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When to begin learning Chinese characters | ||
Tags: Chinese Characters | Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| zerrubabbel Senior Member United States Joined 4602 days ago 232 posts - 287 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Mandarin | Message 9 of 13 14 October 2012 at 1:12am | IP Logged |
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well, here is only my opinion of it, but!, I think (especially if youre still in an early stage) that you should try to learn
a character for every word you learn to speak... this is especially usefull in chinese where you cant guess the spelling of a word, and you need to write it... I did not take this approach when I began japanese... I started to learn kanji approximately 2 months into my study, and I still have many basic words I do not know the kanji for, and I should... but with chinese, (tho I only yet know a little) I know the characters for almost every word I know how to say... and I find that very useful 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Cthulhu Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7225 days ago 139 posts - 235 votes Speaks: French*, English, Mandarin, Russian | Message 10 of 13 14 October 2012 at 5:00pm | IP Logged |
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My two cents on the issue are that,
1) You should begin studying characters as soon as humanly possible; learning to read and write Chinese is by far the skill which is going to take the longest to develop to a high level, and putting it off is only going to slow you down in the long run. Even learning a few characters a day while you study the spoken language will make a big difference over months and years. 2) Personally, I disagree with the emphasis people put on learning the characters for every word you learn how to speak. I mean, again, long-term, yes of course that is something that you should shoot for, but short-term that is a pretty stupid way to learn them. When I first started learning Chinese about a million years ago my main source for learning characters was [I]Reading and Writing Chinese[/I] by William McNaughton and Li Ying; even though it is essentially a (highly informative) list of characters, it introduces them in a logical order, beginning with simple characters and pieces that make up other characters before bringing in the more complex characters made from those pieces. I`m sure there are other books today that do similar things, but the point is I think it`s idiotic to make students learn 就 before they`ve learned 京 and 尤 even if it is more frequent. It does nothing but increase the already significant burden on the learner. So yeah, it seems counter-intuitive, but I would (And did, successfully) approach Chinese from the spoken and written sides semi-independently and let them come together gradually somewhere in the middle. 10 characters a day through ANKI (I do prefer paper flashcards, but that might just be because I'm a luddite at heart) is good; it's easy to learn 20, 30, 40, however many characters you like every day, but you also need to remember those characters months and months later which is trickier. It's all too easy to get greedy once you get into the swing of things and start over-extending, but you're much better off just doing a little bit each day and constantly reviewing. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| michaelyus Diglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4567 days ago 53 posts - 87 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: Italian, French, Cantonese, Korean, Catalan, Vietnamese, Lingala, Spanish Studies: Hokkien | Message 11 of 13 14 October 2012 at 8:35pm | IP Logged |
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I agree that Chinese character literacy should begin with those characters which are simplest in construction, especially with respect to writing. However, there are important characters that need to be learnt before others, for practical reasons. Edited by michaelyus on 14 October 2012 at 8:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| yakherder Diglot Newbie Canada Joined 4431 days ago 4 posts - 8 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Korean, French | Message 12 of 13 15 October 2012 at 3:24pm | IP Logged |
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It's also worth considering that reading and even typing using a pinyin input method takes much less
time to learn than writing. When starting out I too didn't learn to write every word I learned to speak and understand, but I did learn to read it. I could read fairly advanced literature and type coherent emails and simple essays in Chinese long before I could write even a fraction of the characters I recognized. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4446 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 13 of 13 16 October 2012 at 11:38pm | IP Logged |
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The last few months I've been pushing myself to learn to learn Pinyin phonetics system.
I've been to Taiwan before and I know they used the Bo-Po-Mo-Fo system. Being on the computer all the time I think it is more practical using Pinyin to look up characters and their meanings (with 26 letters of the alphabet). There are some that still gives me problems occasionally like ji & zhi, chi & qi. Most of the time I can find the correct character the first try. 1 thing I find useful is that most if not all online dictionaries have both traditional and simplified characters. You can type in entire words, single characters by the phonetics without the intonation markings. Watching movies and TV drama series 1 after another I do pick up a lot of new vocabulary. I always keep my online dictionary open. If I hear something I don't know I'd stop the video and look that word up. There are YouTube videos that teach you how to write a few basic characters. If you decided to go the more traditional way you can find books on how to write Chinese or take a beginners course locally. It is not the easiest writing system to learn because they don't go by an alphabet. Just have to learn some radicals and how the words are formed. Edited by shk00design on 16 October 2012 at 11:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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