translation of my Chinese book! :D 

BEBC

January 11, 2010, 08:16 PM

That's a good analogy, Ev. In the gym it's best to "stay hungry" rather than to blitz yourself for a few months, then become disappointed with the results. Those huge guys who work out 6 hours every day have been doing it for years, and are all on steroids. Wait a minute - there's a thought - I wonder if steroids will improve my Chinese :-)

BrokenJoker

January 11, 2010, 10:51 AM

I am learning to read but not to write as I just don't have the time. If i need to write i use a typing programme.

I develop a picture of the character in my head. The problem is that the picture is a general one and not exact and I often confuse similar looking characters. The only way round this constant repitition. I have started to use flashcards of words (not charachters).

I guess this is not the most efficient way.