Learning the Characters - Hanzi

Originally, I thought that I could get by with just spoken Chinese. My first trip proved me wrong: I got lost and even though I had a map, I could not read it since there was no English. I knew some traditional characters from my former formal education some 40 years ago but these really did not help me much.

Where ever you go in China, you will want to be able to read signs to know where you are at. This was a trouble saver on my 3rd trip to China:

I was with a group that traveled from Qinhuangdao to Beijing using a paid bus driver. From Beijing we were then to fly back to the United States. We even had a Chinese translator with us. But because I could read the signs and understand them, I was the first person to notice that the bus driver had missed the turn off the expressway to the airport. (The Chinese translator was asleep.) Had I not noticed that we had missed the turn, we would have missed our flights back to the US.

I really do believe that learning characters is now an essential way of improving your Chinese and that you should definitely learn the characters.

I purchased PlecoDict and it is terrific for flashcards (and also as a mobile electronic dictionary). Pleco allows you to laboriously create your own flashcard lists, but it also lets you import lflashcard lists prepared by others. Has ChinesePod or anyone else prepared Pleco flash card lists of characters within individual ChinesePod lessons series of lessons? If so, where could I get them? Alternatively, is there some way of creating flashcard lists of ChinesePod personal vocabulary lists?

entirely agree with AuntySue (re: Pleco) and RJBkerki (re: learning characters). Even though Pleco has very tolerant handwriting recognition, it's essential to also learn stroke order.

One more thought. You would be considered functionaly illiterate if you spoke any other language and could not read or write. You are severely limiting yourself if you choose not to learn characters in my opinion. It also provides an associative medium which will assist you greatly in learning the spoken language. Good luck. Im sure you got more feedback than you wanted.

Ste5en

Ultlimately it depends on what your goals are and what works best for you. I believe characters are a necessary foundation, and yes you should learn the radicals. I may never learn to pronounce correctly but reading I can master and with it comes great satisfaction. Consider also that if you ever can not be understood, by writing down a few characters, all will be clear regardless of dialect or area accents involved. The radicals are useful in case you want to look up an unfamiliar character. Electronic dictionaries work by picking one of the 250 (I forget the exact number) radicals and the number of additional strokes which narrows your choices to a managable number and the mystery character is then identified. Understanding strokes is also necessary but fairly simple. I find it very useful that I can write emails to friends in China even though I can not yet speak well. Using the computer only requires a reading knowledge of characters and you can write them since you choose from all options corresponding to the pinyin entered.

Just start studying with CPod and I think it will become clear what you need.

The best, by a looooong shot, is PlecoDict. It's not real cheap but compared with the price of big paper dictionaries it's not too bad, and you do get your money's worth.

The new version is currently in beta has many improvements, including extra dictionaries, stroke order, various modes of working flashcards, audio, document reader, and so on.

The old/current version is excellent enough as it is (good dictionaries, flashcards, radicals, pinyin hanzi or handwritten input for lookups, simp/trad). If you purchase now, you automatically get the new version when it's released, and you could participate in the beta testing too if you're adventurous. Check out pleco.com, and use their Forum to ask questions.

What are the best mobile phone/pda softwares for learning characters? I use Windows Mobile 5. Also, what are the best dictionaries for mobile phones?

liuyan,

You make a good point. For a long time I concentrated only on learning to read characters, not on writing them, because I could always use a word processor for writing. After I decided to pay more attention to being able to write characters by hand (because on the few occasions that I needed to do so it was embarrassing not to be able to do so), there was an unexpected benefit for reading: I found I could much more readily read characters that were in a different font or size from what I was used to.

I recommended getting this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Writing-Chinese-Simplified-Character/dp/0804835098/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-4956157-6148719?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1184121092&sr=8-1

I do think it's important to learn the Hanzi. For me, it helps solidify the connections in my brain...it makes Chinese "make sense."

I use the Tuttle workbooks (the "250 Chinese Characters for Everyday Use" ones), but every so often I also go through all of my old ChinesePod lesson pdfs and write out all the phrases and sentences I possibly can with the Hanzi I've learned. That helps me connect the written with the spoken.

kmkfr, I don't think that the article Sobriaebritas refers too is necessarily not serious or totaly outdated, it looked at reading development in "Chinese primary school children age 7-10, native speakers of Putonghua, who had not started to study English or other languages".

So, with due respect, it's not about you, or most of us on this forum.

