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Learning Kanji & Hanzi at the same time | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| morinkhuur Triglot Groupie Germany Joined 4705 days ago 79 posts - 157 votes  Speaks: German*, Latin, English Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Maghribi) | Message 1 of 13 12 May 2012 at 4:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Hi!
I have studied Japanese for quite a bit now and I've recently taken up Mandarin. I know Hiragana and Katakana but only a few basic Kanji and I can read Pinyin but only one or two Hanzi. I know that you would all like to tell me how stupid it is to study two languages at the same time, especially two "hard" ones, and how i will never achieve anything like this but I'm sure that I can do it and you won't convince me otherwise :) So now here's my question: How would one go about learning Kanji and Hanzi at the same time? And by that I mean, how much difference is there between the two sets of characters and are there any programs/learning resources that would help me with both? Do I have to study them separately or is it possible to just learn a certain character with both its Japanese Kun- and On-readings and its Mandarin reading? Also, I would like to know when to start with the Characters, as in how much of the languages i need to know before it makes sense to approach them. Thank you for your answers! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| eggcluck Senior Member China Joined 4729 days ago 168 posts - 278 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese | Message 2 of 13 12 May 2012 at 4:58pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The best time is to start now.
Plenty of times I have heard people say speaking first, written stuff second. Though it would depend upon your situation. For me, being able to read is very usefull even more so than speaking as most of the locally availble mandrin materials are written in madarin, and scribling down a few characters clears up any confusion from bad pronunciation ^^ . There is also a significant number to learn, so the sooner the better it took me several months to do all 2000 odd kanji via Hesieg. If you are serious about mandrin you will need to study both simplified and tradtional as traditional is still used in the mainland and for more than just stylistic reasons. Break the memorisation down into segments, the more information you try to remember at one point in time the more muddled you will become. Create a skeleton if you will that you can then start to hang other things off. So based on the keep it simple approach. first learn the writing due to the evident overlap in this catergory. Then this can be your skeleton to hook things onto. Then consider reading, but keep them seperate in you mind as Kanji and Hanzi even if they look the same, this will reduce confusion. Kanji is simplified and it has used different simplification rules to Hanzi and there are some differences between meaning for the same character. So you will not be just learning reading and writing for some charaters, as you may need to add different translations. I had some cunfusion between the two for a while untill I adopted the good professors filing cabinet visualisation, and it has worked wonders for me. Some Japanese comnpund words are arbituary in that the word does not use the readings and instead they are simply placed together to represent a concept, in essence they will have irregular readings. Heisigs books may prove usefull in this approach as the focus is on the writing and makes the process much quicker. 6 months in and I am up to about 700 Hanzi with readings with little confusion and good recall, wheras someone I know who has adopted the traditional approach is struggling with 200 despite a 3 month headstart. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6625 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 3 of 13 12 May 2012 at 10:15pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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You may want to use an etymology-oriented book. My dad has one and just gave it to me as some fun reading for a language geek :D but I can't check what the name is. (or the author, actually. the name is "a japanese self-study book" :D) If there were any changes in the meaning they are explained, and although it's for Japanese learners it also often points out the meaning of characters in modern Chinese.
Also, the coursebook was originally written in English. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4729 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 4 of 13 12 May 2012 at 10:44pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I'd undertake this ONLY if I had strong masochistic tendencies.
Good luck - you'll need it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5563 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 5 of 13 13 May 2012 at 1:27am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I'm about to run into something similar myself, but rather it would be learning Hanja (the Korean version) and Kanji at the same time. I'm up to 365 漢字 in my SRS, but I've only learned them as Hanja (and thus only with Korean readings). However, I've been considering starting some beginner Japanese and have been wondering if there is a good way to learn characters for both languages simultaneously. Korean readings are fairly simple (the vast majority of Hanja have only a single reading), but with Japanese some characters apparently have a mass of possible readings. Plus Hanja uses traditional Chinese characters rather than simplified like Kanji does, which while not a *huge* deal, doesn't really help either.
