Learning new characters

[Flying Pigeon]

Hello,

Would like to hear how you go about learning new characters. What’s the best approach to learning them. At first, do you go for the definition or pinyin? Or both?

I'm a beginner and know about 300 characters. I’m using ZDT. At first I was learning the characters in “pinyin” mode. I’ve sinced switched to the “definition test” mode. For example, if I’m studying characters for the first time, I view the character/s with the pinyin, then guess the definition. I found trying to get the pinyin and the definition simultaneously to be a bit overwhelming. When I’m more confident with the new character/s, I view only the character/s and guess the definition and pinyin.

I came across this thread, but it wasn’t quite what I was looking for.

Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts on the matter.

[renzhe]

There are interesting discussions in different threads, you could try this one.

You'll find that there are many different approaches. The best thing to do is to pick one that's similar to your studying style and experiment around that until it works for you.

Personally, this is what I do -- learn characters from HSK and frequency lists. If I'm shown a character, I produce pinyin and meaning. I find it important to do reading of some kind at the same time, so you run into these characters in several contexts soon after learning them. I use Mnemosyne, but any software that does spaced repetition is fine.

You can read in detail about how I do it here, but it may be too convoluted for anyone who's not me.

Personally, I've found that, if you use a good SRS program, and read a lot, regularly, you can learn many characters and get decent retention rates. I only started learning to write the characters years after learning to read them, after reading became quite painless. For me, this was the correct decision, probably because I read a lot in the meantime, so the danger of forgetting was smaller.

[Lugubert]

I'm just into a scheme that might look rather crazy for some people. I intend to take beginners' Japanese at my university in spring 2010, and have bought the books and started on the lessons. For each lesson, I (so far) make an MS Word vocabulary table with the Hiragana of each new vocable, (Hiragana +) Kanji, translation, and the corresponding (trad and simplified) Hanzi and their Pinyin and meanings.

Sometimes frustrating, when the Kanji and the two Hanzis are three quite different characters. OTOH, the overlearning involved should be useful for both languages for me.

[Hofmann]

At this point, I learn new characters when reading stuff. When I come across a character I don't recognize, I look it up. If I can remember the meaning, pronunciation (Pronunciation! Not the notation of the pronunciation.), and its composition, then that's it. If I find difficulty remembering, then I find more information about it. I can then note why it's written that way, why it's pronounced that way, and why it means what it means. My memory is better when I have more information to associate with something. I might even write it once or twice. (No more than 10. That's useless.)

This has never failed, but if it did, I'd try mnemonics, but I don't support any mnemonic system that ignores phonetic components. (It isn't a coincidence that 專 轉 傳 團 are pronounced similarly.)

[Brianlee0311]

First thing to learn character is know pronunciation or pinyin. When you know how to speak out, you can guess what it means. Then look up real definition in dictionary.

Remember is another important thing, because there are 5401 common Chinese characters in newspaper or oral conversation. Even Chinese still need to solid remember these characters during 9-15 years old. In order to remember these characters, Chinese also learn stoke order and radical. That helps us to remember the difference between every character. For example, you can try to guess from radical such as 木, 金, 土, 忄.....

[renzhe]

First thing to learn character is know pronunciation or pinyin. When you know how to speak out, you can guess what it means.

This is much easier for native speakers than people learning from the beginning.

To people new to Chinese, the sound doesn't necessarily say much. We have to learn meaning and pronunciation together.

I do agree, though, that sound is important (and often overlooked), and that there is both phonetic and semantic information in many characters that can be exploited if one is aware of them.

[Brianlee0311]

Yes, it is true. What I said is Chinese style learning, it may not easy for non-Chinese background learner. I met some non-native speaker and they also suggest to learn character and meaning at the same time. In this way, the efficient method is lookup the meaning from website like Google translator or yahoo dictionary when you try to read some Chinese news or document. Interent is so convenient to access and let us check every meaning immediately. But, the most important thing is still keep these characters in mind and create you own character database.

Just in case, I know it is hard to access internet sometimes when you are not at home. Our company provides a software to do the same thing, which shows you pinyin and meaning immediately. In addition, we also have stroke order for every character and help you to remember...

Here is trial version, please take a look.

http://pce.penpowerinc.com/Trial-Version.html

[Hofmann]

One cannot call it "Chinese style," but rather just something more suited to people who already speak Mandarin.

(One day, someone will come up with something like "Chinese style walking" and "Chinese style spitting.")