all chinese all the time?

[brainsplatt]

Hi, is there a version of like Khatzhumoto's all-japanese-all-the-time for chinese? I want to learn mandarin first then japanese (if i ever have much time in the future lol) Anyway, is there like a Mnemosyne to learn hanzi because it's so fun learning with this program. So addicted when I was learning hanji but first comes first, I thought I might want to start off by being fluent with mandarin. I am happy to come to this blog

This guy is also learning it like Khatzhumoto's method in japanese but in chinese but I have not found any information where to download some Mnemosyne files to learn hanzi.

My second question is, I'm a bit confuse as what to learn first. I have read there are different kind of types, like pinyi, traditional, modern..etc. In other words, I just want to learn chinese mandarin the "normal way", that enables me to read like the newspaper, read signs, shops, and conversational texts. thanks

[OneEye]

Ha. That's my blog.

There isn't any mnemosyne file for learning characters the Heisig way, but Heisig's Remembering the Hanzi is out now. I'd either go with that, or Harbaugh's Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary, or McNaugton's Reading and Writing Chinese. TK Ann's book Cracking the Chinese Puzzles is also supposed to be great but I can't comment on it because I don't own it. Just pick a book and start entering characters into mnemosyne rather than downloading a pre-made file.

Pinyin isn't Chinese, it's just a transcription system that tells you how to pronounce characters. You'll need to learn it no matter which character form you decide to go with.

As for traditional vs. simplified, I won't go into the debate on which to learn here (you can search the forum and find plenty of that). But it seems you aren't clear on what "Simplified" and "Traditional" are. They are two different forms of Chinese writing. The traditional form is used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao. The simplified form is used in Mainland China and Singapore. Traditional is also used more in Chinatowns, but I've seen both. Some of the simplifications are easy, such as 語 vs. 语. Some aren't as easy to get, like 書 vs. 书.

You'll eventually want to learn both. Most people recommend learning to read both, but just to write one. I'm personally going with traditional first, then I'll learn to read simplified later.

[imron]

You'll eventually want to learn both. Most people recommend learning to read both, but just to write one.

Once you've learnt one (regardless of which one it is), the other one is pretty simple to learn because there is a considerable amount of overlap, plus many of the simplifications happened in a reasonably standard fashion so once you know the simplifications that were made it's trivial to figure out the characters. What you are then left with is really only needing to learn those characters where it's pretty much impossible to figure it out without learning it, but these are in the minority. As renzhe pointed out in this thread, one you've learnt a few thousand characters, learning the few hundred more required to be able to read the other form is not such a daunting task (and he even provided the mnemosyne files for those who want to try it).

As for which one to learn first, the most important factor is to think about where is the source of the information that you want to be reading. If you want to be reading newspapers, books, conversational texts originating from mainland China, then go with simplified. If you want to be reading stuff from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau then go with traditional.

[anon6969]

Well if you want to learn standard Mandarin, as they read and write it in China, then it's Simplified characters. If you have a special interest in any of these countries: Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan or HongKong then they use Traditional. If not then traditional characters are not worth learning.

Pinyin is used to tell you how to pronounce Chinese (for example the Pinyin for "中文" is zhong3wen2 because that's how you say it). Mandarin uses this, except if you are going to Taiwan where they use their own pronunciation alphabet called: Zhuyinfuhao.

The standard list of Chinese Hanzi is the HSK List of Chinese Characters (the HSK is the standard test for Chinese). The HSK has levels 1, 2,3,4 so you can learn all the Characters for Level 1, then Level 2 etc.

You can download the HSK Lists for Mnemosyne at HSKflashcards.com here:

http://www.hskflashcards.com

Or you could download "all levels" and try and learn them all at once.

Level 1 has 1033 Words, comprising of 800 Characters.

[renzhe]

There are plenty of Mnemosyne decks for Chinese, look here. They even have a database with 20,000 sentences, which is probably exactly what you are looking for if you're going with the Katzumoto method. There are also plenty of character databases on there, for example the HSK database, which covers close to 3000 characters and 9000 words. If you learn that, you'll be able to read most things. Keep in mind that the HSK is a mainland test, but this database also includes a traditional character version.

