Beginner's Questions

[giraffe]

Should I learn pinyin words separately (faster) and characters separately (slower), or characters plus character words without pinyin? Currently it seems to me that pinyin words then characters would be more efficient, kind-of like assembly line approach.

BTW, can I use Wenlin or some other software (or a free database?) to automatize creating printable wordlists similar to DeFrancis ABC dictionary entries? A wordlist consists of two columns: pinyin words in the left column and their English translations in the right column. It is used by closing one column with a sheet of paper and opening entry by entry. The ability to cut-and-paste selected entries from a DeFrancis ABC in text form should suffice.

I don't think you can rely on Pinyin for learning Chinese. I tried it for the first year and I think it really slowed me down. The problem is that the language has a very limited set of sounds or, to put it another way, there are many many homophones in the vocabulary. I found that when I only knew pinyin I would get quite deluded about the meaning of certain words. For example, I was convinced for a long time that "zai(4)" was one word that had several meanings such as "again" and "be at". It wasn't until I started learning the characters that I realized that these are actually two different words that happen to sound the same. Yes it's much harder to learn the characters but they do convey a great deal of information, such as the relationships between various words, that's totally absent in pinyin.

[Glenn]

On that note, I was looking at a page from the site that Hoffmann linked to (苏州园林, to be specific), and while I hardly got any meaning out of listening and reading along with the pinyin, when I looked at the characters I got almost the whole thing. In that sense characters almost seem to be a hinderance to learning the spoken language, but maybe that's just because I've tended to focus way more on reading than listening (probably because I'm such a fan of 漢字).

As far as whether to do characters or pinyin, I think that doing characters with pinyin ruby would be a good way to read and see the proper readings while also seeing the characters that go with the words as a separate but parallel study method to learning the characters in isolation. Of course, the issue there is that I don't think that sort of text exists -- at best it'll be in a pop-up or parallel text (above or below the character text) -- and that even if it did, the pinyin may be too small to see the tone markers. But I suppose you could take care of the second problem by using numbers. At any rate, I think exposure to characters is extremely important, and that exposure should be in isolation and in context.

[dreamon]

giraffe> I don't think you can rely on Pinyin for learning Chinese. ... For example, I was convinced for a long time that "zai(4)" was one word that had several meanings ...

John DeFrancis apparently thought otherwise. It could be faster to learn multiple meanings of a pinyin word (e.g. via learning expressions containing this word), and later the characters for them, than to learn the characters first - because it could be easier to attach the characters to already known words. Also, if things get too hard and slow, I may find it difficult to move on, lose the positive feedback.

Glenn> ... doing characters with pinyin ruby would be a good way to read and see the proper readings while also seeing the characters ...

DeFrancis textbooks (as well as Colloquial Chinese etc.) do contain some pinyin text, for the time being. Meanwhile, I guess, it is a good idea to print those word lists for intensive study in three columns: characters, pinyin, and translation. Do you have any suggestion how to efficiently create printable word lists like that? Can Wenlin be used, or perhaps there is some other cheaper resource? Doing online flashcards it too hard on the eyes, already I spend all day staring at the screen.

chinopinyin> ... I would suggest using zdt or anki and focus on sentences, rather than on isolated words. Also have a look at lingt.com

Great suggestions, thank you very much! Probably though, the bulk of my learning will be through printed wordlists, because it is too tiring to sit rigidly and stare into one spot after a day of doing same. The printed lists could be faster to learn because you learn in order, they are kind of like scaffolding. Then, in text, you remember the list where the word occurs, before recalling the translation.

giraffe> I only did Assimil 2.

OneEye> Do not pay $195 for Assimil part 2. ... you can order it directly from Assimil for 64.90 Euros.

Thank you! Order placed.

renzhe> The rest is subject to extreme controversy ...

Here is the main question: should I learn recognition only (at first), or writing? My Chinese friends, of course, say that writing is a must. But evidence shows that writing memory is different from recognition memory. I can live without writing until I am more advanced. However, writing the characters is the only way of "saying out loud" their shape, the only way to actively practice their recall. Hence it's not clear what is more efficient, writing or just recognition. What would be your advice?

I am looking forward to the distant day when I finish my first "Chinese Breeze" or equivalent - that would mark my graduation to the Intermediate Level. I will celebrate big time!

[Glenn]

Now that you mention it I do have some books with the pinyin right below the characters, which I suppose is the same thing. But I don't have any where it's line-by-line that I know of, and I've never seen it online. I was thinking of longer texts, like multiple-paragraph writings where it would be nice to have the pinyin right in line with the characters. Now that I think about it, though, the annotation feature at MDBG does exactly that. It will parse some things wrongly sometimes, though, which is a bit of a problem, but overall it's pretty good. I don't know how print-friendly it is, though.

