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Best way to learn Hanzi | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| day1 Groupie Latvia Joined 3837 days ago 93 posts - 158 votes  Speaks: English | Message 9 of 17 31 March 2014 at 7:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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NPCR is definitely the commoner, but I personally would not recommend it. It's dull and very soon the vocabulary it throws at you becomes somewhat impractical - a student is offered topics such as Chinese calligraphy, climbing the hills (pa shan), Beijing opera etc., which in my opinion is not the content volume 2 (elementary) textbook should have.
I would highly recommend Integrated Chinese 3rd edition, mostly because it comes with loads of free supplementary materials scattered around university sites - pinyin supplements, additional exercises, additional listening exercises, simplified and traditional editions (both scripts starting from volume 2) and much more everyday and useful content than NPCR. I think even Chinesepod had a special section somewhere for those doing IC. Yes, I'm openly advertising, but I have compared a lot of books and genuinely believe this to be one of the best. Especially the workbook (answers available, if you google enough). A Key to Chinese Speach and Writing is by the same author as Rapid Literacy in Chinese (Zhang PengPeng), he has authored several textbooks and most of these books offer some innovative approaches to Chinese teaching. Edit: Oh, yeah, and Memrise has vocabulary sets for all parts of Integrated Chinese. Lessons 1-15 of IC cover almost everything HSK 1 and HSK 2 ask for, plus more. So it seems to be a decent choice if your goal is an HSK certificate somewhere down the line. Edited by day1 on 31 March 2014 at 7:37pm 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 10 of 17 31 March 2014 at 7:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with you about NCPR, that Gubo and Palanka affair makes the book like a
phrasebook. I will definitely try IC. Thank you so much! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Adam_CLO Newbie Taiwan ChineseLearnOnl Joined 3811 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 11 of 17 26 April 2014 at 3:42am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm actually working on a course right now that teaches Hanzi. Unlike the many flashcard
lists out there, I try to use the characters in the context of words and sentences, while still breaking down its radical components, so you can learn the meanings behind them. It's still a work in progress, but you can try out the first few lessons here: http://www.readtypechinese.com 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4389 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 12 of 17 26 April 2014 at 11:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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In the beginning you have to decide which region of China you want to cover. If you are going to apply
your language skills in Mainland China and parts of S-E Asia like Singapore, you should be learning Simplified characters. If you are going to spend more time in Taiwan, Hong Kong or Macau, your target audience would prefer Traditional characters. Sometime ago I went to a summer exchange program in Taiwan. The teacher insisted Simplified Chinese characters is the wrong way of writing because it was invented by a communist regime who destroyed Chinese traditions. That was before computer became popular. We learned to write each character from l->r, top-> bottom. Today everybody (including myself) would enter the appropriate Pinyin on computer / portable devices and choose the correct character from a list. In some cases, you can enter several characters at a time for longer phrases such as "nihaoma" for "how are you" and "shouyinji" for "radio" without the intonation markings. Out of the list of characters how do you know which ones to pick? This is where I rely on a computer dictionary (on my computer & online). Each character / group of characters has the English meaning beside it. Many advanced Chinese speakers do occasionally forget characters but they have no trouble recognizing them on newspapers & magazines. When the same characters come up often enough, you'll remember it. It's not like you have to spend hours pushing your brain to do memory exercises. Edited by shk00design on 26 April 2014 at 11:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| day1 Groupie Latvia Joined 3837 days ago 93 posts - 158 votes Speaks: English | Message 13 of 17 28 April 2014 at 12:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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It is actually very true indeed in the modern world. Hardly anyone handwrites, for everything else even the Chinese themselves use pinyin IME. I had reached a solid upper intermediate level in Chinese and then happened not to use the language for like 5 years or so. When I returned to this language, my listening and reading skills were fine, I could even speak, but could not write even the simplest characters (unless I typed, of course). Now it has slightly gotten better, but still, I can't write. And guess what, that has proven not to be a problem.
So the advice shk00design is giving you makes sense - learn to recognize the characters, don't bother with writing, especially at first. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4613 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 14 of 17 28 April 2014 at 6:11pm | IP Logged | ||
Write in Pinyin ---> computer automatically encodes them into Hanzi Use Pleco camera app ---> it decodes Hanzi back to pinyin What is the purpose of Hanzi in this? It serves only as a secret code. We could to the same in alphabet languages by using Morse code as a secret code. Constant encoding and cyphering would just make everything tiresome. What's the use of codes / Hanzi in this approach? It's nothing more than a cumbersome cryptic script, which some people find elegant, but some not (I think Thai, Lao and Khmer script look much better than boxy Hanzi). Hanzi should be learned in a systematic way: know your radicals, and your phonetics, don't learn them by heart, or use ''I only need to recognize them anyway'' approach. Chinese people can get the meaning and pronunciation of very complex unknown Hanzi because they learned radical+phonetic analytic approach. Either learn Hanzi the way they should be learned (the 2nd approach) or use to Pinyin only system with constant ''spy script'' Hanzi encoding and decoding (like I described previously). Edited by Medulin on 28 April 2014 at 6:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| day1 Groupie Latvia Joined 3837 days ago 93 posts - 158 votes Speaks: English | Message 15 of 17 28 April 2014 at 9:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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I personally don't really understand in what way knowing my radicals (which I do) and my phonetics (which I am OK with) is so horribly opposed to the whole idea of not bothering too much with writing. Knowing my radicals and being aware of the phonetic component HELPS me to recognize (and, as you rightly said, often guess the meaning or even pronunciation of) the hanzi when I read. It's not a black and white situation, really.
Very many learners give up on Chinese in the early stages just because the Characters are too difficult to memorize; very many go through a culture shock when volume 2 of their textbook comes without pinyin over the dialogs; both of these are things to avoid. Avoid life with pinyin (learn to read the characters from early on) and avoid needlessly memorizing how to write non-too-common characters (say, 贵 from 您贵姓 is only used in Lesson 1 and then shows up next only when you reach Lesson "Shopping" - is there any rush to learn it?). Few months down the line, when the student is already used to the whole shapes and structures and bits and pieces of the whole hanzi deal, then starting to write the most often used characters will be a piece of cake. Anyway, thanks to your comment I bumped into a nice site, listing the phonetic "sets" of most common 6800 Chinese characters. http://hanzicraft.com/lists/phonetic-sets There is a comment out there somewhere saying, and I quote, :
source: http://www.hackingchinese.com/phonetic-components-part-1-the -key-to-80-of-all-chinese-characters/ I fully agree to this statement; making students aware that the (usually) right side bit often tells you about the sound is a must, but that is indeed the information they'll be able to better utilize later on in their studies, not straight away. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5904 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin | Message 16 of 17 28 April 2014 at 10:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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Whether you "should" learn to write characters is in part going to depend on your circumstances. If you spend time with native speakers in daily life, say stay in mainland China or Taiwan for a number of years, then learning to read handwriting will be more important as well as being able to hand write quick notes. Another thing to consider is that hand writing characters is a help to some of us in learning them.
All the native speakers I've met depend heavily on dictionaries for unknown characters, both for pronunciation and meaning. Often their guesses are quite off. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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