I Hate Hanzi

[renzhe]

It is those additional hours that allow others to appear to learn faster than me, when in reality they are just putting in more hours.

It has been my experience that 1 hour every day for 7 hours is much better than one hour every week for 7 week. Although the amount of time spent studying is the same.

I think that everyday exposure is important because it keeps things fresh in your mind and helps cement things in your memory.

Perhaps you just need to find something that's fun enough to do every day. For me, it was comics, later books. I never could get into simplified stuff written for learners.

[trien27]

If you don't like it, don't do it. simple as that! If you don't like Chinese then learn something else!!!

[paperbagprince23]

The purpose of a written language is to convey a specific meaning to the reader, they are not paintings

Typical post by a typical ethnocentric pig. What says that a written language is not supposed to be beautiful? You are taking your own, personal, western look at language. Remember, you are learning Chinese now, open your mind. What gives you the right to dictate a 5,000 year old system.

And no, actually the more Hanzi you learn, the easier they become. When you learn a lot of hanzi, you begin to learn all of the parts that make them up. And I don't just mean radicals. The more characters you learn, your brain becomes used to learning them. It is to the point now when I can look at a character and pretty much remember it.

I suspect you are not as much of an ass hole as your title implies; so If I could offer any advice to you or anyone else learning Chinese it would be to not just try to "memorize" characters, that is the biggest mistake Chinese language learners make. Learn how to write them, not memorize them.

And a quick word to anyone who thinks I am being rude or trying to start a flame war; I am not. I simply care, not love, Hanzi. More than I care about hurting douches feelings at least.

[daofeishi]

Typical post by a typical ethnocentric pig. What says that a written language is not supposed to be beautiful?

I'm not sure about your definition of "ethnocentric", but I find that Thai, Devanagari, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew and Armenian are both functional and beautiful.

[paperbagprince23]

This doesn't go against my point, actually. I am not saying that many written languages are not beautiful (I would agree to the list above and could add many many more), but his assertion that a written language is not meant to be beautiful is, or that somehow it being beautiful took away from its usability.

The definition I am using for ethnocentric is the sociological one, that being the usage of ones won cultural background and expectations to judge another one.

[roddy]

I don't think anybody took him seriously and he got laughed at already. In 2007. I'm fairly sure someone must have said something more stupid more recently. Quite possibly me. Could probably have just let sleeping typical ethnocentric pigs* lie.

*that's porcinism, BTW.

[paperbagprince23]

I guess so, what can I say, i'm late to the party. But, after all, what is a forum for but putting in your two cents

[roddy]

Shedloads of stuff - have a look around. I can't believe you read back to 2009 and didn't notice . . . ;-)

[paperbagprince23]

Haha, I was searching for something and I just came across it. I think I was looking up for a thread about "funny" characters, kinda that on the lines of 肏 when I found it. Last time I started a thread, it was about a movie, but someone else already made a thread about it, and I felt kinda jackassy for duplicating it...was just checking, but got distracted...like always.

[paike]

Just stick to it. I can't write. Maybe a hundred of so characters?

I can read thousands and spend most of my "study time" reading newspapers and short story collections. Big difference in those two types of language, but other than that, not much else.

Wish I could write, though I can on a computer just fine.

[Jan Finster]

Bump ?

 

[rant starts]

I hate hanzi too.

No, they are not "beautiful", they are not "fun to learn" and no "you do not just pick them up by reading them a lot" ? 

I learn them, recognise them and "know" them for a a couple of weeks and then forget them. Recently I came across some "HSK 1 ish" words like 宿舍 and my mind drew a complete blank. I would literally have sworn that I have never seen this character before ?

I positively know that mnemonics like Heisig method or memory places are not the way my brain works. Maybe I should start writing them even though I know it will destroy months of my life writing 3000 characters 100-200x only to forget how to write them 6-12 months later.... 

[rant ends]

 

 

 

 

[Insectosaurus]

I don't really see how this is a problem just for hanzi, Jan. What's the big difference between your scenario and completely blanking a word you've learnt in Korean? Surely blanking 宿舍 is the same as blanking 기숙사? If you forget a word, you forget a word, the phonetics aren't going to help you, unless it's in a language of the same language family as your own. The reason we don't forget that voix means voice is because of the similarities between the languages, not the phonetics itself. Tha'ts what I'd argue at least.

 

I think the key both in the Korean example, and when it comes to hanzi, is exposure. As long as you get exposed to the characters you're learning, they will stick eventually. Some will take longer than others, but as said, the same goes for words in foreign languages. Some just won't stick until you'e encountered them over and over again.

 

I agree with you though that you don't pick them up by reading. I would say most people need to learn them on the side of exposure, and letting the exposure enforce them. I think most would agree also that the more hanzi you know, the easier it is to learn new ones.

[Demonic_Duck]

7 hours ago, Jan Finster said:

Maybe I should start writing them even though I know it will destroy months of my life writing 3000 characters 100-200x only to forget how to write them 6-12 months later....

 

I strongly recommend that you do not do this. I'd recommend learning to handwrite Chinese only to 2 groups of learners:

• Those that really enjoy learning and honing this skill
• Those that are required to do so for academic or (much less commonly) professional reasons

If you find it a slog and have no external requirements to learn it, it's little better than wasted time. Recognition and production are separate yet related skills. With speaking and listening, you have to learn both, but as long as you have access to a computer/phone, you don't need to learn the productive skill of writing. This is because, when you're using an input method editor:

 

pronunciation + pinyin + visual recognition = writing

 

This makes the receptive skill of visual recognition even more important and the productive skill of handwriting much less so.