Incidentally I spend all day staring at the screen too, but it doesn't bother me. I'm not sure if that's a good thing, though.

[renzhe]

John DeFrancis apparently thought otherwise.

I don't think so. DeFrancis has often pointed out the advantages of phonetic writing and advocated a reform, but at this time Chinese is not written phonetically, it is written using characters, and you must know them. If some day a reform happens that switches to a purely phonetic script (like in Korea), then you can think about learning using pinyin only.

He cited experiments where native speaker children had better results starting with pinyin only, but this is obviously a very different situation.

Great suggestions, thank you very much! Probably though, the bulk of my learning will be through printed wordlists, because it is too tiring to sit rigidly and stare into one spot after a day of doing same. The printed lists could be faster to learn because you learn in order, they are kind of like scaffolding. Then, in text, you remember the list where the word occurs, before recalling the translation.

The point of SRS is that it will drastically reduce the time needed by drastically reducing the unnecessary repetitions. This leaves more time for more useful stuff like reading and listening.

I gave up on printed wordlists after a few thousand items. It really doesn't work after a while. You can't learn 10,000 vocabulary items from a list, the revision will take you 5 hours every day. With an SRS, you are spending 20 minutes.

Here is the main question: should I learn recognition only (at first), or writing? My Chinese friends, of course, say that writing is a must. But evidence shows that writing memory is different from recognition memory. I can live without writing until I am more advanced. However, writing the characters is the only way of "saying out loud" their shape, the only way to actively practice their recall. Hence it's not clear what is more efficient, writing or just recognition. What would be your advice?

Like I said -- extreme controversy. Learning to write is more time-consuming, but it ensures that you know the character actively, and it's more likely that it will stick for longer. It will also have the nice side-effect of, well, knowing how to write.

On the other hand, most of the writing today is done on computers, and you will probably be fine with knowing how to write 1,500 common characters if you ever need to jot down a note or similar. At the same time, you should aim at 3,500+ characters in order to read fluently.

Personally, I went for all recognition for a number of years, and then started learning to write the most common 2,000 characters. Many of them were easy because I had good passive knowledge of them. Keep in mind that lots of reading is really helpful if you are going the passive route, because you tend to forget passive knowledge faster. You need reinforcement from lots of reading in order to make it stick. But it will still stick much faster then if you're learning to write by hand.

As with many things, it will depend on what you want to do. If you don't expect to write by hand very often, my personal suggestion would be to learn to read and read read read.

[Ed Log]

I don't think you can rely on Pinyin for learning Chinese. I tried it for the first year and I think it really slowed me down. The problem is that the language has a very limited set of sounds or, to put it another way, there are many many homophones in the vocabulary. I found that when I only knew pinyin I would get quite deluded about the meaning of certain words. For example, I was convinced for a long time that "zai(4)" was one word that had several meanings such as "again" and "be at". It wasn't until I started learning the characters that I realized that these are actually two different words that happen to sound the same. Yes it's much harder to learn the characters but they do convey a great deal of information, such as the relationships between various words, that's totally absent in pinyin.

If you try to learn pinyin without learning the meaning of the word you will soon find the language incomprehensible. Learning the history and make-up of a character helps assist in the understanding of the word (try to get as many 'links' as possible to new word. Even if you never have the ability to recognise the character knowing a story behind it helps.

I personally know approx 4 characters but can hold a simple business meeting in mandarin. It depends what you want from a language. Do you see it as a tool to make life simpler or do you want to learn the language and be fully conversant in all forms?

Decide want you want to learn then choose your method of study. The worst scenario is to get verbally fluent and wish you could read and write but realising your short-cuts in studying mean that it would be a very long road to get back to where you are.

[renzhe]

I've never seen, met, or heard of anybody who managed to get conversational using pinyin (or similar phonetic system) alone, without being immersed in the language (living in China, Taiwan, Singapore, Chinese family, etc.)

I'd be interested to see if anyone has actually managed this. I'm very skeptical. On the other hand, it is relatively common for people living in China. There just aren't enough materials using pinyin to give you enough exposure (and relation to spoken word) to do it with pinyin alone.

I've met quite a few people who learned Chinese outside of China, and all of them could read characters well.

You will also need characters if you ever want to get past simple conversations. More formal language and less common vocabulary will probably only work if you can read.

[Glenn]

With an SRS, you are spending 20 minutes.

