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Evita’s Mix of Languages

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Evita
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Latvia
learnlatvian.info
Joined 6339 days ago

734 posts - 1036 votes 
Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian
Studies: Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 97 of 236
03 April 2014 at 10:40pm | IP Logged 
I had no choice but to unretire my old phone. At first I couldn't turn it on because I had to enter my PIN code and the code contained the number '2' and the touchscreen didn't work at that spot so I couldn't press it. But then I borrowed someone else's phone, changed the PIN code and then managed to turn on my own old phone. It's so small and old and unresponsive but at least I can get some Anki reviews done on it.

My Hanja deck is going well, I have 6 characters already entered - 一, 人, 十, 日, 七, and 大. Finding the right balance between the easiest characters and the most popular characters will be a challenge but that's the kind of challenge I enjoy and am good at. I'm using mostly three resources - this, this and this. I like the Daum dictionary better than Naver because the example words are more relevant.

And check out this. Can you believe the club opening was last weekend and I only found it today? Oh well, I guess I'll try to go to some of the next meetings.
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druckfehler
Triglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 4655 days ago

1181 posts - 1912 votes 
Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean
Studies: Persian

 
 Message 98 of 236
03 April 2014 at 11:35pm | IP Logged 
Once you get to the more complex characters I recommend checking out the German site täglich Chinesisch. It's geared at people learning traditional characters (so the ones used as Hanja) and has a lot of useful information about how to memorise them by breaking them into components. Of course a lot of the info is only relevant for people learning Mandarin, but it's still worth a look for the info about the characters themselves.
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Evita
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Latvia
learnlatvian.info
Joined 6339 days ago

734 posts - 1036 votes 
Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian
Studies: Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 99 of 236
04 April 2014 at 7:53am | IP Logged 
I'll keep that site in mind but I doubt I'll use it much. One thing is that I prefer the English - Korean language combination to the German - Chinese one, but the main reason is that I plan to learn all the components of a character (assuming they are also simpler characters) before learning a complex character so I should be able to recognize those components myself.
1 person has voted this message useful



Evita
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Latvia
learnlatvian.info
Joined 6339 days ago

734 posts - 1036 votes 
Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian
Studies: Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 100 of 236
06 April 2014 at 9:03pm | IP Logged 
Those Chinese characters are so pretty when you display them with a big pretty font, I just want to learn them all at once LOL. I've set the daily limit on my Anki deck to two new characters per day for now though, I don't want to rush it. My Anki philosophy has always been "slowly but steady" and that's what I'm doing here as well. Still, I've already added 27 notes and made a list of the next 40 characters I want to add. I would have kept working with hanja all day long if I hadn't reminded myself that there were some other things I had to do.

I got my phone back on Friday but shortly after that it stopped working properly so I'll have to bring it back again tomorrow. I don't know if they were just incompetent or if they gave me a defective part but either way I'll be going to a different phone service the next time I need it (which hopefully won't be for a long long time). Anyway, there's also some other stuff happening next week so I'll be busy and I decided to officially take a break from studying. I'll keep doing both of my Anki decks (vocabulary and hanja), I have enough new cards entered to last me a week, but otherwise I won't put any pressure on myself to study. I feel that I'm a little burned out, always thinking "I should do some studying" when I come home from work. Next week I won't be thinking that, I'm giving myself a vacation.

Oh and by the way, I'll be taking a short trip to Paris in June so I'll probably reacquaint myself with the language when the time comes closer. Just enough for a tourist. I did take French classes for 3 years in high school and I do remember some things, even if it's not a lot.
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Warp3
Senior Member
United States
forum_posts.asp?TID=
Joined 5322 days ago

1419 posts - 1766 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese

 
 Message 101 of 236
07 April 2014 at 3:14am | IP Logged 
The first characters are definitely the easiest, mostly due to the lack of similarity in
most of the simpler characters. Once you get a couple hundred in there, though, you'll
start mixing up the ones that are really similar (if you are like me you will, anyway).

