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Pinyin sounds. How to memorize them? | ||
Tags: Chinese Characters | Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Komodo Triglot Newbie Brazil Joined 5180 days ago 10 posts - 13 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 9 of 14 20 March 2010 at 5:31am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Sorry for the late reply, I've had some problems with my ISP this week.
Thanks for the advices and links, and just to clarify once for all (because I wasn't really clear), my problem is remembering the hanzi's pronunciation, not how to pronounce them. And I'm already using a SRS software (Anki). In fact it was during my study sessions using Anki that I noticed how difficult it's being for me to remember the hanzi's pronunciation. Some times I have to review 15 ~ 20 hanzi which I already know their meanings and stroke order but I can't remember their pronunciations, so I mark them as wrong, even though I just don't remember how to pronounce them. That's frustrating and honestly, sometimes infuriating. I could be learning 20 hanzi a day if it weren't for my difficult in remembering their pronunciations. I've noticed that lately it got easier to remember their pronunciations, not a lot, but I've noticed an improvement, I'm not spending almost 1 hour to review 25 cards. Fortunately. If that's normal and pretty much every regular learner faces this difficult I'll get used to it, as I'm really determined to become fluent in Madarim, but I started this thread because I think I'm doing something wrong, as the time I spend to memorize a hanzi's pronunciation is exponentially bigger than the time I need to remember its meaning and stroke order. Did anyone here face this same problem? If you did, what did you do to address it? Below I'll try to outline my study plan, so if some of you could look at it and help me, I'd really appreciate it. Honestly, I believe it's a pretty solid and well put study plan, but despite having done a lot of research on learning Mandarin, one thing that I barely could found any information about was on how Mandarin learners systematize their approach to memorizing hanzi, so I made up this study plan all by myself, adjusting it to the amount of time I have available. As I said, I believe it's a good plan, but maybe there's something seriously flawed on it, and that flaw is hindering my ability to memorize the hanzi pronunciations, I don't know, maybe some more experienced students can give me some tips and point some problems out on my approach. Here it is: I decided to learn 10 hanzi a day. So this picture below shows pretty well how I organize my studies. 
Each capital letter stands for a set of 10 hanzi. The number that accompanies the letters are the number of times I'll write down each hanzi, its pinyin and its meaning (So A10 means that I'll write down 10 different hanzi, 10 times each one of them). The numbers "100"; "170" ; "220" stands for how many hanzi I'll have to write down each day. During this 'study phase', which I call 'write down phase' I write down a hanzi, its meaning and its pinyin. I also listen its pronunciation and I repeat it out loud every time I write it down. You've probably noticed how there's a progressive trend, as I introduce new characters everyday but I still review the ones I studied in the last two days. So after three days studying a hanzi in the 'write down phase' I insert them into my SRS in order to review it from time to time (and to check if I really memorized them). For example, Thursday I won't have to write down the 'A' set anymore, but I'll study them when I'm doing the reviews using Anki. I believe that's pretty much it. Since I started studying Mandarim almost two weeks ago (03/08) I'm still learning the radicals (or bushou, that's how the author of Cracking the Chinese Puzzle calls them). If someone else wants to outline their study plans, please do it, I believe it'd be great. Any suggestions would be welcome, and if there's some serious flaws on this study plan that I'm not spotting, I'd appreciate it if some of you could point them out. I plan on achieving a high level of proficiency on mandarin (write/read/speak/listen, pretty much fluency) in three years and I'm willing to spend 3 hours a day systematically studying the language (except on weekends, where I plan to study it casually or not at all. I know that my brain needs some rest to put all the information together). At first my main interest on learning mandarin was for professional reasons, but the language really grown on me, it really did. Its exotic sonority, its fascinating writing system and the perspective of knowing as an insider (not through unreliable translations) one of the most interesting cultures in the world are really big incentives to learn it, as big as the big paycheck that awaits me should I get fluent in the language, I mean, almost as big. :p Edited by Komodo on 20 March 2010 at 5:39am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Pyx Diglot Senior Member China Joined 5546 days ago 670 posts - 892 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 10 of 14 20 March 2010 at 5:40am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
It's normal. Everybody has this problem. Just go on with it. You're just two weeks into your study, what did you expect? Study for a half year and then we'll talk..
Are you serious?! Either we have a different definition of "a lot", or of "research". Have you tried, like, asking google "how to memorize hanzi" (or characters or kanji )? And you're telling me nothing of that can give you enough tips or leads for more research? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5797 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 11 of 14 20 March 2010 at 6:03am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I find it much easier to remember the words when I find an example sentence, or when I have audio. To remember sounds, you need to do a lot of listening. The more chinese you listen to, the more familiar the sounds will all be, and then it'll be much easier to associate them with the words that you are learning.
