The Pinyin Wall

[Ed Log]

I am trying to learn Chinese without rote learning any characters. To assist in learning words and phases I look at the characters that make up the word to help with memory association.

Has anyone become conversationally OK in Chinese without learning any characters and what hints or tips do you have for progressing in this route.

[HerrPetersen]

I believe it can be done. The key might be to really focus on learning pronounciation at the beginning, for which you obviously need a lot of audio resources. As soon as possible you should become familiar with the ch sh zh and x q j sounds which are not explained in a lot of text-books. I found this link very helpfull:

http://www.sinosplice.com/lang/pronunciation/04/

I highly suggest having a look at the material from Assimil as a beginners resource "Assimil with Ease".

Anyhow, good luck to you

[imron]

Every 5 year old in China does it That being said however, if you are serious about learning Chinese then personally I think you're putting yourself at a disadvantage if you don't at least learn to read the characters (and once you can read them, you'll be able to type them also using a pinyin-based input method) because you are closing off a large number of learning resources - newspapers, novels, instant messaging etc. It might seem like characters are a burden initially, but they really do help once you want to do anything beyond beginner level. You can use a spaced repetition system such as Anki to make the process of memorisation less daunting.

[Ed Log]

I really have not seen a need for reading Hanzi as of yet, but I would agree there is a dearth of pin yin based text. Probably my vocab is around 1000 words and OK for basic general chit chat and perhaps having a joke with a taxi driver etc when I visit China.

But conversation is still limited to only the words I know which even at 1000 words is just the basics.

Without Hanzi I found it pretty quick (a few months) to get up to very basic conversational level but not what I would describe a OK i.e. OK for most conversations. I certainly agree character recognition would help with pin yin input methods but I can think of a time when I would need to write something that I couldn't say. Sometime even business communication between Chinese companies I deal with is in English and all my contacts will always be able to write better English than my Chinese etc etc.

Just need to know if getting to a good level is possible or I should start rote learning.

[Hofmann]

All little kids do it, but I don't recommend it. If you're in a rush, you can learn basic Mandarin without knowing any characters, but it will become a burden that inhibits further progression.

Also, I'm generally against rote learning anything.

[renzhe]

A lot of people do this, but most of them actually do it while living in China (or a Chinese-speaking community like Chinese born abroad). You can achieve a conversational level in Chinese if given enough exposure and through lots of practice.

This might be extremely difficult to do on your own outside of China, though. Far more difficult than learning characters. Also, many Chinese I've met who grew up abroad without learning to read have a very limited vocabulary restricted to everyday conversations. After a certain point, you will need characters to improve your vocabulary.

[OneEye]

Chinese uses characters, not pinyin. By choosing not to learn characters, you're limiting yourself to learners' resources only, and will never be able to use anything actually written in Chinese. Not to mention that most textbooks will have you using characters past the beginner stage anyway, so in effect you're limiting yourself to only beginners' resources. How do you expect to be able to progress any further than a beginner's level without learning characters at some point? As renzhe points out, it will be extremely difficult.

And as Hofmann points out, rote memorization is no good anyway. Fortunately the choice isn't between rote memorization and nothing. There are other, much more efficient ways to learn characters. They really aren't that difficult to learn, and knowing them opens you up to a much larger range of resources, such as real Chinese.

[Ed Log]

I agree that there is a shortage of pin yin based text to study from but there are a few web based applications e.g. Pera-kun that translates Hanzi as you go to increase the reading material but I am a lazy student and I don't do much reading, just a few flash cards and conversation session with an exchange student. I guess I have around a 700 words I can use in conversation but that is not enough to have an OK conversation. Just enough to share a joke with a taxi driver when I visit China (if his accent is not too bad). I am guessing it is the problem of diminishing reward for learning and using new words, you very rarely use them to they don't get interlinked in your brain. I hasn't taken that long to get up to a 700 words (a few months) with out Hanzi but the effort to reward ratio is changing fast, so I wonder is this the Pin Yin wall I have heard about, people who don't learn Hanzi have a different purpose for learning the language and perhaps just enough is just enough. I was just after any techniques to improve my stamina to get to the next 700 words and that should allow me to converse much better.

[digchinese.com]

Many foreigners living in China learn to converse without learning a single character!

[Ed Log]

OK so next 500 words were less interesting to learn. Is anyone aware of a simple program where aural vocab can be learnt by tedious repetition linked to a list with pinyin and Hanzi so the 'history' of each vowel can be research / learnt?