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Cracking the Chinese Puzzles by TK Ann

  Tags: Textbooks | Mandarin
 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes Post Reply
30 messages over 4 pages: 13 4  Next >>
Volte
Tetraglot
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 Message 9 of 30
23 August 2011 at 10:19am | IP Logged 
newyorkeric wrote:
paranday wrote:
Sprachprofi wrote:
Just £40, with free shipping, and definitely worth it.

It's only £30 with free shipping to the USA, in hardback. Do you think this series can be browsed for
pleasure by a character lover? I'm not studying Chinese.


Yes, I think it's a very enjoyable text to leaf through. As a set of texts to learn characters though it's quite
dense and difficult to manage especially if you use it as your primary source.


I second this. They're definitely fun books to leaf through.

Edited by Volte on 23 August 2011 at 10:20am

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Luk
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 Message 10 of 30
23 August 2011 at 6:37pm | IP Logged 
newyorkeric wrote:
Yes, I think it's a very enjoyable text to leaf through. As a set of texts to learn characters though it's quite dense and difficult to manage especially if you use it as your primary source.


That's my problem right there. Is it meant to teach you about the characters etymology only? or to teach you how to remember them as Heisig?
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newyorkeric
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 Message 11 of 30
24 August 2011 at 6:40am | IP Logged 
You'll see from the pages I scanned that he gives some stories for some characters and none for others. I think that you would have to be familiar with the Heisig method before tackling this text. In my case, I am working through the Matthews and Mathews text first to learn how to use mnemonics and to create stories and then I will move to these texts (hopefully).


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newyorkeric
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 Message 12 of 30
24 August 2011 at 6:58am | IP Logged 
This is the first actual chapter. It's only 4 pages. Later on the chapters become much longer. Before this chapter there are a lot of instructions and a list of bushous (they're like radicals) that he says you must memorize. A number appears next to each character the first time it is introduced. The reason that this chapters starts at 144 is because there are 143 bushous that can stand alone as characters that are introduced in an earlier chapter.





Edited by newyorkeric on 24 August 2011 at 7:03am

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newyorkeric
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 Message 14 of 30
24 August 2011 at 3:35pm | IP Logged 
You're welcome, paranday.

There are 3,650 characters that Ann calls frequently used characters and another 1,000 or so that he calls infrequently used. These numbers are based on a survey in which he collected characters from 4 Hong Kong newspapers for 45 days. Here is the breakdown of the frequently used characters, in order of most common to least common, with the percentage coverage for the 1,411,088 characters surveyed:

    First   Coverage
      500   74.7%
    1,000   88.8%
    1,500   94.6%
    2,000   97.4%
    2,500   98.8%
    3,000   99.5%
    3,650   99.8%

Here is my main complaint about the book. Learning characters 1 through 3,650 is not the best way if you want to start reading relatively soon because he doesn't order the characters by frequency. So I would probably choose to learn 2,000 in one go. But as far as I can tell there is no direct and easy way to figure out what those 2,000 characters are in the text.

Edited by newyorkeric on 24 August 2011 at 3:36pm

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Luk
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 Message 15 of 30
25 August 2011 at 4:23am | IP Logged 
newyorkeric, you're the man! thanks a lot!

one question: it deals with traditional characters or with simplified?
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newyorkeric
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 Message 16 of 30
25 August 2011 at 11:06am | IP Logged 
Luk wrote:
newyorkeric, you're the man! thanks a lot!

one question: it deals with traditional characters or with simplified?


You're welcome...

The focus is traditional characters, but he includes the simplified versions as well.

Edited by newyorkeric on 25 August 2011 at 4:24pm



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