Also, instead of trying to learn the pronunciation of each individual character, find a bunch of example 2-character words that use that new character, and then you can try to remember the whole two syllable word. I find this much easier than one-syllable words. nciku has some good example sentences and example words. Overall, I strongly recommend that you find some chinese audio content of some sort, and have it on as "background noise" as much as possible. Have it playing 8 hours a day if you can, at least for a few days. You'll get much more familiar with the audio part of the language, and you'll start making associations between the words you have heard and the words you are learning. (to do this myself, I used Radio Canada International's mandarin news-magazine program...hundreds of 1 hour mp3s available in their archive, and it's all talk with no music or ads). Right now you probably have very little basis to "hook" them onto in your mind. It's hard to make associations when you have nothing to associate to. Right now I'm listening to several Swedish audiobooks, even though I understand very little of the content. I listen on the train, at work, at home, while cooking, everywhere. The result is that when I actually sit down to work on learning some new vocabulary, several of the new words will pop up instantly in my mind because I've heard them before. This makes new words "click" much easier when I realize I've actually been hearing them the whole time, but didn't know them yet. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Komodo Triglot Newbie Brazil Joined 5180 days ago 10 posts - 13 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish Studies: French, Mandarin | Message 12 of 14 20 March 2010 at 7:35am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I didn't say I couldn't find 'tips' or any kind information at all. I said I barely could find any detailed, in depth information on how to memorize hanzi. I just found that odd because I found detailed, in depth information on how to pronounce them, on how to listen to them, on how to write them down, and on many other aspects of mandarin learning, but on how mandarin students systematize their hanzi learning process I couldn't find that much useful information, that's why I gathered all these tips and came up with my own study plan, and when I noticed that I was having an incredibly difficult time associating the pronunciations to the hanzi, I thought I was doing something wrong, hence I created this thread asking for advice. Actually even the most detailed information I found about memorizing hanzi didn't mention 'having problems to associate hanzi to its pronunciation' as one of the main problems that many people face when memorizing hanzi, which is the specific problem I'm having. Thank you for the 'how to use Google' lesson, though.
Some days ago I was thinking about something like that. Since I noticed that in the last few days it got slightly easier associating the pronunciations to the hanzi, maybe my brain is still getting used to the completely new sound patterns of the Chinese language, and as soon as it 'gets' it it'll be much easier to associate these, at least for now, completely abstract sounds to some random ideograms. I'll take into account your advice on listening to as many mandarin audio as possible during a few days.
Since I'm still learning the radicals, I'm learning each of them individually. As soon as I learn all of them (237) I'll have to decide whether I'll continue learning individual characters or I'll learn words. Actually, after I finish memorizing the radicals I'll start using the 'Rapid Literacy in Chinese' book, which really seems to be a great book to rapidly get basic literacy in mandarin. Out of curiosity I already did the first lesson and I was amazed by how I could already read a few phrases presented on the book (and get a good grasp of the grammar) just after finishing the very first lesson. But it just teaches you 800 characters and 1200 words, so after that I'll have to decide: characters first then words or only words? Today I think I'll learn characters first, but honestly, I don't know exactly why, it's just safer. I fear that learning words instead of individual characters and its meanings will make me stumble upon some kind of problems in the future, problems that could have been avoided should I had learned characters first. I still have to do some research on that the finally decide. And Thank you for your advices. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Pyx Diglot Senior Member China Joined 5546 days ago 670 posts - 892 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 13 of 14 20 March 2010 at 7:49am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Come on, there's an abundance of in-depth descriptions on how to memorize hanzi. This is by far the best understood part of the whole process. In the end you'll have the choice between rote memorization, like they do in China (google on how Steve Kaufmann, for example, did that), and mnemonics (google Heisig, which I already mentioned). And of course everything in between.
Let me tell you again the most important aspect: You are NOT EVEN TWO WEEKS into your Mandarin study! Your brain isn't yet used to any part at all of this language! Why don't you just do go on doing what you're doing, and not already fret about how you just can't remember the pronunciation?! And lastly: Read AJATT 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Miznia Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5162 days ago 37 posts - 42 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Cantonese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese | Message 14 of 14 08 April 2010 at 9:08pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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In my experience, studying characters not associated with words I know how to use in a sentence, is a good recipe for not remembering those characters very well...
If you study Japanese or Chinese at a university they won't have you learning characters removed from any context. The opportunity to use them helps you remember them. edit: oops, I didn't see how old this thread is. Edited by Miznia on 08 April 2010 at 9:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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