That said, I'm sure people have done this before (learned Chinese characters while linking them to multiple languages), so hopefully this thread will generate some useful tips for doing just that. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6977 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 6 of 13 13 May 2012 at 7:50am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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My background: I started learning Japanese and Chinese simultaneously at university,
and planned to double-major in the languages. Like you, I was determined to prove the naysayers wrong, and was confident I could succeed through sheer willpower and passion. After 3 semesters I dropped Chinese to focus on Japanese because I realized that attempting to climb both mountains at once was preventing me from achieving anything. It was all tiring work with little reward (i.e. proficiency in either language) because I was spreading myself too thin. People I knew who tried the same thing ended up reaching the same conclusion. Since becoming fluent and literate in Japanese, I have learned the Korean hanja readings and gotten back into Chinese, which I now find surprisingly easy. Hopefully you don't dismiss me as a cynic who's trying to burst your bubble, and are not opposed to a realistic assessment of your goal. That said, here's how I view the situation: Even just considering Japanese in isolation, the reason I think many students give up before making any real progress is because most programs concentrate on 3 aspects at the same time: there's 1) the spoken language, 2) the kanji readings (日 = hi, nichi, ji, etc.), and 3) the kanji meanings (日 = sun). In a language like Spanish, 1) is the only one you need to worry about, and the reading will take care of itself. In a language that's hard to read, like French, you have to worry about 1) and 2) at the same time. In Japanese, 1) and 2) are each worlds harder than most popular languages on their own, and then there's a third dimension on top of it. For learners of Japanese, I always recommend focusing on only 1 or 2 of these aspects at one time, which is why I'm a fan of Heisig. Learning all 3 aspects at once is not impossible - most learners do it that way out of tradition, and you'll find many examples of learners on this forum who have been successful - but it makes progress so slow that the intermediate stage is very long and hard to bear. What you're proposing is not only to learn all three aspects at the same time, but to also throw in the Chinese equivalents of 1) and 2), which are also more difficult than most foreign languages themselves. The fact that 3) is shared between the two languages will be of questionable help to you in learning these two unrelated languages; it's hard to find a good comparison that's close to home, but let's say you might as well learn English and Greek at the same time since English uses a lot of loanwords from Greek. In fact, in my experience the shared character set caused a lot of interference, and this was another factor that hampered my progress in both languages. It's much better to master one set of pronunciations and use them as a springboard to learn another language's set than to learn them both at the same time, just as countless threads in this forum have testified that it's better to use existing knowledge of Spanish to learn French than to learn both at the same time. So if I could go back and give advice to myself when I was in your shoes, here's what I'd say in order to avoid wasting as much time and effort as I did. )Note that I'm going to assume you're also interested in speaking and using the languages, rather than just etymology and reading.) Realistically, the most efficient path would be to choose one of the following to start with: A) Spoken and written Chinese (both traditional and simplified) first. After you reach intermediate level, use it as a springboard to facilitate your study of Japanese. Learning spoken Japanese will be your only real challenge with the language at this point, because you've learned most of the characters already, and the readings will even be self-evident to a point if you know the spoken language and the meanings of the characters. B) The other way around, with spoken and written Japanese first (but as I said, preferably not all at once). This took me more than 4 years, but if you avoid my mistakes and do it more efficiently than I did, you could manage it in 2 years or less. NB: Japanese uses a character set that sometimes corresponds with traditional and sometimes with simplified Chinese. C) Spoken Japanese and Chinese at the same time, and worry about the characters later. Learning the characters after you can already speak the languages will speed up the process substantially, as noted earlier. The good things about this option is that you won't have to choose one language, and will be able to actively use them sooner. The bad thing is that it will probably be hard to find materials for only the spoken languages, and that people who are interested in these particular languages probably see learning the characters as one of the greatest appeals. I think this is the most