Chinese characters are used throughout the Chinese speaking world, but there are slight differences. Some countries use a modified version that's easier to write, and different regions will sometimes use different variants of the same characters. You should learn one set, and learn it well, and this should be the one that is more relevant to you. Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and some overseas publications use traditional, and Mainland, Singapore and Malaysia use simplified. Once you learn one, the other one is relatively straightforward.

Just to corroborate what imron said, I've been playing with learning traditional characters (I know simplified), and I estimate that if your basis in simplified is strong, it can be done in a month. Learning the first set well is the difficult part. The same for the other way around.

Pinyin is there just to let you know how characters are pronounced. Learning pinyin is learning sounds and Chinese pronunciation. It's basically used for learning Chinese and writing Chinese names in the Latin alphabet..

[Hofmann]

(for example the Pinyin for "中文" is zhong3wen2 because that's how you say it

塚文, huh?

As to which character set, learn the one that suits the source of your reading material. If you want to be fully functional though, you'll have to learn the other one eventually.

[adrianlondon]

traditional characters are not worth learning.

Unless you like them, or fancy some calligraphy, or ... whatever. If you're only learning the language to communicate and have no interest in the language itself, then fine, but most people learn something because they're curious about it. So why not learn some trad characters even if you'll never write them? They look nice.

[brainsplatt]

Damnn!! Thanks for all the help guys!!!

Quote:

There isn't any mnemosyne file for learning characters the Heisig way, but Heisig's Remembering the Hanzi is out now. I'd either go with that, or Harbaugh's Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary, or McNaugton's Reading and Writing Chinese.

That was your blog?! Awesome bro! So wait Heisig's Hanzi book is out now? Hmm, I'm guessing it will take some time to get the pre-made file for mnemosyne or either I just buy the book, search each character and copy-paste everything manually.lol That would take ages! Thanks again man! I'll keep those books in mind

Okay, I've downloaded the wrong file file (Practical Chinese Reader) and my head almost exploded at how crazy advance it was. It had more than one characters. lol like this one:

工讀學校

工读学校

which means, the reformatory, reform school

How clueless am I to ask this question on how to read it, is it from right to left (like mangas lol)? And it scares me on how long those lines are, but now I know there are two forms, hopefully I would get an answer that the top is simplified and the bottom is trad. or vice versa. But there are also one-lined characters, (maybe rules or universal?) like police, policeman, policewoman:

警察

lol I apologize if I started to jump and sped the boat too early. But It took me awhile to find the first basic lesson (thanks anon6969). And thanks for the imron about that thread, looks interesting and want to check it out later. I come to terms it does not much matter on which to learn first because I will eventually learn both but I chose simplified. Hopefully, it turns out very straightforward to learn the other hand. Just need some clarification on the two-lined characters on which is which. The top appears to be bold and the bottom is more on the slim italic one.

Much thanks!

[renzhe]

Well, which one looks simpler? It's kind of obvious.

And modern Chinese texts (especially the ones read on a computer) are typically written left-to-right.

Edited November 11, 2008 at 09:40 AM by renzhe

[Lu]

工讀學校

工读学校

is eight characters in total. (From what you write it seems you think all of this is one character.) Two groups: the first line is this word/term in four traditional characters, the second line is the same characters but in simplified. 警察 is two characters.

And I agree that this is way too advanced for you at this point. Start with simple ones, like 人，山，工，and the numbers: 一，二，三，四 etc.

[Volapuk49]

Another reason, a very good reason, to learn Traditional, is to read anything published before the introduction of "simplified".

Traditional characters are beginning to reappear on the mainland very selectively but they are starting to come back.

If you have any interest in China pre-1956 then you will need Traditional.

It is my opinion that it is easier to learn Traditional first and then "simplified" and not the other way around.

I agree that if you want to exclusively concentrate on mainland Chinese works post-1956 it would be necessary to learn "simplified".

[renzhe]

If you have any interest in China pre-1956 then you will need Traditional.

Why not read the same works printed in simplified characters? Most of the major ones have been reprinted.

