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Recommended textbooks for learning Hanzi | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| hombre gordo Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5582 days ago 184 posts - 247 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Portuguese, Korean | Message 1 of 8 17 December 2009 at 11:25am | IP Logged | ||
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When I eventually take on Chinese, I will need some good materials to learn the characters.
My personal opinion is that learning characters and vocabulary should be combined as one activity. In other words, focusing on vocabulary when learning characters is what works best for me. I took a look at Kanji in Context a while ago. I thought it looked like an ideal method, namely because the learner learns the characters with example sentences packed with loads of useful vocabulary. (non of that Heisig crap when there is virtually no emphasis on vocabulary). (sorry to an Heisig method enthusiasts). if there is a textbook with similar methodology for learning Chinese characters, maybe it would be ideal. Please recommend some vocabulary-heavy, context-heavy textbooks for learning Chinese characters. By the way, as a base language of instruction, either English or Japanese would do. However, up to now all the Japanese based foreign language textbooks I have seen in Japanese bookstores have been totally sh!te in quality to put it bluntly, so naturally I dont trust foreign language materials sold by Japanese bookstores. Edited by hombre gordo on 17 December 2009 at 11:26am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| YoshiYoshi Senior Member China Joined 5530 days ago 143 posts - 205 votes Speaks: Mandarin* | Message 2 of 8 17 December 2009 at 12:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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「漢語800字」（publisher：外語教學與研究出版 社）
「汉语800字」（publisher：外语教学与研究出版 社） Maybe it's too simple for you, I just found it on Amazon.cn bookshop. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TheElvenLord Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6079 days ago 915 posts - 927 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Cornish, English* Studies: Spanish, French, German Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 3 of 8 17 December 2009 at 12:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Tuttle's Learning Chinese Characters :)
Simply the best :P TEL 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6469 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 4 of 8 17 December 2009 at 1:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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+1 for "Learning Chinese Characters". It provides mnemonics for the HSK A characters, and also words that are made up of the characters you've learned so far, but no sentences. Alternatively, get "Reading and Writing Chinese", which also provides characters in such an order that you understand every part of a complex character before you encounter the complex character, but it has no pre-made stories and it contains 3000 characters. It's available for simplified and traditional.
I really recommend this imagery-based method for learning characters because there are so many of them. With other methods, at first I had trouble remembering any at all, and after a lot of repeated writing I managed to memorize several hundred, but a lot of them disappeared after I stopped using Chinese in writing for a few months, and later when I wanted to learn a lot more characters I kept confusing similar ones. A Heisig-like imagery method works wonders there, though I do recommend studying pronunciation along with the characters for Chinese. To add more context, I recommend using a traditional coursebook alongside this, or you may like "Rapid literacy in Chinese", which is about forming as many words as possible and writing as many sentences as possible with a limited amount of characters. This does not replace the memorization of characters though. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ulmo Diglot Newbie Joined 6085 days ago 20 posts - 22 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English | Message 5 of 8 18 December 2009 at 3:02am | IP Logged | ||
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If you want to really get into hanzi you could try Cracking the Chinese Puzzles by TK Ann. I think it teaches between 5000 and 6000 hanzi, grouping them by radicals and giving ethimology insights. It may work pretty well using Heisig's methodology.
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| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6469 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 6 of 8 18 December 2009 at 12:35pm | IP Logged | ||
That book is definitely good - and it's based more on (real or possible) etymology than inventions, a plus. However, if you're just starting out on characters, TK Ann will have you learn at least 3000 characters before you've covered all the 500 most common characters of Chinese. I would find that too frustrating as a beginner, so I recommend her book for people who already have studied a decent amount of characters. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ulmo Diglot Newbie Joined 6085 days ago 20 posts - 22 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English | Message 7 of 8 18 December 2009 at 3:02pm | IP Logged | ||
Certainly. But the only reason why I recommend this book to hombre gordo is the fact that he has already got a good knowledge of kanji. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5520 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 8 of 8 19 December 2009 at 3:06pm | IP Logged | ||
Ann is the family name, it's written by a man, who also happened to be a big shot industrialist! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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