|
 |
Hanzi - how to learn ? | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| ericspinelli Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5780 days ago 249 posts - 493 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Italian | Message 17 of 39 12 May 2010 at 7:27am | IP Logged | |||||
|
First, it is important to clarify the meaning of mnemonic. A mnemonic is a memory aid that associates easily remembered or meaningful pieces of information with the whole or a sequence. Heisig-esque stories, knowledge of phonetic/meaning components, and historical etymology can all be used used as mnemonics. Even rote memorization often makes use of mnemonics, albeit at a much less conscious level. Whatever method one chooses, mnemonics are - by definition - a useful aid.
It's important, however, to recognize that the mnemonic is essentially just a placeholder for the actual information. In a similar vein, it's important to focus on the actual purpose of learning characters. Neither the ability to write characters nor the ability to explain characters is equivalent to the ability to read and write Chinese. Basing your studies solely on any system that only teaches you do the former two is not seeing the forest for the trees. Approaching characters from multiple angles will get you to where you need to be. I think the Heisig crowd, the etymology crowd, and the rote memorization crowd* all see the value of learning the components of the characters. These include radicals, meaning components, and phonetic components**. It's also important to remember that these components won't always be present, accurate, or otherwise meaningful. How far one goes in studying components is a matter of contention, but it is necessary to understand these to some extent to communicate like a native. *Including native speakers, who learn radical names in elementary school and who, among other uses, often use them to describe many odd name kanji. **In Japanese, 部首, 意符, and 音符, respectively. I am unsure if the same words are used in Chinese. Since the goal is to learn to read and write a language, not just characters, it is important to put characters into the context of words. Just as many individual characters can be broken down into components, so can many words be broken down into characters. Here, though, is where we must be careful to not confuse characters with their mnemonics. One must be OK with words that are not the sum of the parts or when individual parts work in unexpected ways. Throughout my studies of Japanese I have changed how I studied vocabulary and characters to fit my needs and level, but I will describe briefly the common parts and strategies that got me to the goal of being able to read and write. First and foremost, with the exception of some rather ineffective study methods when I was starting out, I have studied characters and words together. Among other things, this deals with the issue of multiple readings per character that Japanese is notorious for. While Chinese, for the most part, lacks this specific problem, it does have tone shifts to be accounted for. When studying vocabulary, I organized words into two main groups. Group 1 was words that shared a phonetic compound. I would study words that all shared a common character and then move to words that shared a phonetically related character. Rather than just studying 生, 性, and 姓, I studied [生死、生産、生活] then [中性、男性、性格、性質] and then [姓]. This gave me the ability to first guess at a unknown word's pronunciation and later even pick up unknown words in conversation by imagining how that word might be written. Group 2 was words grouped loosely by topic. This learning was much more effective during much later stages. Learning about medicine, anatomy, and physiology I might come across the character 傷. I would then learn [傷、傷害、中傷]. In this example, all the words are connected, but some vocabulary lists would give words that used the same character but fell outside the topic at hand. This study gave me a broader idea of what nuances an individual character carried. Although I did some simple research into the most common and basic radicals and meaning components, most of my knowledge of these components came from studying words in the above Group 2. Seeing 月 show up in many words related to anatomy (腕、肺、心臓、脚) or time (月、朝、時期) builds natural connections. However, I find the meaning components to be vaguer and harder to apply than phonetic components. I found that the meaning components helped to distinguish known words but not learn new ones (e.g., there is no way to determine the exact meaning of most of the above words just by looking at them, but I can distinguish 肺 (lung) and 姉 (sister) by radical/meaning component). Some people write the characters (pen or finger), some people use flash cards (electronic or paper), some people just read. There are many different ways to expose yourself to them until they stick. No matter how you look at it, though, it takes exposure. I find flash cards incredibly boring and lose motivation quickly. As discussed in this recent thread about learning myths I find that sometimes learning without context is more effective. Flash cards provide a definition or example (i.e., some context) that can be distracting or limiting. I find recalling and writing words from memory, aided only by the other words I am trying to recall (which, as described above, often share a character or a loose theme), to be more effective. I reinforce these words through extensive reading (a rough estimate of 10 novels and 2 text-heavy video games per year). Edited by ericspinelli on 12 May 2010 at 7:39am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| maaku Senior Member United States Joined 5571 days ago 359 posts - 562 votes Speaks: English* | Message 18 of 39 12 May 2010 at 10:29am | IP Logged | |||||
|
The problem with insisting on an etymological basis for your mnemonics is that it degrades the trustworthiness of the system. There are characters that have been simplified at various points in history, unifying components that are similar looking but radically different in meaning. Worse there are component variant forms that have haphazardly evolved from a single etymological root: these components are distinguished in writing but treated the same by etymology. Even if you remember the etymology, that's no guarantee you can write it correctly. Finally, just about every character has undergone seemingly random simplification at some point in its history--sometimes without rhyme or reason.