20 minutes? Really? I spend well over that a day with my SRS, and I don't even do characters individually anymore for the most part. How many reps are we talking here? I have a total of around 42, I'd say, between my Japanese and Chinese decks.

I suppose I should say that I do sentences, and I write every one of them out by hand as well as read them a few times to pratice writing and speaking, and then think about the meaning and sometimes picture the situation being described. Man, that sounds way more hardcore than what it feels like I do. haha

[renzhe]

My brain starts switching off after around 30 minutes, so I keep the sessions short. Plus I hate flashcarding.

TBH, I go anywhere between 20 minutes and an hour per session, with short breaks included. That covers single characters, traditional-simplified pairs, writing and vocab. Altogether more than 10,000 cards accumulated over more than 3 years.

You might need more if you're just in the phase of cramming lots of new information, but you shouldn't have reviewing take too much of your time -- chances are that you're forgetting too much if that's the case.

[Glenn]

So do you have an estimate for how many cards per day you do? And they're mostly one or two characters per card, is that right? Oh, yeah, I just thought of this too: I have three different decks across two different programs for sentences (C and J) and characters. All together it's around 7800 cards, I think. Do you have all of your cards loaded into one deck?

I think one problem of mine might be being afraid to forget to the point that almost everything gets rated the lowest "correct" score possible, so I may be doing more of things than I need to. I have a real problem scoring myself, and I can drive myself crazy with it if I let myself. It's actually I think one of the reasons I've gotten away from the SRS when I have for extended periods of time.

[renzhe]

So do you have an estimate for how many cards per day you do? And they're mostly one or two characters per card, is that right?

Yes, that's right. I will do between 60 and 150 cards per day, depending on whether I'm in maintenance mode or learning mode (depends on how much spare time I have).

I will usually process a card in less than a second. I use keyboard shortcuts to speed through them. If I have to think for a couple of seconds, it gets a low grade, if I really can't remember it after deliberation, I fail it.

I really drill new characters for days many times during the day before I add them, so I usually remember them quite well.

Do you have all of your cards loaded into one deck?

No, I don't.

I don't mix them. I do the same type of cards together. Helps me concentrate and make it faster.

I really need to go back to it. I haven't had time for flashcards, and my backlog must be in the thousands by now :/

[Glenn]

Yeah, this is making me want to hit my character deck again. I think it could use an overhaul, though, which is scary, because it's 2200 or so cards that would all have to be done. It's around 2500 unique characters because I threw all the variants onto one card, which means up to four different versions of a character sometimes. But I never put any readings, which can be frustrating. And then there are things like 弔 and 吊 meaning the same thing, apparently, which I just found out about, which means just having variant characters isn't good enough (at least not the way I have them). Bleh, that's a lot of work. I haven't looked at that deck in months anyway, so my backlog there is quite large as well.

I just realized something, though. My card deck is in Anki, which doesn't have a limit on reps for a day, but my sentences are in Surusu, which does have a limit (32). I wonder what would happen if I tried to do all of the cards that were due for a given day in Surusu. It'd probably be an all-day affair, and would probably last a few days.

[giraffe]

I wanted to mention that one of the fantastic benefits of learning characters is the way it facilitates watching Chinese television programs and movies. Since most shows seem to use Chinese character subtitles there's a great synergy between what you read at the bottom of the screen and what you hear.

[dreamon]

... at this time Chinese is not written phonetically, it is written using characters, and you must know them. If some day a reform happens that switches to a purely phonetic script (like in Korea), then you can think about learning using pinyin only.

Of course, must know the characters. But learning them does not have to precede learning spoken words. DeFrancis wrote entire textbooks, pretty fat ones, based entirely on pinyin - while also preparing the readers, separately. Anyway, I guess I'll try doing printed pinyin wordlists. If this doesn't work, I'll change it. I cannot get over my experience learning English, with the wordlists marking the highest point of my progress. The question remains, how to efficiently produce these lists: too little free time to write them all by hand.

I gave up on printed wordlists after a few thousand items. It really doesn't work after a while. You can't learn 10,000 vocabulary items from a list, the revision will take you 5 hours every day. With an SRS, you are spending 20 minutes.

Hmmm... Why so? I would typically learn a list in one session, come back to it a couple of times, and leave it aside. If after that I could not remember a word in text or on a TOEFL tape, I would add it to a new list, so that the same word appeared on multiple lists. But maybe I just don't realize how magical the software is. I should give it a try.

Like I said -- extreme controversy. Learning to write is more time-consuming, but it ensures that you know the character actively, and it's more likely that it will stick for longer.