For example, 成 (성) is pretty distinct by itself, but not so much when you add in 戊 (무)
and 戌 (술) to the same deck. Eventually, I do start picking out the distinguishing
attributes and can tell them apart reliably, but having a character you thought you knew
extremely well prove you otherwise once similar characters appear can be annoying at
first. (In other words, you find that you only really knew it by distinguishing it from other
unique looking characters, but now you have to focus more deeply to see how it differs
from those that aren't so different from it.)

One character that really surprised me like this was 美 (미). Even many people who
*don't* study Chinese characters know that as the character for beauty and I had gotten
it right so many times it had a huge review interval. Then one day it showed up in my SRS
and I honestly had no idea what it was. The problem was that I had seen so many
characters by that point, that I was looking at each element of the character and thus
didn't recognize it as a whole. When I initially learned it, I wouldn't have recognized most
of the elements inside it, but once I did, I was seeing those elements automatically and
couldn't recognize what character had those.

If you only plan to learn a small subset of characters, then it is definitely worthwhile to
learn the common ones first like I did (regardless of stroke count). However, if I were to
do it again *and* was sure that I would have the necessary drive to learn them all, then
I would learn them by stroke count instead, like I switched to later. It is more boring that
way (since many of the more basic characters are surprisingly uncommon), but learning
those basic characters first allows you to see those characters inside the more complex
ones when you learn them, not when you have to relearn them later because you just
learned the vague shape of the character. Also those basic characters often provide
meaning or pronunciation hints within more complex characters (in fact, sometimes they
are only there for the purpose of showing how that character is pronounced).

EDIT: See my next post below. After thinking about this more, I would not just learn
them in stroke order if I started over, but instead would make sure to learn any internal
characters as prerequisites for learning a more complex character.

Edited by Warp3 on 07 April 2014 at 12:41pm

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Evita
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Latvia
learnlatvian.info
Joined 6339 days ago

734 posts - 1036 votes 
Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian
Studies: Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 102 of 236
07 April 2014 at 10:54am | IP Logged 
I completely agree that it's important to learn the easier characters first, that's why I'm starting with them. However, I'm not studying the characters strictly in the stroke count order either; I tried it last year and it was too dull. Now I'm employing a mixed approach where I consider both the complexity of a character (approximately 70% weight) and its popularity (30%). I think it will give me good results. And of course, if a character is a radical then I have to learn it fairly early on even though it might be quite rare. For example, 市 is much more popular than 巾 but I'm learning 巾 first.

If we look at me actually using the deck and studying hanja, it's been quite easy so far because I already got familiar with some characters last year. The fact that I already know words with these characters helps immensely because then I have no problems with the reading of the character. I'm making myself memorize also the Korean primary meaning of the characters but that goes together with the English meaning so it's not too difficult either. The difficult part will be to learn to recognize the Chinese characters. But as I said, so far it's going well.
1 person has voted this message useful



Warp3
Senior Member
United States
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Joined 5322 days ago

1419 posts - 1766 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese

 
 Message 103 of 236
07 April 2014 at 12:38pm | IP Logged 
I agree it is rather boring doing them only by stroke order, which is why I added that
disclaimer "was sure I would have the necessary drive to learn them all". The more I think
about it, though, a better compromise (one I wish I had used myself) might be to only learn
characters for which you know the components. In other words, you could feel free to learn
忍 (인 / 참을; which is a *very* popular Hanja character on variety and talk shows, which
they display to show when someone is holding back instead of expressing anger) at any
time, but only if you already know 刃(인 / 칼날) and 心(심 / 마음) or learn them both along
with the more complex character.

Edited by Warp3 on 07 April 2014 at 12:42pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Evita
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Latvia
learnlatvian.info
Joined 6339 days ago

734 posts - 1036 votes 
Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian
Studies: Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 104 of 236
07 April 2014 at 5:09pm | IP Logged 
Yes, I'm going to employ that approach along my other approaches. I spent several months thinking about this deck and reading up on all the relevant stuff so I have it all figured out :)

By the way, I got the permission to attend a university Korean class even though I'm not a student. Remember I wrote a while ago that this is the first year they offer the Korean language? Well, finally I decided to do it. I won't have time this week but maybe I can do it next week. I'll have to prepare something, maybe a short text about myself. Not that I was asked to, I just think it would be nice.


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