 

However, learning visual recognition doesn't have to be done purely by rote. Most characters have both semantic and phonetic components; learning how these work and how form, pronunciation, and meaning tend to change historically will help massively. For that, one resource I'd definitely recommend is the Outlier Chinese character etymology dictionary, available on Pleco. It's a shade pricey, especially the full version, but well worth it in my opinion.

 

That's not to say you can skip the rote learning entirely - flashcards with spaced repetition are an extremely effective way of doing this. Unfortunately, they're also very boring, but there's really no way around that.

[Demonic_Duck]

As a caveat to the above, I'd still recommend learning the basics of handwriting (横竖撇点折 etc. and some of the most common atomic components) to all Chinese learners. That way you can copy down written text, enter a character to look it up when you don't know its pronunciation, and so on. But that's vastly different from copying out characters hundreds of times on 田字格 paper.

[Shelley]

7 hours ago, Jan Finster said:

writing 3000 characters 100-200x only to forget how to write them 6-12 months later

 

You shouldn't forget them if you don't stop writing them. 

Write short passages about anything once a day. It can be something you did, a fantasy story, plans for tomorrow, the more varied the wider you r use of characters.

 

If you just write them out X times and leave it at that you will forget them, something like Skritter will keep presenting you characters at longer and longer intervals but never stop giving you them unless you take it off the list.

 

I have to say that any characters I learned to write using Skritter are the ones I have the highest retention, for writing and reading. if Skritter is not for you try TOFU learn https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tofulearn.tofulearn&hl=en_GB

 

I am one of those that find them beautiful, enjoy the etymology and practising is sometimes boring but I think worth it.

 

[Dlezcano]

I think this is a matter of changing your mindset, for instance I always loved hanzi so I never had any issues with it, but at my early stages of learning Chinese I hated chengyu. Those feelings even became worse when I met an American guy who liked using them with my Chinese friends, who immediately praised his linguistic abilities. Later my Chinese improved greatly and I started to enjoy learning chengyu.

It all depends on the amount of time you are willing to spend learning the language, the more you know the more you like it.

[889]

What are you going to do with your Chinese?

 

Will you be spending a lot of time in China or with Chinese speakers? Will you be using Chinese at work? In these contexts, if you've got good spoken Chinese you'll naturally be expected to have at least some basic writing skills: fill out a form, write down an order in a restaurant, leave a note for a colleague, etc. Imagine your reaction to a Chinese colleague who spoke great English but who, you one day discovered, could barely write his own name. Ditto you in the reverse situation.

 

Of course if you're just working on Chinese for your own personal satisfaction, then put your emphasis where you will.

[Flickserve]

16 hours ago, Jan Finster said:

Recently I came across some "HSK 1 ish" words like 宿舍 and my mind drew a complete blank.

thanks for the reminder! I remember this word also being quite hard to remember. It’s HSK 1 but very unrelated to daily life unless you are in University.  

 

16 hours ago, Jan Finster said:

writing 3000 characters 100-200x

 

Try 200-300 first. I would say that’s quite helpful. I did it for traditional Chinese. 
 

 

Mind you I tried a bit of japanese and the beginning was total confusion. To me, chinese characters seem easier than japanese kana! 

[Jan Finster]

6 hours ago, 889 said:

Will you be spending a lot of time in China or with Chinese speakers? Will you be using Chinese at work? In these contexts, if you've got good spoken Chinese you'll naturally be expected to have at least some basic writing skills: fill out a form, write down an order in a restaurant, leave a note for a colleague, etc. Imagine your reaction to a Chinese colleague who spoke great English but who, you one day discovered, could barely write his own name. Ditto you in the reverse situation.

 

I am learning out of personal interest in China and because (before Corona) I used to do quite a few seminars in China every year. My goal is to, at some point, be able to do the Q&A session without a translator and potentially lecture in Chinese (I doubt this will ever happen). Since it is all talk & slides, writing is really not required.

 

I am quite certain, if I learned to write Hanzi, I would forget it pretty soon. In the last year, I have probably handwritten less than 100 words (maybe less than 50 words) in German and English combined. 

Here is an interview with a German translator, who studied Chinese at university, who lived in Beijing for 16 years and who works as a professional translator: You have lived in Beijing for 16 years. Can you speak Chinese fluently and write all Chinese characters, similar to a Chinese?

"I can speak Chinese fluently, but by no means about all subject areas. The writing of characters is made much easier these days with the use of computers and character entry software. However, this means that I can hardly write any characters by hand" (google translated). http://german.china.org.cn/meinchina/2015-03/27/content_35172848.htm

 

 

 

 

[Demonic_Duck]

7 hours ago, 889 said:

fill out a form, write down an order in a restaurant, leave a note for a colleague

 

Writing down an order in a restaurant = copying the names of dishes from the menu. Leaving a note for a colleague = sending them a WeChat message or email.

 

I'll give you "filling out a form", but many things you'd need to fill out don't require characters (姓名、手机号、出生日期、护照号码、人数 etc), only require checking boxes (性别、是否需要发票 etc), or are copyable from the form itself. A major exception is your own address, which it's probably worth learning to write. Anything else can be looked up on Pleco on the fly.