Quick Study tip: keep a personalized list of mutually confusing characters

[necroflux]

I've found that as I continue in the long, arduous, yet always rewarding journey of learning the Chinese language, keeping a list of characters which I frequently confuse for one another has been a great study tool. This idea is implemented in Reading and Writing Chinese by McNaughton and Ying, but having your own customized list is much more effective.

Whenever you see a character and misread it at first as something else, you may feel frustrated - but in reality this is an opportunity for clearing up misconceptions in your mind. Your brain has just communicated to you a redundancy error if you will. Write these two characters down in a central list for these types of mix-ups. If a confusing character belongs in a group that you've already started, add it to that group. Quite often you will probably find that groups of 5 or more characters form, any of which could be confused for the others in that group.

Obviously the way the Chinese written language is set up there are characters which are comprised of the same building blocks - so technically this list could grow to include every single character. If you're like me, however, you'll find that some of the time these subtle differences are good enough as clues to discern between the two characters. And other times, different for every person, it can be maddening.

For me, 左 and 右 were a bitch. Yeah, one has the "H" looking thing, the other has the box. Easy right? Left is H, and right is box. Wait.. why? Haha you get my point. In the end this list will lead you to strengthen your character mnemonics as necessary. I chose to represent "left" as H because I Hate writing left handed. Two or three times of actually using the mnemonic and it starts to fade, leaving only solidly memorized characters ready to be called upon for battle.

As a matter of reference, here is part of my list of confusing characters. Note that not all are necessarily visually similar - but for whatever reason at one point in time my mind mixed them up and the mind is not always logical. The important fact is not why your mind mixes up two characters; just that it has.

My partial list:

叫收

乖乘

其真

樣棒賽捧寒

晚免

誰進

忙忘

所以吃

真直

我找

書畫事

間問

較校教

快筷

討厭 : 壓力

辦班

拉站

放旁房

病痛

火太大

日目

嗎馬碼

供恭

穿房

意音

包色

司可

動棟種重鍾鐘懂

零電

照熱

母每海

機幾極

渴喝

汁代

久入人

歲號

戶房屋

窗傻聰腦

紅經

架加

住往王主

打斤新

成或對感

長身

東果

刻到

還遠

筆笨等答

筋節算

可何句

能從

很眼

情請睛

借錯惜

冷今

黑點

相香李季

比北花化

[leosmith]

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