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Learning chinese - a discouraging article | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| furyou_gaijin Senior Member Japan Joined 6180 days ago 540 posts - 631 votes  Speaks: Latin* | Message 33 of 39 28 August 2007 at 6:56am | IP Logged | |||||
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Please note that originally this discussion concerned 'symbols' which I interpret as including elements, phonetic components, etc. Most of the components Heisig breaks out ('meeting of butchers' in the character for 'in front', 'Christmas tree', etc.) have valid, etymologically accepted explanations which he omits in the vast majority of cases substituting them with random ones, chosen for the sake of mnemonics. My point is that there is no need to tell students anything that is, strictly speaking, untrue.
The accepted meaning of [辟] is 'to break', 'to keep away'. It can be (and has been) demonstrated that this connotation is present in most of its derivatives. This in itself can be used as a powerful mnemonic to support the study of this group of characters. There is nothing wrong to forget about this original meaning and replace it with 'ketchup' or something else but whether to do it or not is a decision every student should take for himself - based on the knowledge of actual facts. And Heisig's book fails to supply the facts, in most cases. Once again, this doesn't diminish the validity of the method which I think is brilliant. But most people, sadly, forget that this is just a method (that as such can be set out in 3 pages or so) and start seeing those books as THE final word on the characters, which very clearly they are not. Edited by furyou_gaijin on 28 August 2007 at 6:57am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Georgi87 Triglot Groupie Israel Joined 6095 days ago 43 posts - 44 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, French Studies: Japanese | Message 34 of 39 31 August 2007 at 8:57am | IP Logged | |||||
You're contradicting yourself. You wrote: "random ones, chosen for the sake of mnemonics." Well, if they're chosen for the sake of mnemonics, they're not very random, are they? Personally, I don't care about how historically accurate Heisig's stories are; obviously, I realise that the Japanese had never intended for the radicals in their kanji to mean things like "computer." These radical/primitive descriptions are just used to make it easier for students to memorise the keywords for the actual kanji. The method is excellent for memorising the meanings of Kanji (though sometimes Heisig's stories are terrible), but, quite obviously, not so excellent if you want to know why every kanji has evolved to look the way it does today. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| furyou_gaijin Senior Member Japan Joined 6180 days ago 540 posts - 631 votes Speaks: Latin* | Message 35 of 39 31 August 2007 at 9:11am | IP Logged | |||||
'Random' as in 'etymologically nonsensical'.
...and leave the students with a bunch of made-up concepts. In fact, the 'computer' primitive has nothing to do with the 'field' and the 'earth', as presented by Heisig, but has evolved from something very different. Everyone sets their own standards, obviously, but it would help to know from the start which bits of information are actually untrue. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ximing Tetraglot Newbie Canada Joined 6073 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, Japanese, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Latin | Message 36 of 39 18 September 2007 at 3:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I see many people praise the “Heisig's Remebering the Kanji”.
Actually, I, as a Chinese native, can confirm you that similar tricks were used by my parents in teaching me the characters when I was a child. My parents know nothing about Heisig, or anything like that invented by linguists. But they teach me a “women + child” = “good” (“女+子 ＝ 好” ), and “big sheep is delicious” (“大＋羊 ＝ 美”), and “one woman under one roof is peace, two or more will result in war” (安) , and similar things. If I organize them in a book, will there be any one want to buy it? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6496 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 37 of 39 18 September 2007 at 6:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
There certainly would be a market for it, especially if you point out that it's what your parents taught you as a child. Of course, you have to have enough material to fill a book, but they don't all have to be remembered from childhood. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| cassidium Bilingual Pentaglot Newbie Singapore Joined 6088 days ago 14 posts - 15 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Japanese, GermanA1, French | Message 38 of 39 23 September 2007 at 7:38am | IP Logged | |||||
I do think that some of the difficulties mentioned in this article are very valid. Though I speak and read Mandarin on a daily basis, when it comes to writing an article or a letter in Chinese, I'm not confident of getting more than 70% of the Chinese characters correctly written (or getting the appropriate Chinese character written for a particular context, I would frequently make the mistake of substituting another character with the same pronunciation in place of the correct character that i should be writing in that context) without the help of a dictionary. Secondary school students over here are allowed to bring in their chinese dictionaries for national exams for the composition paper. As I was schooled to learn the simplified character, i can only write simplified character from memory, though i can read both simplified and traditional characters. I remembered that when i was in primary 6, i attempted to read an article from a Chinese newspaper, and i had to stop and ask my baby-sitter on how to pronounce this character and that character, so much so, that she got so irked and told me that i should only be attempting to read the newspapers after i finished secondary school and learnt enough Chinese characters. On recollection, I found the learning of the Chinese Language to be rather challenging as a child. I remembered crying due to frustration when i had to finish my chinese homework of writing chinese characters when i was 7-year-old. To make matters worse, my Chinese teacher then, would make us line up in front of her to show her the chinese characters that we had written, if it was written not up to her standard either because certain stroke were relatively out of proportion with respect to others, or the position of a dot is not correct, etc, she would pull our ear. I feel that a better approach for people learning mandarin as a foreign language would be to focus firstly on the hanyu pinyin (the standared chinese romanisation) and subsequently the conversational aspect of the language, and learn only minimal chinese characters. I think the conversational aspect can be acquired almost as easily as other foreign languages. Once you find that you are fairly good at picking up spoken mandarin, then you can start substituting the romanisations with more and more chinese characters (a bit at a time). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6088 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 39 of 39 23 September 2007 at 9:52am | IP Logged | |||||
Hey, this looks like a "fun" one. I see 辟 listed as character 241 in my "Japanese-English Character Dictionary" by Andrew Nelson. The meaning is given as "false; punish; crime; law". This character pops up all the time in modern Chinese. I refer to the "Far East Chinese-English Dictionary" where it is character 6039. Here, when pronounced bì, the meanings are listed as: a monarch; to summon; to govern; to avoid ... when pronounced pì, the meaning is listed as: remote, inaccessible. Hours of fun and entertainment can be found tracking down how the meanings diverged but not by me right now. I've got French grammar books calling for some attention... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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