@doctorcolossus,

I know what you mean. Even after clicking on the pencil at first I didn't realize that the drop-down box had appeared!

How did you like the Heisig method?

I was planning to switch to Heisig's "Rememering the Hanzi" after finishing this book (unless "Remembering Chinese Characters Volume 2" gets released by the time I'm finished Volume 1).

Thanks, lechuan.  The interface wasn't obvious to me.  Typically mousing over a site component intended to produce some action shows a special cursor, but in the case of the pencil it's just a normal arrow.

Back on topic, I agree that the mnemonic stories are eventually replaced by direct knowledge, but I try as hard as I can to remember the stories just in case I forget the meaning or pronunciation later!  I started with this book about a week ago and am up to nearly one-hundred characters.  It's taken some getting used to (I was previously using Heisig's RTK), but the method is also working well for me.

Just discovered this discussion.

I have been using this book for the past we months and it has helped me retained over 300 characters. That's about 300 more than I've succesfully been able to retain in the past using rote methods.

You only need to keep the stories until you've learned the character well enough to drop it. Some characters I don't bother with the story because I just rememer them. Some characters I find the stories essential during the critical period where the character is not new, but not yet learned enough to be automatic.

In my browser, Clicking on the pencil icon is drops down a small text box that allows me to edit my comment. It is seperate from the regular text box.

Well that's annoying.  It says I have 14 minutes left to edit my comment, and yet it doesn't seem to offer any actual way to edit it...

Furthermore, the reason I want to edit my post is because the WYSIWYG editor broke the link I tried to give.  It should lead to:

http://hskflashcards.com/download.php

... rather than:

#mce_temp_url#

]-:<  If anyone knows how to edit posts, please let me know.  The words, "14 minutes left to edit your comment," are not a hyperlink, nor is the pencil icon to their left, and neither is there any other link that I can see presented which allows for editing.

@Huai Houzi & Chang Ye:
I also found the characters for the first few characters to be overkill. Huai Houzi -- you probably read the book's own response to this reaction for this yourself, under the third character's entry, but for others getting information about the book from this thread:

"Clearly you don't really need stories to remember the meanings of the characters 一, 二 and 三. The stories are given to get you used to how pictures and stories work for both basic and composite character."

As with Heisig's books, the explanations do seem to get significantly shorter as the course progresses and it's assumed that you've started to get the hang of it.  On the other hand I indeed found these first few stories more difficult to remember.  I suspect this is due to the factors that a) I am already familiar with these characters, and thus have little sincere interest learning mnemonic devices for them; b) the style of the stories is new to ne, which is in fact the reason I'm making an effort to assimilate them all the same (to habituate myself to that style; and c) the stories do contain a great deal more data than the Heisig ones I've grown accustomed to, by virtue of including two pronunciation mnemonics each (sound-word and tone).

@George B. Keith:
I would be very keen to obtain either the source code for your phone-app or its raw data, for the purpose of porting it to Windows and *nix platforms.

Hrmm.. so far I have found trying to learn singular characters, out of context of dialogues, almost impossible to retain. Knowing the character 老 and the character 师 by themselves allows me to read outloud the pronunciation but not understand the meaning of them. And even if I knew their individual meanings, it doesn't help me all that much:

老    lǎo    /prefix used before the surname of a person or a numeral indicating the order of birth of the children in a family or to indicate affection or familiarity/old (of people)/venerable (person)/experienced/of long standing/always/all the time/of the past/very/outdated/(of meat etc) tough/

师 [師]    shī    /a division (military)/teacher/master/expert/model/

Yay!! err.. what?

Yes.. of course 老师 = lǎoshī = teacher.

My point here is that I learned to recognise both the characters, as separate characters, from dialogues involving discussion about teachers and the like. Now I can recognise and pronounce each individual and also if I see either of them, especially 师, with other character combination then I have an idea of what the meaning is.

I guess if I had the time to sit in a classroom (or a home-made classroom of sorts) and drill singular characters over and over, I would have a chance to learn them individually but I find that I retain it more from dialogue that makes contextual sense.

I find that 笑 is just a character that looks like it's meaning anyway (what's the visual version of onomatopoeia?) The bamboo are the eyes, it's kind of a smile underneath. 哭 is easy to remember for the same reason. 爸 looks like eyebrows, 'tache, teeth and goatee. 山 looks vaguely mountain-like, etc.

choam:

Thats exactly what is supposed to happen...after awhile the silly stories fall away and ultimately leave the characters lodged in your memory banks...after 2 months of using the book i have found that to be the case...its a little strange but it works. Also, another thing that helps is to write every new character like 10 times. I keep a little 50 cent character writing tablet with the book.

But, after experimenting with many different learning techniques i always go back to the most effective one...CPOD!

Everything else like this book is only supplementary...

I am starting off the year with my first Intermediate lesson called Shopping. Its an oldie but goodie with Ken and Jenny.

Wo mai dongxi!

Let's kick our Chinese up a notch this year people!!!

I got this book after reading the 1st post & I'm finding the book very useful, my previous retention rate for characters was appalling. I too had an issue with having to remember tonnes of excess info (the stories) I thought my brain would fill up! But it is working. 

I guess its like watching a movie or going the theater -- its pretty easy to remember most of a movie . Its important to review frequently though to lock the items into LT memory. After a while the stories fall away and the meaning & pronunciation just pop into your head. 

The component "person with head bent" is actually given in the book as "die young", broken down as "beret" + "big" and defined by this story:

"The child had loved wearing a beret which was too big for him (he had wanted to grow up to be a commando), but tragically he died young. (Picture the beret on the poor lad's coffin at the funeral)."

What your more easily remembered story is missing is the giant/dwarf/teddy/fairy character that tells you the tone.  (dwarf = 4th tone)  If I could actually remember all the stories, that component would be quite useful.

笑, xiao4, laugh, has two components: bamboo, 竹, and person with head bent, 夭.

Story: A 夭 person with head bent reads on 竹 bamboo tablets something humorous and 笑 laughs.

Much simpler and more easy to remember.

More (sorry, in German)...

Follow me on Twitter.

I 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. 

I 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...

I 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.

yep 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...

Hi 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.

Hi 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!

Maybe 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 

urbandweller,

There is a QW on this very pattern.

• Qing Wen - Even you can use the (连...都...) pattern

urbandweller,

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. 

character #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

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.

Thanks for clarifying that blackjacksadie.

I 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.

urbandweller,

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.

Something 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

Yes, 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

Hi 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 !

@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

Urbandweller - 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

Sounds 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.