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Hanzi - how to learn ? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Kazen Diglot Groupie Japan japanese-me.com Joined 5326 days ago 96 posts - 133 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese | Message 9 of 39 10 May 2010 at 5:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
I respectfully disagree. Kakitori may be a great way to teach children the characters but as fully-formed adults we have more tools at our disposal, the greatest of which is logic. By using techniques like mnemonics it is possible to learn kanji more efficiently than a schoolchild does by brute memorization. That being said, writing a character out many times is wonderful for improving one's handwriting. ^_^ 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| dissident Newbie United States Joined 5310 days ago 37 posts - 43 votes | Message 10 of 39 11 May 2010 at 7:03am | IP Logged | |||||
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ok this heisig's book is interesting but i don't want any "mnemonics" what i want is the ACTUAL derivation of the
characters. for example i have seen diagrams about how the character for "sun" or "moon" have been derived from pictures of sun or moon. that's the kind of guidance i want. i don't want to end up memorizing something from the wild fantasies of the author - only the reality. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| furrykef Senior Member United States furrykef.com/ Joined 6470 days ago 681 posts - 862 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Latin, Italian | Message 11 of 39 11 May 2010 at 10:30am | IP Logged | |||||
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The problem is that mnemonics are easy to memorize and the actual history of a character is almost impossible to memorize at such an early stage. Most hanzi don't even have cute stories like how 月 comes from a picture of the moon. Instead, the majority are semantic/phonetic compounds. To use an English example, imagine that 人 means "guy", and 食 means "food"... so to write "pie", you would put 食 on the left half and 人 on the right half, as if to say, "Food, rhymes with 'guy'." Sound silly? It's exactly how most Chinese characters are composed (except of course using Chinese words), and -- especially when you consider many of these rhymes are out of date by a thousand years or more -- it won't help you remember a thing.
So, no, you probably don't actually want the derivation of the characters. :) Edited by furrykef on 11 May 2010 at 10:30am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6766 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 12 of 39 11 May 2010 at 1:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm with Dissident. Made-up explanations for remembering characters might help with the first few hundred, but if
you're going to learn thousands and become literate, learning the real reason the character is composed that way will end up being more useful and more interesting, in my humble opinion. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5667 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 13 of 39 11 May 2010 at 2:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
I don't know. As a random example, in the Hoenig book it says to remember "coal" is written as a composition of "fire" and "certain". He says you can connect the two with a thought should as "you need a certain amount of coal to make a fire" (or something like that). I only had to read that once and I am sure I will never forget how to write "coal" in chinese. I can't see how my retention would improve by knowing the "real reason" it is composed that way. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| furrykef Senior Member United States furrykef.com/ Joined 6470 days ago 681 posts - 862 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Latin, Italian | Message 14 of 39 11 May 2010 at 3:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
I can write the 2042 characters in RTK1, plus a few that aren't in the book. That's much more than "a few hundred". I still have yet to learn to read and pronounce many of them, but that problem would still exist if I learned the etymology of the characters as well.
On the contrary, I'd wager that the history of most characters is boring and useless to most students. Again, most kanji boil down to "radical + phonetic", which is neither interesting nor informative to the student. If you study the etymology of Chinese characters, what you'll end up learning is etymology -- not Chinese or Japanese. It's rather like studying Latin with the idea of learning English. If you like Latin itself (as I do), that's great, but if all you really want is to learn English, just learn English. Thus I recommend doing only what's necessary to learn a character (i.e., use mnemonics). If you want to pound a nail, use a hammer, not a sledgehammer. :) Edited by furrykef on 12 May 2010 at 7:04am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Yukamina Senior Member Canada Joined 6262 days ago 281 posts - 332 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean, French | Message 15 of 39 11 May 2010 at 5:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
For a Hanzi learning resource that shows derivations and components, you could try zhongwen.com or the book it's based off of, Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary. It has component based hanzi trees, and a very brief explanation of what each character is made up of (but no pictures). It also has pronunciation, definition, vocabulary examples, and traditional/simplified forms. I find the character explanations too brief to use as a memory aid, though.
I find real etymologies can be convoluted and actually harder to understand. Often a character component looks like one thing, but used to be something else. Made-up stories are a lot more flexible; if the story or etymology provided doesn't help, you can make up your own. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| maaku Senior Member United States Joined 5572 days ago 359 posts - 562 votes Speaks: English* | Message 16 of 39 12 May 2010 at 5:37am | IP Logged | |||||
Is your goal to be fluent in the language or learn etymology? Pick one; you can't have both. There's nothing mnemonic about the vast majority of characters. Characters like 日, 月, and 木 are the exceptions. Most characters are merely phonetic associations that mean nothing unless you happen to already be familiar with the phonetics of ancient, Qin-era classical Chinese. Are you?
Do you want to efficiently memorize the hanzi or not? These mnemonic methods appeared because they work, because they are more efficient than traditional methods, and because they will help you reach fluency faster. Edited by maaku on 12 May 2010 at 5:40am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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