difficult option. D) Learn the meanings (not readings) of the simplified and traditional characters first, e.g. through Heisig, and the spoken languages after that (simultaneously if desired). The readings in each language should fall into place on their own with relatively little dedicated study. This is probably my favorite option, especially for those etymology nerds among us who are enchanted by the hanzi/kanji/hanja and feel as if choosing one language would be like choosing which limb to get chopped off. There is also precedent for this readings-first method (which translates to discussion, support, and materials), because it's what AJATT recommends for learning Japanese. What I DON'T recommend is learning it like this: 日 (sun) Zh: rì Jp: hi, bi, nichi, jitsu, ka Ko: il This is probably my biggest pet-peeve in Japanese language education, and adding other languages on top of it is just going to ensure you're studying for years before you can do anything fun with the language. You can visit kanjidamage.com for a few essay-length rants about why learning all the readings in a list this way at the same time you're learning the meaning is so inefficent. Sorry about the length of this post, and I hope my advice is useful to someone. Edited by Lucky Charms on 13 May 2012 at 7:51am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| mizunooto Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4725 days ago 42 posts - 47 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Mandarin, Japanese, Polish, Kazakh, Malay | Message 7 of 13 13 May 2012 at 12:53pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I spent a long time on learning this not very well, so consequently I am confident that I've found the best method for me personally.
*First of all, to know the meaning of the characters is a gift you will never regret receiving. -> This means that you have a concept for every character and a character for every concept. Each character has several elements within it which you combine into a story or mnemonic when learning it. In some cases you might just remember it without doing anything, but some characters have several elements in there so it's important to have way of remembering them. -->So basically you need to learn 200ish radicals or primitives (some of which are characters in themselves) so as to be able to remember the full characters which are combinations thereof. --->Learn the stroke order when you learn the character. There are several simple rules for stroke order which become natural because they are so few. ---->Then practise remembering the character, first a few times that day, then the next day, then in 3 days, then 7, then 15, then 3 months, then soon you know it. ----->Start from the keyword, e.g. "Day", then remember the character. This is more difficult than trying to recognise the character, so in other words if you can do this then you can also recognise the character. ------>Do not attempt to learn the pronunciation at the same time. You already have 5000 things to learn. Do you want to learn 15000 instead? *If you want to be proficient in a language that uses characters, learn the characters. There are fluent speakers of Chinese languages who can't read or write, but if you want to do more then it's worth getting the skills that you need. *Get a spreadsheet like the one linked to in reply #17 in This thread, then you can see how the three writing standards (Simp H, Trad H, Kanji) compare. *Personally, I found Chinese difficult, so I'm glad I started with Japanese and Kanji. But I think that technically the best way to go is to start with traditional Hanzi, though it has both more strokes and more characters. You should start where you want to. The simplification rules are quite simple (by definition~). I think it makes sense to learn the full character then its variants. But to learn a simpler variant first is an easier way in, then when you are more comfortable you can progress to the traditional form. Some are the same anyway, as you know. It just depends what you want to use it for. If you were moving to Taiwan soon then you would have little choice but to start with trad.! In other words, there may be an ideal way to learn these all systematically, but you will have your own needs and wants too. The point is to learn some, then learn more, then enough, then as many as you wish. *If you have some time, then it could be worth putting in some hours on characters right now. If you have all day free, you could do 1000 per two or three weeks, using a "story/mnemonic" method and only writing them down once or just with your finger. Some characters I never wrote at all during learning but can do so now - that's why I'm confident about recommending this way of learning. You can copy them out again and again for 12 years if you want, but... (I learned the character 語 by copying it out and it is still difficult to remember how to write it this way, but if I just remember the elements it is easy to write, because I don't have to think about the strokes). *If you don't have time then it is possible to learn based on what you need to know week by week. It might be unsystematic because you might be learning very different