Extensive reading is obviously the way to go to learn hanzi, but you know what, it's the same with any language. There is a frighteningly high level of function illiteracy in adults in the West... of course Chinese makes the going rougher.

I too have often mused that I have spent so much time learning Chinese, largely because of the characters... And yet I couldn't think of learning without them, in fact I'd never have started if it hadn't been for hanzi.

One thing I notice time and again, which I feel is limiting my progress, is when I start reading say a news article, I have to lookup a number of words, read them aloud, take a good look, a few similar ones or words containing it come to mind, etc. But as I keep reading and this character (or word) recurs, I give it less and less thought and can go through a few sentences very quickly without sub-vocalization. It's good news, shows I get straight to the meaning, but I'm not sure in the end I've really memorized the link between sound and meaning. So on the one hand it looks like I'm making progress, but I fear that somehow it won't stick, if I need to reuse it I might recall the writing (or parts of) but not how to pronounce it.

learn to write can definitely help you to understand various signs and ad posts on the stores on any Chinese streets, help you locate places

i would focus more on the speaking part because that's the most useful... but, if you wanna learn the characters, the best way to learn is to memorize and read a lot of chinese. when you come across an unfamiliar character, look it up and then say it to yourself...buy a book to help you (i use "Reading and Writing Chinese", published by Tuttle Language Library). another good way, if your computer can type chinese, is to talk to chinese people on instant messengers in chinese

The Tuttle flashcards are a good start, but there are two problems. One is that as wei1 xiao4 says they are character based and not word based, which doesn't help in retention. Also I find that it's a problem that they have the character on one side and the pinyin along with the English on the other. I found it meant that I wasn't learning the tone along with the character. I've started making my own, which means you can learn characters as you use them and they seem to stick a bit better that way. And the kick of being able to sit and write in Chinese more than makes up for all the time spent on it, even if it does get you funny looks when you write on trains.

xiaohu,

I agree, extensive reading is the only way to really learn words and characters. Flashcards can be useful though, to reinforce characters that you are on the verge of learning, the ones that you've seen a few times and almost know but not quite. And sometimes switching to flashcards for five minutes can serve as a nice break between two reading sessions.

Flashcards used in reverse can be useful for seeing how well you remember how to write a particular character. Not a vital skill anymore since we all use computers, but good to review once in a while.

And to answer your question: Yes, I do think you should learn the characters. I think it is important that you know how to write it if you learn how to speak it. Letters are more fun to write in Hanzi than pinyin!! Harder? Yes. ;)

As with any language, reading and writing reinforces what has been learned. Same in Chinese, however the input method and characters make it more difficult to learn.

I found that using a Palm with Plecodict (www.pleco.com) loaded not only gave me a great electronic dictionary, it also helped me learn stroke order. Believe it or not, this isn't the most difficult part of Chinese (comprehension is to me).

Xiaohu's comment above (which I agree with) gave me the following exercise idea:

Could Chinesepod create a writing exercise where key vocabulary words or full sentances (in characters) are flashed and users are asked to retype them without errors in Chinese? Think of it as The Fix for learning vocabulary by typing in Chinese. You could just flash up the existing Expansion sentances, or some portion thereof.

Or, at a minimum, how about allowing us to write in the answers in the fill-the-blank section of the Exercises instead of click-and-drag?

龙飞

For me flashcards just didn't work.

The thing I found works best for me is READING, READING, READING, WRITING, WRITING, WRITING! Once you get a basic knowledge of a few hundred characters (which will be the hardest part) it gets progressively easier. But the thing about reading is that it reinforces the characters so much because you're always making a connection within the context of real language instead of just trying to cram a single word, it's basic meaning and combined meanings into your brain by rote without having a context to refer it to. Also if you forget a character or two, you have the context to remind you what it is.

Writing (via computer pinyin or zhuyin imput) is another great way to reinforce both visual identification of the characters but also combinations, many which might have the same basic pronunciation but use different characters so the software can essentially distill it down to multiple choice. Also when your writing the language is actually COMING FROM YOUR OWN MIND, so it sinks in much better.

Paper flashcards are kind of unwieldy. How are you going to carry around a few thousand of them? A computer-based solution (desktop or mobile) seems much more practical.

Having said that, if ChinesePod ever gets around to creating an online store selling T-shirts and coffee mugs, flashcards would be an obvious item. They could be sold in thematic packs (measure words, etc), with a ChinesePod logo and URL printed on them, so if students saw their friends using them, it would be a nice viral item.

