Remembering Simplified Hanzi 1 and Remembering Traditional Hanzi 1

[renzhe]

I would like to get a Hanzi list to use in anki whith 3000 basic Hanzi, who can provide one?

There is a file for mnemosyne which includes all characters and words from HSK (covers around 9000 words using 2900 characters) and on top of that has the top 2000 characters sorted by frequency. Look on their webpage.

Anki can load mnemosyne databases, so you can use that -- import it and save it from Anki. If you do this, please remember to send the resulting file to the Anki developers, so other people can benefit from it.

If that doesn't work for some reason, I posted the exact same data here on the forum: link. I'm pretty sure that anki should be able to import TSV files.

[KONDDE]

@renzhe

TANKS! TANKS A LOT!

It something like that I was looking for, you was very nice to share this item for us! TKS

but,

In fact after I finished thwe last post I´d written here, I choose to folow KATZUMOTO-SAN steps, in fact this man learned over www.zhongwen.com instead of Reisig book, in his site he explain on his FAQ. He didn´t used Heisig Books but he highly recomend it for japanese learners. He learned +4230 Hanzi (simplified and Traditional) at the same from this site and he explained why he did on this way.

And now I gap the katzu-san essence.

What we need to do is in fact to learn the alfabect, buit a alfabect far from dificult to learn than nine.

What I can recomend for the beginners like me is to learn at least 3000 basic or comom caracters, but just hanzi, forgive about words, pinyin, tranlation, etc. Focus on get these chars. as quicly possible. If you are learning it alone or take classes one or twice per week, stay focus on it. And try to learn tarditional and simplified forms, because to read interesting material avaliable on net you´ll see how is dificult to find a manga in S-form.

BTW

I just discovered that don´t need Heisig book for now.. at least for now.

To wait so many months without learn a simple alphabect?!?

Is too time..and.. keep on yours mp3 headphones listening to target language (JAPANSE< CHINESE, KOREAN)doesn´t matter what happen

[renzhe]

KONDDE,

this is one approach to learning Chinese that people use, but not the only one.

While I personally advocate good amounts of rote memorisation in the beginning stages of learning Chinese, I also think that learning words, grammar, pronunciation etc. is important, and should supplement this effort. This actually helps the character learning process.

Learning 3000-4000 characters without any other language aspects is difficult and you'll forget many of them rather soon unless you fit them into a language context (words, sentences, pronunciation, etc.)

This is why I would encourage you to go ahead and learn the common characters like you plan, but also encourage you to follow a good textbook and get some spoken language experience. This will make the characters stick much better, and make you UNDERSTAND them much better.

What I can recomend for the beginners like me is to learn at least 3000 basic or comom caracters, but just hanzi, forgive about words, pinyin, tranlation, etc. Focus on get these chars. as quicly possible. If you are learning it alone or take classes one or twice per week, stay focus on it. And try to learn tarditional and simplified forms, because to read interesting material avaliable on net you´ll see how is dificult to find a manga in S-form.

Learning once or twice a week is a waste of time if you want to memorise 3000 characters quickly. Twice per day is some sort of minimum, more is better, spaced out throughout the day.

It is also my experience that learning both the traditional and simplified characters is detrimental. Once you master one set and the vocabulary that is built on these characters, you'll be able to read the other set with very little extra effort, because the context (words, phrases, grammar) and the make-up of the characters (the parts they consist of) will give you huge hints in the vast majority of cases.

No fluent Chinese speaker I've met has learned both sets at once. They could all read both, and all it took is some reading. Concentrate on one set, 3000+ characters is difficult enough.

[renzhe]

I'd also add that learning Hanzi for Chinese is different than learning Kanji for Japanese, as the characters are an integral part of the language in a much stronger way than they are in Japanese.

It's far more than an alphabet, and in fact learning pronunciations will help the memorisation effort because most characters have a strong phonetic component that makes sense in Chinese, but not in Japanese.

[KONDDE]

@renzhe

Many tks for the tips,

In fact the Hanzi and Kanji are the same but in few exceptions. What I mean what I´m looking for is to learn this, just the characters, I know it is very complicated to learn just his and so focus on it, but while I´m studying the chars.(Hanzi S and T) I do my listening drills and try to read some exercices books, I used to do 2 classes per month with a native teacher too.

But is very confortable when you know all the basic or odds charachters, after that to learn sentences is a step too closet.

About T-form I just learn to recognise them, just it. Trying to learn 25-50 chars. per day is a good number to attemp this in a fews months, what dou you gues?

Remember that: Kanji, Hanzi and Hanja are all the same, I know that theirs uses is far from diferent and there are few exceptions to some chars. kind.

The process is:

1) to learn all 3000+ odds chars. using the Heisig mmemo method.

2) while you listening to target language do some exrcices. etc etc. the main focus I will stress on chars.

BTW´: I´m in 350-400 chars at this moment. There are no much time to goal the 3000+ I hope.

Please fell free to exchange any idea, my mother thongue is not english is brazilian portuguese instead, sometimes I cannot express my self correctly, me sorry,

TKS!