It is my opinion that it is easier to learn Traditional first and then "simplified" and not the other way around.

I often hear this idea, but it is difficult to evaluate, because everybody starts with one set.

Personally, I've arrived at the opposite conclusion. I think it's easier to learn simplified first. But I think that the difference is not large and that you should start with whatever set will be more useful to you, and learn the rest later.

[imron]

It is my opinion that it is easier to learn Traditional first and then "simplified" and not the other way around.

I think actually it's all much of a muchness. Initially, people tend to believe the one they learnt first is the easiest, and that's probably what they were told by their teacher (who was also almost certainly biased towards the type they had learnt).

The fact is, that once you get beyond your first hundred characters, you are probably already going to be breaking characters down by shapes, rather than strokes, so for example, if you came across the character 妈 (or 媽), then regardless of whether you learnt simplified or traditional, in your mind you would see it as either 女 and 马 or 女 and 馬, and that is what you will remember. When you factor in that some 90% of Chinese characters are made up by combining other characters together, and that most character components in one set also exist in some form or another in the other set, then it renders obsolete most arguments about which is easier/more difficult to learn, as learners of both are remembering essentially the same thing (shapeX combined with shapeY).

Anyway, the gap between traditional and simplified isn't nearly as large as many people seem to believe, and once you've learnt one, it doesn't require too much effort to learn the other.

[thekhanon]

I read through this discussion, and I'm pretty sure that no one addressed something that I feel is kind of important for a beginning Chinese learning (which I am also)... not all Traditional characters have a corresponding Simplified character... in fact, if I recall correctly, only about 1,300 Traditional characters were "converted" to Simplified, so the rest of the characters you see will be the same whether you know Traditional or Simplified. This is also probably the reason that some translations you see have two lines (the one on top being Traditional and the one below it being Simplified), and some only have one line, because there are no Simplified character translations for that word or sentence.

[Capitalist]

OP, there are many threads about traditional v simplified, but the time spent debating it probably negates the time you'd save just starting to learn. If you're an AJATT guy, then read Khatz's "African way of learning: just do it" post.

[xieco]

http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%B0%A1%E5%8C%96%E5%AD%97%E7%B8%BD%E8%A1%A8

(Only in Chinese)

No, I copied the list above for my exam at university, and I stopped after copying the first and second lists (350+132). The third list is "logical simplification" that Mao added to expand the list, so the third list has systematic simplification. The difference between traditional and simplified would then be more apparent than real for the third list. But for the first and second, my teacher's advice, for native writers, is to memorize - in other words, I can say the first and second are illogical/counter-intuitive/unpredictable for native writers. So, the real difference is 482 characters, around 1/6 of 3000 characters you might need to read a newspaper. That's not like Japanese since Chinese has n times more characters than its neighboring language. I just learned simplified Chinese by reading these lists. But of course, settle for one set first before learning the other. And according to the utilitarian rule of thumb, though unjustified according to the minority for the traditional, I do think it makes sense to learn simplified Chinese before learning the logical one.

As for the flashcard thing...I'd never do this, since I don't need to. It's worth a try, yes, though I prefer doing it like practicing writing as I read one particular lesson of a starter's textbook. It'd be perfectly fine if the Heisigian book you find introduces characters logically - which I don't see in the real Heisigian Kanji books. I can't say whether it's at all logical, but my pure speculation is: if English were like Chinese, and if I were to learn a western language with pictograms, I'd try to learn how to write "how are you? good morning! I'm a student from China" before I write "gold, water, fire, wood, earth" which are the so-called five basic elements according to some Chinese philosophers...

Actually, I think I'd also face the same challenge, though pretty much more like a piece of cake, if I would learn Japanese. If I do, I'd look at the character in basic sentences, and try to learn how to write it - Japanese Kanji aren't as numerous, so I can even safely assume NOT to be a native writer myself (who knows even more characters than average Japanese actually do). As long as your input on Hanzi/Kanji is meaningful, it's alright not to use flashcards or anything. Those are just tools. My 2 cents is just that I'd do it logically in context.

Edited December 19, 2008 at 02:49 PM by xieco