I will try writing some characters, otherwise I don't know how to even approach them. Just staring at them doesn't feel like something is happening in the brain, I need a way to spell them out loud, to force them in. Later maybe mental writing will suffice.

[renzhe]

But learning them does not have to precede learning spoken words.

Sure.

But written words are not spoken words, and pinyin is not spoken words. It's a pronunciation guide. You learn it along with the characters to tell you how to pronounce characters.

Learning 10,000 words from pinyin flashcards cannot possibly work.

If after that I could not remember a word in text or on a TOEFL tape

That's the dealbreaker. For all intents and purposes, text written in pinyin does not exist. You will get most of your exposure from reading, and it will be written in characters. The thing you read should be the thing that's on your flashcard.

There are only so many tapes you can listen to. Associating characters with the correct sound early on will save you lots of worthless effort.

As always, this is MHO.

[cababunga]

I will try writing some characters, otherwise I don't know how to even approach them. Just staring at them doesn't feel like something is happening in the brain, I need a way to spell them out loud, to force them in. Later maybe mental writing will suffice.

You are right. Using photographic memory to memorize characters is really wasteful and inefficient. Instead, use one of the books specifically written to help you to build each character from its components. Most people usually agree that this approach is more efficient but unfortunately disagree on which particular book is the best for that purpose. I just finished Remembering Simplified Hanzi by Heisig & Richardson, which I'd recommend to anyone starting learning characters. It certainly worked well for me.

Free book sample is here:

http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publications/miscPublications/pdf/RH/RH%20Simplified-sample.pdf

Book's home page is here:

http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publications/miscPublications/Remembering%20Hanzi%201.htm

Relevant thread is here:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/14001-remembering-simplified-hanzi-1-and-remembering-traditional-hanzi-1/

[renzhe]

You are right. Using photographic memory to memorize characters is really wasteful and inefficient.

This will depend on your memory.

Learning clever mnemonics for 2000+ characters will help you keep them in memory for a while, but you will still have to read several thousand pages of real Chinese text before you can read comfortably. The prolonged reading sessions are what makes the characters finally sit and they are also the most time-consuming part of the process, regardless of which method you use for the initial memorization.

In order to develop reading skills, you have to read. The more, the better.

[dreamon]

I just finished Remembering Simplified Hanzi by Heisig & Richardson, which I'd recommend to anyone starting learning characters. It certainly worked well for me.

Hmmm... Interesting, thank you! The discussion thread is too long, but it looks like people like the method. I got a bit put off by some mnemonics that heavily rely on the U.S.-specific common knowledge items such as nine players in baseball. I grew up in Russia and don't know anything about baseball. Are such mnemonics an exception or a rule? To me it seems that the most important information in a mnemonic is "which simplest part of this character is unique", i.e. which part will help me tell the character apart from the others.

This will depend on your memory.

My photographic memory is below average: I often fail to unambiguously identify an acquaintance or remember his/her name. But I have a decent imagination and analogical thinking. So, mnemonics could help, if they don't add too much extra stuff to memorize. I am also concerned that, with the above books, I would have two totally disjoint learning threads: characters-to-keywords and pinyin-phrases-to-speech.

BTW, I forgot to ask the traditional (and simplified) beginner's question: which characters to learn first, traditional or simplified? I assumed by default that I should start with traditional, because then the simplified are almost effortless. But if pretty much all intermediate-level reading material is in the simplified, then maybe I should do the simplified first?

In order to develop reading skills, you have to read. The more, the better.

Possible only after a critical mass of the characters and words is attained.

[renzhe]

Possible only after a critical mass of the characters and words is attained.

...which is exactly why I crammed vocab and characters like a maniac and jumped straight into a 1400-page book.

It was quite painful, but it paid off.

I can't guarantee that it will work for everyone. But I can assure you that reading one single quality native Chinese book over 1000 pages will be more helpful than reading dozens of learner stories at 100 character level.

[jbradfor]

Using photographic memory to memorize characters is really wasteful and inefficient.

IMHO there is no other way. To be able to read, you need to memorize and internalize the characters to the point that you can recall them at some decent speed and without conscious thought. You can't read if for each character you need to work through a mnemonic. Say it takes 2-3 seconds to go through your mnemonic for a character. That is way way too slow for reading. The point of a mnemonic is to help you remember it until you can memorize / internalize it, but it is only a tool to reach that goal, and the ultimate goal is to not need mnemonics.

And then consider words vs characters. Eventually you will need to read by recognizing words, not characters. Are you going to have a separate mnemonic for each word?