[renzhe]

KONDDE,

you are right that the characters used in China, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan/Hong Kong are variations on the same characters. The meaning is mostly the same too (though there are also some variations in meaning).

But, for example, in Japanese, they are read using Japanese language. They were imported from China and grafted onto the Japanese language over generations. Each character has 3 different pronunciations, and at least two of them lose much of the phonetic part of the Chinese character.

The connection between the language (which can be written completely in hiragana or katakana) and the characters is much weaker than in Chinese. You learn the Japanese language (using katakana and hiragana), and then you learn how to write some common words using kanji instead, by memorising a couple of thousand of them.

In Chinese, the characters basically ARE the language. That's the difference I was talking about.

You can still do the Heisig thingy and some people do, but I wouldn't just assume that the best method for learning Japanese (whatever it might be) will be the same as the best method for learning Chinese, because of issues like these. That, and the fact that the number of characters commonly used in Chinese is far greater than in Japanese or Korean.

But is very confortable when you know all the basic or odds charachters, after that to learn sentences is a step too closet.

I agree that it's nice to have a buffer of characters you've memorised and far easier to learn words and get better at reading that way. I do this too, but I'd suggest also learning other things at the same time. Whatever you do, and whichever method you apply, you'll be learning characters as long as you live, even native speakers do. So concentrate on getting enough to get you started, give you exposure to written material, help you with following TV shows, etc.

Learning things in different context really helps with memorisation. You can get this context from hearing the words, learning vocabulary, seeing the words in context, etc.

Please fell free to exchange any idea, my mother thongue is not english is brazilian instead, sometimes I cannot express my self correctly, me sorry

You're doing fine, no worries. Many people on this board don't speak English as their mother tongue.

1) to learn all 3000+ odds chars. using the Heisig mmemo method.

I've been studying chars intensively, and I figure it will take me about 2 years to get there. I use an SRS program, have good memory, and do it daily. I also use mnemonics (similar to the ones Heisig uses) for some more difficult characters. I'm at about 2500, but I'm learning vocabulary and pronunciation at the same time too.

My point is -- you can learn so much more in this time. You can go from very basic stuff to watching whole TV shows.

[HerrPetersen]

I too would not recommend learning both versions at once. Heisig also discourages the thought: he gives out one book only for traditional hanzi and one only for simplified. But still it would be interesting to see a list which compares traditional to simplified characters (leaving out the obvious ones). Even cooler would be a list which also includes a kanji-version (if available) with entries like for instance:

simplified, kanji, traditional

(宽, 寛, 寬)

Has anyone compiled such a list?

[renzhe]

Try this

[HerrPetersen]

Great! Nice page. Thank you.

[The Elf Piper]

Has this been published yet? I checked Amazon but it's not there.

[jslee]

Some good news:

PROGRESS REPORT (7 August 2008): The covers for Book 1 of Remembering Simplified Hanzi and Remembering Traditional Hanzi are now in their final stages of preparation. The book should go into production in the next week or two.

Source

[Rebecca Weiner]

Hi--

I find pinyin can help in learning characters but can also be a crutch that ultimately can hinder absorbing the character itself. Personally I prefer the combo of looking at the characters with listening directly to the sound of the characters, not filtered via pinyin.

One nice way to do that is watching CCTV or movies both dubbed and translated into Chinese with the characters on. Another nice way is listening to dialogues together with transcripts of those dialogues - there are a lot of fun ones on ChinesePod, and as others have pointed out one of the advantages of the paid service (works out to about $9/month) is the ability to get full transcripts. Note I do some consulting for the CPod people - I also genuinely believe in their products.

--Rebecca

[jslee]

Very good and valid point, but I suppose some people could learn it wrong.

[Guest realmayo]

Hmm, Heisig for hanzi seems flawed on several levels, mostly detailed earlier in this thread. I bought "Learning Chinese Characters Volume 1", authors Matthews & Matthews, a book mentioned several times on this forum by m.ellison ... I got the book a few months ago on the offchance that it might be a bit useful and I'm really surprised just how good it is, I'm learning new characters very quickly indeed.

Unlike Heisig, the book shows you how to remember each character's pronunciation including tones too. This is very valuable: lots of people say that simply learning characters in isolation is a bit daft -- that as well as learning characters, you should learn the two-character words (ie vocab) which these characters form. I agree, & pronunciation is really helpful here. Heisig seems to want to to learn the characters in isolation from the language, which may work for Japanese (I have no idea) but seems absurd for Chinese.

The Matthews & Matthews book on the other hand has been very very helpful to me, in a way I can't see Heisig ever being. I'm surprised it's not more popular -- I guess people are seduced by the idea of the miracle-worker Heisig....

Edited August 12, 2008 at 09:20 AM by realmayo

[imron]

[i guess people are seduced by the idea of the miracle-worker Heisig.

People are seduced the the idea of any kind of miracle method for learning characters. Whatever method you choose though, In the end, nothing beats time and effort, however that is not the answer most people want to hear.

