Handwriting - is it useful?

[gougou]

How you put a note on a table that you will be late, lets say from work? (But I think with SMS you need some ideas about writing too (cell phones never use Pinyin, right??))

I use a cheap Motorola phone, and I have only Pinyin input available. Which is fine by me, though, as on my old phone that's all I used, too. (BTW, putting the note on the table makes sense when you leave home after your partner does)

I am certainly not going to learn handwriting (at least not in this lifetime)

Note: I never said never!

[flameproof]

oh, I never checked what input my Nokia actually has. But it has stroke symbols on the keys, so I presume it has some sort of stroke related input method. Usually when somebody sms me in Chinese I usually reply with simple Pinyin.

>Note: I never said never!

Hehe, caught me! I don't know. Maybe with more reading, things fall into place automatically. I am not planning to learn writing. But one never knows how far motivation can carry one.

For now I just "look" at a whole character and only sometimes look at sub components to remember it, like 姐 has a girl in it....

In my lunch break I picked up the "Heisig" book from the library. I wonder a bit how far it can be applied to Chinese? Are the radicals the same? Are simpl. and trad. radicals different?

I noticed that Kanji uses both systems. Like, country (国) is simpl.m but car (車) is trad.

I may go through that PDF and make it fit Chinese.

[wushijiao]

I don't think learning to write by hand is all that useful. Of course, everybody else has already given the advantages (taking down notes, filling in forms, cultural reasons, reading handwriting, being able to appreciate calligraphy..etc).

Living in the PRC, you almost never have to write characters by hand. Even if you do, you can type in the pinyin on your cell phone and then copy down that character after you recognize it.

Learning to write by hand takes a ton of time. That time is better spent improving other aspects of one's Chinese, I think.

[leosmith]

I'm skeptical. How many hours have you spent with this method, and how many characters have you memorized?

I understand your skepticism. I memorized 2042 characters in about 300 hours. But I used paper flashcards. I believe by using a spaced-repetition flashcard program like supermemo, mnemosyne or twinkle I could have done it in 200.

Many finish even faster. After reading the intro in that PDF link provided by flameproof (thanks for fixing that btw), you could check out this forum.

http://forum.koohii.com/

Hundreds of folks using the Heisig method to learn kanji.

I wonder a bit how far it can be applied to Chinese? Are the radicals the same? Are simpl. and trad. radicals different?

I dunno. I started making a list for Chinese with a group of folks, but we dissolved when we found out Heisig was working on Remembering the Hanzi (RTH). It was supposed to be out last November, but they didn't finish writing, so the date has slid to this fall. I'm willing to wait.

But you can still use the method. You can take a list of hanzi, learn 10 or so radicals, and use his story method to learn all the hanzi you can make with those radicals. Learn some more radicals, then use them, along with your previously learned hanzi to learn as many as can be made with those, etc.

Of course, you don't need to take advantage of the domino effect. You could just learn all the radicals first, then use the story method to learn hanzi in any order you want.

[flameproof]

Since "gougou" challenged me on my comment:

I am certainly not going to learn handwriting (at least not in this lifetime)

and

Note: I never said never!

I need to add, the longer I look at characters the less complicated they become. After buying these book: http://www.sinolingua.com.cn/en/product.asp?id=1164 and looking at radicals writing suddenly looks much easier then before.

I found these passage in the Heisig book interesting, and unfortunately true:

Virtually all teachers of Japanese, native and foreign, would agree with me

that learning to write the kanji with native proficiency is the greatest single

obstacle to the foreign adult approaching Japanese—indeed so great as to be

presumed insurmountable. After all, if even well-educated Japanese study the

characters formally for nine years, use them daily, and yet frequently have

trouble remembering how to reproduce them, much more than English speaking

people have with the infamous spelling of their mother tongue, is it

not unrealistic to expect that even with the best of intentions and study methods

those not raised with the kanji from their youth should manage the feat?

Such an attitude may never actually be spoken openly by a teacher standing

before a class, but as long as the teacher believes it, it readily becomes a self-

fulfilling prophecy. This attitude is then transmitted to the student by placing

greater emphasis on the supposedly simpler and more reasonable skills of

learning to speak and read the language.

It's always fun to prove people wrong.

[JonasL]

Sorry to put it this harsh but: Handwriting is also helpful if you don't want to be seen as an illiterate fool by Chinese.

If no foreigner would be able to write Chinese then I guess it would be fine, but since I think most(?) foreigners can, you will always be in the bronze medal group (silver is foreigners that can write, gold is Dashan (in Chinese eyes of course, eventhough tons of foreigners are better than Dashan they didnt come to China in the 80s so they get no recognition..)

[calibre2001]

Whenever I write, my character recognition (amd thus reading ability) improves by a ton. So yes I figure it complements listening, speaking, and reading very well.

It's just combinations of strokes and basic characters........