Remembering Simplified Hanzi (James W. Heisig) VS. Tuttle Learning Chinese Characters (Matthews)

I haven't noticed any errors in the Matthews' book, but i've only gone through about 150 characters or so. Could you point out a few? Thanks.

Good luck! The Learning Chinese Characters Tuttle book did wonders for me and I know the Heisig method is the original. I used it on the first 800 characters and took it's method applying it to a total of 2,700 characters. This took me less than one year. Per my Anki Stats the retention of characters to recall is what is really impressive with this method:

92.2% Correct on Mature Cards (11,061 card reviews)

91.3% Correct on Young Cards (31,722 card reviews)

77.7% Correct on First Time Seen Cards (7,450 card reviews)

Heisig and Anki are an incredibly effective combination for me.

I had similar results when I used Heisig for Japanese. For me, it totally eliminated the need to write the characters over and over, a result which I found awesome.

When I started learning Chinese, I applied the Heisig aproach in a sort of ad hoc way, learning new characters as a mix of the Heisig approach and a study of character etymology (you have to admit -- some character etymologies are absolutely useless for the purpose of memorization). I've found the results to be less efficient than a straight Heisig approach, but it's less silly, and I learn more about etymology this way.

I think I have the book you are talking about, called "Reading and Writing Chinese" by W. McNaughton (Tuttle). It is sort of a dictionary with all the characters and words of the first three HSK vocab lists plus all the radicals.

The characters are grouped in the book according to common elements (and to some degree radicals). For quite a few characters it explains the etymological information, e.g. how the radical relates to the meaning, and where an element gives an indication of the sound.

It's not bad. You can use it as a stand alone study guide, but I haven't as yet.

Wasn't there a book that grouped hanzi by components such as these so you learnt them as groups of related chars separated by different radicals? I read about the approach but the book was not obtainable.

It sounded sensible to me as it seems easier to get to the meaning of chars with a phonetic relationship. Not sure how the books system coped with the 30%左右 that have no phonetic component!

Some easier way to get this would be good, I find as fast as I aquire more I loose the onesI had!

Bababardwan,

I mean it's easier to memorize, for example, these characters:

请、情、清、青、晴

The 青 is the phonetic component in all but one of the above, and the radical for each character supplies some semantic clues to the meaning of each character.

If you're Chinese and you already know these words but not how to write them, you learn how to write them much more quickly. If you're a foreigner and you're learning to speak and write at the same time, it's still much easier than if each character had been a separate pictogram.

Really sorry John,but I'm not clear on the point you're making with:

"crux of the matter is that phonetic components greatly aid the memorization of characters, as do identifiable component parts".

I do however understand what you mean by being unworkable if each character was a unique crafted pictogram.Furthermore I'm glad they're not this way as I think it's much more interesting the way the characters often link concepts to form new characters and the insights that sometimes gives into Chinese culture and thinking.Fascinating stuff.

"difficult to find their etymologies, unfortunately"

..yeah,now this is what I have gathered/suspected.It's not that there isn't any rhyme nor reason to it...it's more that their origins are difficult to find perhaps.Such a shame.Thanks for that explanation anyway mate.I wonder if some researcher will be able to trace it all one day.Are you that man changye?

Heh... Yeah, you could pin the blame partly on "mass production," but I think the crux of the matter is that phonetic components greatly aid the memorization of characters, as do identifiable component parts. The system would not be usable by such a large segment of the population (who have other things to do all day besides memorizing characters) if each character was a totally unique, carefully crafted pictogram.

Hi bababardwan

Back in the good old days, or in the early stage of Chinese characters, more than two thousands and several years ago, hanzi were "hand made" by skilled professionals, and those characters were often semantically carefully created. Later, the era of mass-production came, and people made a lot of Chinese characters mainly using both semantic and phonetic parts, which are difficult to find their etymologies, unfortunately.

You guys obviously understand this way better than I but I'd love to understand why that is the case.Surely the characters were trying to represent something and there was some rhyme or reason behind them.I know it's complex and what may have originally started out as simple pictographs then ended up with the evolution of the characters and language with much more complex characters being formed from different component parts.

Hi bababardwan

Etymology-based mnemonics work well for some basic Chinese characters, but not for most 形声文字, which consist of semantic and phonetic parts. Unfortunately, most Chinese characters are classified as 形声文字 (some say more than 90%). Basically, etymologies are for "entertainment", but not for mnemonics.