[Guest realmayo]

Agreed, with the obvious caveat that putting time and effort into an inefficient method of study will produce poorer results than putting time and effort into an efficient method of study (eg SRS programmes versus paper flashcards).

[renzhe]

Yes, I will agree with both of you. Ultimately, you'll need to sweat and show serious dedication. But there are better and worse methods of going about it.

I'd be head-over-heels about this book if it had come out 2 years ago, but I found that just the plain old flashcards got the job done in the meantime. Perhaps I'd be able to do the job faster if I could start all over again, and organise it a bit better, but the hardcore way wasn't too bad either, as long as you accept that you need a couple of years of serious effort and roll up your sleeves.

I really wonder about leaving the pronunciation out. Pronunciation is such an integral part of Chinese characters (and often makes it FAR easier to remember the meaning than a far-fetched mnemonic) that I don't believe this will be as effective as it is for learning kanji. I'd be interested to hear the opinion of somebody who goes through this programme.

[Janne]

I guess different methods for different people. I read about the Heisig method and have been trying to adapt its basic ideas myself, ie breaking down and associating a silly story to a character that is to be learnt. For me, this is so far a revolution for my ability to remember the characters. The ones I can come up with a really suiting story for seem to etch into my memory almost after the first review, whereas the good old copy and cry method requires many reruns in the SRS.

One big problem is with keeping consistent representations of the radicals after getting to 100+ stories. And that's why I'll be buying the Heisig book when it finally comes out, since he will have done the hard work of breaking down and arranging the characters in a logical order.

The biggest flaw is definitively that pronounciation isn't included. But I do believe it would be a more effective approach to separate the pronounciation learning and the character learning in two different runs, as to not clog up the mind. If I'm not wrong, I think this is what Heisig does in the Kanji series?

My version of learning pronounciation is taken from the "All japanese all the time" concept, which means I study sentences and try to pronounce them from characters to pinyin. Gives me a feel for grammar at the same time.

In the end, very hard work is definitively needed to get to the 3000+ character level, no matter what method you use. But I think it's important to find a method that gives you the most value for your time. The thing I can think of that everyone definitively should use with no exception is a decent SRS.

[xroman]

大家好！

First, I apologize if this has been posted before...

Does anyone have experience using Heisig's "Remembering the Kanji" to learn the Hanzi?

I started doing this, because "Remembering the Hanzi" isn't out yet and I already have the Kanji book.

I think the mnemonic method is surprisingly very effective, and each new character that I learn, I look up the pynyin and any different meaning (between japanese and chinese) - rarely is there a difference.

Can anyone give me a reason why not to do it this way, or why to continue?

谢谢

[Jasel]

Looking forward to this. I used RTK a couple of years back and was extremely impressed. After a few weeks I had no problem remembering about 580 Kanji from memory with casual review here and there. This was with pretty much no training in Japanese whatsoever.

I think once you actually do the program you realize how effective it is. One of the comments I keep seeing is people saying that it's not worth the effort because you'll just have to go back to all the symbols and learn the pronunciations for them anyway which I guess seems like doing twice the work when you could be doing half the work for more practical results. I think there are individuals here who are maybe slightly overestimating the time needed to progress in this program (although I do know people learn at different speeds) and many who are underestimating how much easier it is to retain what's learned using the Heisig method as compared to rote memorization. Not to mention that it's much easier to apply pronunciations and various meanings to symbols after having an understanding of their basic meaning and being able to recall the symbol accurately from memory quickly and easily as well as write them.

There are also some misconceptions people seem to have. This book isn't supposed to be the "end all" to the Hanzi learning process and the author never claims that. He simply recognizes that the hardest part of learning Chinese is being able to effectively and accurately recall the ways the symbols are drawn and their basic meanings. By getting this out of the way, and relatively quickly depending on how much time you dedicate to the process, you'd be amazed how much easier it is to absorb other information regarding to the language in conjunction with what you've already gotten out of the way via Heisig's method.

I'm not a fast learner and the 30 Kanji that I had learned my first few weeks of learning them (and naturally I couldn't accurately draw all of them, recall all of them, or remember their meanings as fast as I would have liked) pales in comparison to the 580 + that I could recall relatively easily in about the same learning period.

And lastly Heisig doesn't have to be learned on it's own. From what I've experienced I think it's fine to learn and also use other Japanese learning resources. Outside of Heisig however I wouldn't recommend trying to use any other Hanzi learning programs etc because it will confuse you or at least make the method less effective.

I can see why people here basically have reservations, skeptical, or outright negative opinions of this method because I've had the same reservations and skeptical attitude myself. However I tentatively tried it and was so pleased with the results I was hooked. I went from illiterate to Japanese to being able to navigate (albeit on rudimentary level) http://www.asahi.com/ in 3 weeks. But like someone else said this program isn't for everyone. If you get partway through, get bored and quit, it's going to be hard to retain a lot of what you learned although even after two years I can see a symbol I learned during the program and recall it's meaning instantly.

This is a program that I would definitely recommend for beginners. Even if it does take a few months you can supplement it with other learning materials.