Heisig is, for the most part, based on traditional etymology except where that etymology gets in the way of actual learning. There is no doubt from my experience--I was once a die-hard etymologist before I encountered the problems I've mentioned here--that Heisig helps you get to fluency faster than pure etymology, and without hindering further etymological studies, if that what you later desire. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6847 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 19 of 39 16 May 2010 at 4:38am | IP Logged | |||||
This is exactly why using real etymologies is not very helpful for learning characters. For instance, the character 老. If you tried to use etymology to learn this character, you would learn that it was composed of 人, 毛, and 𠤎. Rick Harbaugh's book gives "A person 人 whose hair 毛 changes 𠤎" as the etymology. Never mind that it was written that way 2000 years ago. If you aren't interested in being able to decipher ancient inscriptions, this information will never be of any use. It's much easier to learn it as 土, 丿, and 匕. Or 耂 and 匕. And sometimes, etymology can get even more obscure than that, especially when you start including the newer research on oracle bones and other ancient forms. Sure, if you have a particular interest in etymology, or if you do want to be able to read Seal Script and Bronze Inscriptions, learn the etymology. Better yet, give me and Yukamina a hand by pitching in and helping with our project. But if you're just interested in learning to characters to become literate in modern or classical Chinese or Japanese, there's no reason to bother with the real etymologies. Learn the characters as they are today, not as they were 2000-3000 years ago. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Euphorion Hexaglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5337 days ago 106 posts - 147 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Czech, EnglishC2, GermanC1, SpanishC2, French | Message 20 of 39 27 May 2010 at 12:10am | IP Logged | |||||
|
So that means Hoenig?
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| furrykef Senior Member United States furrykef.com/ Joined 6469 days ago 681 posts - 862 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Latin, Italian | Message 21 of 39 27 May 2010 at 4:56am | IP Logged | |||||
|
You mean Heisig? It's not the only viable method, but I've certainly had success with it. It was really rough, but I'd say it was worth it.
(EDIT: note to self: pay more attention to threads. Hoenig means Hoenig. :P) Edited by furrykef on 27 May 2010 at 6:56pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5983 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 22 of 39 27 May 2010 at 7:26am | IP Logged | |||||
I really disagree with this. It's not a matter of absolute time, it's a matter of the time and effort you put into it. I was able to read novels and newspaper articles after 1.5 years of study (although clearly not perfectly). The problem is mainly how you can cram 2000+ characters into your head efficiently. Going by some of the reports on the web, some dedicated individuals are able to do this in a matter of weeks or months. (the best I heard was 6 weeks, and I heard 3 months many times). There have been many suggestions listed for memorizing individual characters, but one thing that helped me a lot was context. I found a book I really wanted to read (a book of English sci-fi short stories translated into chinese). I tried to read each page, and wrote down a list of the characters I didn't know. Slowly the lists got smaller, and I remembered those characters better because I had read them in some sort of meaningful context. This is the reason all those other methods work too. You create extra connections from the character to other meanings and ideas, and you'll be able to remember it better and faster. Really, this just involves the same concepts I'd recommend for learning any language. Find some real material that interests you, and work through it somehow, piece by piece. Find different ways to get exposed to it, and try some of the advanced memory techniques like mnemonics and SRS programs. And don't worry about perfection at the start. Just keep reading and listening. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6847 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 23 of 39 27 May 2010 at 8:08am | IP Logged | |||||
I had a look through Hoenig's book a while back. I thought it kind of sucked, to be perfectly honest. I don't remember why particularly, but I remembered thinking Heisig's approach was much better. Hoenig even mentions Heisig as his main inspiration in writing the book if I remember correctly. Heisig is good. I recommend getting through it as quickly as possible, then moving on to a frequency list or something similar to learn a total of around 3000 characters. 3000 will serve you quite well for a while, but there will always be more to learn. That's just the nature of Chinese. Also, despite what I said about learning via etymology, the Harbaugh book is quite good for learning characters. You'll likely have to add to his "mnemonic" in order to remember, especially if you're just starting out learning characters. I think it's best to use Harbaugh if you've already learned a bunch of characters by mnemonics (like Heisig's method) and have a basic knowledge of the language. Harbaugh's book will be much more useful at that stage, and will teach you 4280 characters, which will be plenty unless you're wanting to get really good with classical or academic texts. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5666 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 24 of 39 27 May 2010 at 8:40am | IP Logged | |||||
Strangely, I have the opposite opinion. I own both Heisig and Hoenig, and prefer the latter. Mainly because Hoenig includes with each character the pinyin pronunciation. Heisig prefers to focus on just the English meaning. One advantage of Heisig, though, is that it does include stroke order for the characters, and I wish Hoenig had done the same. Having said that, at this stage I am more interested in reading, speaking, and typing Chinese than writing it with a pen, so stroke order is my lowest priority. So, on balance, Hoenig gets my vote. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