characters at one time - otherwise you could learn several that have the same element(s) in common. *Whatever you decide, get proficient with the radicals/primitives (however you want to describe them - I mean of course the small elements that are combined and repeated throughout the full set of characters) and give them a name and learn to write them. Make the image you associate with the name a vivid one. Give it sights, sounds, smells, tastes, colours, asoociate it with people and things that you know well. Then no matter how stupid your image for a character, you will remember it. Any story you make will eventually fade anyway; the character will remain. *If you at least know the small elements and can combine them, you can remember anything that comes your way. *Having learned to write them by combining the elements, you can now write down a character for an idea without knowing the word for it, and you can understand written words that you do not know. So now you want to write "dog" and you only need to remember いぬ because you already know it's 犬. *You will notice that some radicals have certain pronunciations attached to them. So it gets easy to guess what the pronunciation might be, the more words you learn. *There are plenty of correspondences in readings between the different languages. The sounds are sometimes just a little bit different. It's easy to make a way of remembering them. For example 加 is か or jiā and they sound similar. If they are etymologically related then great, if not then you can still remember them. This relationship doesn't normally apply for kun readings but I find them easy to remember anyway because native Japanese words look a bit like Spanish or Italian, and I'm more used to languages like that than like Mandarin. ____ I hope this is some help. Just bear in mind that having some system makes it easier, that there are only a relatively few elements which are combined in different ways, that someone designed these symbols to mean something so if you think like that person or persons it should be obvious what they mean, and that the process of simplification or shorthand means that if you learn one way of writing you learn all ways - given that you know how the shorthand/simplification works. Each kana is a just quick way of writing a particular Kanji. So you already know a few Kanji. The main thing to know is that you can do it! You can do what you want if you really want to do it. Millions of people can write these and so can you. So what if they are Chinese. You have an advantage they don't. You can see back to the thinking that created each one and know that it is just a shorthand for an idea. Characters can seem like a prickly forest of thorns made up of millions of strokes to be practised again and again until the world runs dry of ink, or you can push that aside and get straight to the action and see what Sleeping Beauty's been up to recently. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| morinkhuur Triglot Groupie Germany Joined 4705 days ago 79 posts - 157 votes Speaks: German*, Latin, English Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Maghribi) | Message 8 of 13 13 May 2012 at 3:54pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Wow! This forum really is amazing!
I did not expect so many helpful responses, thank you so much!
My situation is that i don't really have to hurry with being able to speak, because I'm not going to China or Japan any time soon as things are now. Generally I don't learn languages for communication purposes (although of course that's a great side aspect). What makes me want to learn a language is either the sound, the script or the grammatical structure, and being able to have a fluent conversation is usually not my first priority. I'll study the languages alongside with the script but I wouldn't want to wait with the script until I'm conversational in both languages.
I googled "the good professors filing cabinet visualisation" but I couldn't find anything on the subject. Could you explain what exactly that is?
That is AMAZING! I would pay for that! From what i read in your responses this is what makes most sense to me: 1. Buy all of the Heisig books (Remembering the Kanji 1,2,3; Remembering the Traditional Hanzi; Remembering the Simplified Hanzi) 2. Learn the meanings (but not the readings) of the traditional Hanzi up to a certain level, while at the same time continuing to study Japanese in Kana and Mandarin in Pinyin 3. After I've reached a certain level in traditional Hanzi, start with Kanji and simplified Hanzi: study 45 minutes of Kanji before my Japanese studies that I do twice a week; study 45 minutes of simplified Hanzi before my Mandarin studies that I do twice a week as well. This way I'll mentally connect Kanji to Japanese and simplified Hanzi to Mandarin. I'll learn the readings with the Kanji and simplified Hanzi and I'll get the meaning from the traditional Hanzi that I've learned before. 4. Start now. Please tell me if you find anything wrong with that course of action and again thanks a lot for all your advice and encouragement! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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