Thanks John for your answer.I have gathered somewhere that the origins and etymology are uncertain and lost for many.I'm not sure how true this is.All the same,I'd rather build my mnemonics if needed on what it is representing [rather than making up something totally unrelated],such as in this case I'll now remember that hong character is representing a roof over the gong phonetic and having a gong [not sure how a hand over a silk coccoon gives us forearm or upper arm except maybe the coccoon shape leading a way from a hand could represent it...I'm guessing of course and maybe the reasoning is totally different or lost] under my roof would indeed be pretty magnificent.I do realise of course that there are hundreds if not thousands of characters with phonetics or radicals under mian.Also your example seems to be a character that is pretty much phonetically based only.Isn't it a smallish minority that would fit into such a category? I'm wondering what percentage would have a fascinating little story,and what percentage would at least have some meaning to be gleaned from the character.I'm very interested in what you can teach in this regard because I realise you've been down this road and have encountered and mastered way more characters so you understand the difficulty I'm sure of similar characters and remembering them all and shortfalls in my reasoning.So thanks again John and any further insights will be much appreciated.

bababardwan,

The problem is that many, many characters don't have a succinct, fascinating little story. They're more like the etymology for 宏 [from Wenlin]:

> 宏 [hóng] 宏伟 magnificient; 宏大 great; 宏观 macroscopic

> From 宀 (mián) 'roof' and 厷 gōng phonetic.

It's for characters like this that Heisig's approach come to the rescue.

I agree John about making your own to make em stick.That is if one has to go the way of mnemonics.But I think better than that is understanding the characters origins/etymology in the first place so we can both see and try and understand what they are trying to represent and how they've come to be what they are today.Why is it so hard to get good resources on that? Why is it that it doesn't seem to be taught? I have found only one resource so far and it is not comprehensive but is a nice introduction.

Yes, John,

There is a long introduction to the book. I've read part of it. I guess I should have read it all.

Apparently, Mr Richardson contacted Mr. Heisig and ask him about doing a Chinese version of the popular "Remembering the Kanji",

I find this is more the case if you use somene else's mnemonic instead of making up your own. The creative (but frequently mentally taxing) process of coming up with a mnemonic is what really makes it stick.

The challenge, then, is to create mnemonics in a systematic way to ease the burden on your memory. That's where Heisig's system (and apparently Tuttle's is a variation of it) comes in.

Heisig states in his book (I've only used the original Remembering the Kanji, for Japanese) that it's best if the learner can come up with his own mnemonics. And he's totally right!

changye,

Yes. And when I first started learning to write, I showed them (Hong Kong wife, mother-in-law, co-workers) skritter and my new book. They were mildly amused. It finally came down to the fact that they wanted me to get out my paper and pencil and write & copy the characters many many times.

They may be right.

不客气

btw,in the copy I have of the Analects, Confucius is referred to as Master,not sir,but I won't insist on it mate,just a tip.

Thank you sir!

ok mate,well I'll go back to a character from my original avatar. :)

I miss the man with the head almost missing. I'm sorry I don't like change. However, I will try to accept it.

I don't mind the request at all and I noted the "respectfully".More than anything I am just curious as to why.Pray tell.I'll definitely consider it.

only a request. keep it.

为什么？

oh. and bababardwan,

Can I respectfully ask you to consider changing your avatar back to the previous one? I assume it's from that blockbuster movie which I never saw.

Yes, they are just stories to help you remember the characters. They are not really related to how the characters were formed and evolved in the first place.

bababardwan,

I think the stories are just made up to help you to remember the characters. Like I said above, some of the stories are bit too abstract.

You can actually download the first 5 or 6 chapters for free.

hkboy,

Are these stories just made up ones to try and help remember the characters,or are they the original stories..ie..related to how the characters were formed and evolved in the first place?

lechuan,

You are the first one I've seen that mentioned "250 Essential Chinese characters for everyday use". I'm looking at it as I type this as it sits on my shelf. I didn't get far with it either but I probably didn't give it a good chance.

I did a search and saw Heisig's book would be out in Sept. but who knows. I'm up to 120 characters in the book so I'm not in a hurry to get part 2.

I too have both, though my heisig is the traditional char version (mistaken christmas present but one that could prove useful later）. I'd actually forgotten I had the tuttle version as I just could not get on with the giant, fairy etc. Somehow it seems hard for me.

That said I am not that artistic and struggle to create images in my head so it might suit some people better.

I have both Heisig and Matthew's books. Matthew's method is an extension of Heisig's methods. It extends the stories to include pronunciation, as well as continuosly introducing vocabulary based on the character's you already know. Heisig does not incorporate any phonetics (no pronunciation at all is given in the main text; you have to go to the appendix). Matthew's only covers up to 800 characters, so I'll probably end up switching to McNaughton (using the Tuttle/Heisig 'method) after. Neither Tuttle (Matthews), nor University of Hawaii Press (Heisig) are currently planning on releasing Part II of their respective books, at least that's what they stated when I contacted them last year.

While the stories seem to be a bit of mental clutter at first, I find them invaluable to memorize characters that are new to me. I only bother learning the pronunciation part if I'm not already familiar with the word. Once I know the character well enough, I can usually dispense with the story; it served it's purpose.

The mnemonic method (combined with repitition spacing flashcard testing) is the only method character method that is working for me given that I can only spend a few hours a per week on learning Chinese.

"250 Essential Chinese characters for everyday use" made me mad because it introduced the characters strictly by frequency without concern their component build-up.

I see. Thanks for the explanation. It does indeed sound like Heisig's approach.

I'm actually not familiar with Heisig's books for Chinese, which I understand also incorporate phonetic mnemonics, so I'm not sure how similar those are.

(Doesn't anyone out there have both books??)