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Best way to learn Hanzi | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| MNL Tetraglot Newbie Norway Joined 5945 days ago 39 posts - 39 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, French, German Studies: Italian, Mandarin | Message 1 of 17 04 January 2014 at 11:29pm | IP Logged |
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I've recently started to dabble in Chinese, and will be learning writing from day one.
This is my first Asian language, and also the first for me that uses ideograms as opposed to Latin letters. I know there is a book by James Heisig that has been warmly recommended for learners of Japanese kanji, and I was wondering if there is also a similiar book/method for Hanzi that I can use. In the opinion of native speakers and seasoned learners of Mandarin, what would be the best, most time-efficient way to learn Chinese characters from scratch? Any tips for methods or books that can help in this aspect? For instance, would you recommend learning the characters with the least amount of strokes first and then move on from those, or do you recommend learning the most common characters first, regardless of the number of strokes involved? Any help would be appreciated :) Edited by MNL on 04 January 2014 at 11:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5904 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes  Studies: Mandarin | Message 2 of 17 05 January 2014 at 12:00am | IP Logged |
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...Remembering Simplified Hanzi: Book 1, How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Chinese Characters by James W. Heisig and Timothy W. Richardson
...Remembering Simplified Hanzi 2 by James W. Heisig and Timothy W. Richardson ...Remembering Traditional Hanzi: Book 1, How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Chinese Characters by James W. Heisig and Timothy W. Richardson ...Remembering Traditional Hanzi 2 by James W. Heisig and Timothy W. Richardson Good luck 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| MNL Tetraglot Newbie Norway Joined 5945 days ago 39 posts - 39 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, French, German Studies: Italian, Mandarin | Message 3 of 17 05 January 2014 at 12:10am | IP Logged |
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Amazeballs! Thanks, Snowflake :)
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| day1 Groupie Latvia Joined 3837 days ago 93 posts - 158 votes Speaks: English | Message 4 of 17 31 March 2014 at 8:50am | IP Logged |
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That's not the only such book though:
Fun With Chinese Characters Volumes 1-3 [Tan Huay Peng] Rapid Literacy in Chinese [Zhang Pengpeng] First one is more fun than Heisig, the second one - includes word making and sentence making (if I remember correctly) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6527 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 5 of 17 31 March 2014 at 9:42am | IP Logged |
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Do you have any specific reason why you're doing characters from day one? There are studies that show that delaying writing in Japanese and Chinese languages improves fluency and the ability to distinguish the sounds. See this article for more information.
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| day1 Groupie Latvia Joined 3837 days ago 93 posts - 158 votes Speaks: English | Message 6 of 17 31 March 2014 at 12:51pm | IP Logged |
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There are quite a few textbooks specifically made with the idea of delaying characters in mind. Characters are introduced more gradually and more slowly than words (in pinyin). Two textbooks that come to mind are Chinese Made Easier (Shaanxi University press) and Ni Hao textbook series (ChinaSoft), Chinese Made Easier being tailored to the students actually living in China (lots of everyday language, shopping, finding your way etc.) and Ni Hao being more like for kids. Both books are good and can take you far. Chinese Made Easier also has very nice, graphic, visual grammar explanations.
Characters from day 1 can slow down the progress greatly, on the other hand, so can delaying characters too much. My personal favorite approach is learning to recognize characters from day 1, while learning to actually draw them later on (then it suddenly seems much more easy to do). That's a method that balances in between the both extremes. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5111 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 7 of 17 31 March 2014 at 6:10pm | IP Logged |
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Memrise courses have actually helped me more than the books mentioned above. You can try
HSK 1, 2 and 3 for a start. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| linguaholic_ch Triglot Groupie IndiaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4993 days ago 69 posts - 96 votes Speaks: English, Hindi, Bengali Studies: Japanese, Esperanto, French | Message 8 of 17 31 March 2014 at 7:18pm | IP Logged |
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The HSK courses from Memrise are great, but it is difficult to learn them without
context. I would suggest that the learner supplements Memrise with a solid textbook as day1 has said earlier. NCPR is commoner in this list, but I would like to add two other books that can be used, the first is A Key to Chinese Speech and Wrtitng Vo1 1 and the other being the Boya series. The former one I am using is awesome. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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