I have sent the following suggestion to Help at ChinesePod:

=============================

I would be immensely helpful if you could add to your system a mechanism for printing out ChinesePod flashcards for students carry.

When I took a one semester Chinese course at Pasadena City College, the college would let me print out the flashcards in the order they were used in the course. To download, I went online to the College's Chinese Course Website, and downloaded two Microsoft Word documents - the first with the front side of the flash cards which had the Chinese Characters (10 to a page), and the second having the back side of the flash cards, showing the English translation of the Chinese character, as well as the pin yin (also 10 to a page). To print them out, I was instructed to use a standard business card cardstock, such as Avery # 8865 Two-side Printable Business Cards, which allow you to print 10 business cards per page. I would put the card stock page in my printer, print the Chinese side, then turn the page over and print the English/Pinyin side. After separating each set of 10 cards per card-stock page, I would have ten two-sided flash cards - one side with the Chinese Characters, and the other side with the English translation and pin yin pronunciation. I would group these into lesson groups, punch holes in the corners and fasten them together with binder rings from Staples, and carry card groups with me to study. This system was very useful, and I got an A in the class partly because I took advantage of this system.

It seems to me that you could easily develop a similar system to let to let users select their own sets of flash cards to be printed. You could format these into individualized MS Word or PDF pages to be downloaded by users, and users could print their own flash cards to carry with them. This feature would dramatically help students to learn to read and write their Hanzi characters.

Doesn't hanzi have base characters? Radicals I think they're called? Would it make sense to learn those first then go into vocab?

I use Tuttle flash cards called "Chinese in a Flash". I have three volumes of them so far. There are probably more. You can carry a stack with you wherever you go. But I try to arrange them into word groupings because it helps me remember them better than just individual characters. When I let time lapse, I often forget them and start over again. I think my problem may be because I read them and don't really practice writing them. So it seems really crucial to do both, although extremely time consuming. I don't know any other way. I'd also value suggestions. Chinese kids just practice, practice, practice. I do like Chinesepod's flash cards for whole words and phrases. I too wish I could print them. As you learn more and more vocabulary, syllables keeps repeating themselves and you really want to make a connection between what you hear and the probable meaning. You'll find yourself wanting to know which "zhu" is that or which "jie". You'll only be able to make the connection if you know the character. Like you I'm only an elementary learner, so I too would appreciate any help the "wiser" poddies can give us.

I can learn the Hanzi more easily when I write letters in chinese to my chinese penpals. First I found a chinese penpal who spoke mandrin ( www.penpalparty.com ). I tryed to write as much as I could in Hanzi! I found it easy to remember the characters that way...

~italiana

Sobriaebritas this article is not serious or totaly outdated.

You could take me as a typical counter-example.

I can read more than 2500 characters and write them on a computer.

But I can only write by hand less than 150 (my name and some other which are usefull for annotation).

It's a shame ... but I can easily work with it.

"Reading depends on writing, in Chinese"

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/102/24/8781.pdf?ck=nck

Then, what iis the best way to learn the characters? Flashcards? If so do I purchase them, and if so what are the best ones to purchase?

Is there any way to assemble the ChinesePod on-screen flashcards and print them out on cardstock, or something? When I took a university class in Chinese I could print out all the course characters on stardard business card cardstock, with the Hanzi on one side, and the English and Pinyin on the other Is there a way to do this with ChinesePod?

Whether or not to learn characters seems almost like a religious question with lots of really strong feelings on each side. :)

My advice is to learn the characters. It's an enormous amount of work (I've often mused that I've studied more in learning Chinese over the last few years than I did in college!), but it pays off as your level advances. If you can only speak, you're limited in learning what people around you want to talk about, whereas if you can read and you want to learn to talk about the migration pattern of ducks in Chinese you absolutely can -- just find an article about it somewhere.

Learning the characters is certainly time-consuming. You have to get used to walking around with pockets stuffed with flash cards, and get used to the 'Learned 10, forgot nine of yesterday's' feeling. Personally though, and my level is not much if at all above yours, I don't really think you're learning Chinese until you do. There is a point at which the effort pays back in that you realise how many of the characters that you already know can be recombined to make new meanings. You also are able to make connections between different parts of the language that pinyin only would never alow you to see.

There is a middle course which is to study the characters enough to be able to read them, and not bother too much about whether you can remember them to write.

learn as more as you can could be better.

when you are not sure the pronouncication of few words, you can write it down to a paper if you know the character. that could be solve your problem soon also