Memorising Characters- Methods

[Shi Tong]

Hello!

I've been learning quite a lot of Chinese Characters recently, and I can probably read and write about 600-700 now. Because I'm simply using a conversational Chinese book for learning my Characters, I'm finding that a lot of the characters have no relation to one another when I'm learning to write.

I keep having to cross reference for others which I "guess" will have a similar writing method by using a dictionary and then learn how to write those too (like 请清青靖睛, or 轻经, etc, etc).

However, I still have trouble memorising some of the ways of writing. I know all about stroke order, and I've thought about the 4 corners method and I just feel like you're better off remembering radicals (and their meanings) plus phonetic components.

So, how do you all remember how to write certain characters? Are there useful lists of characters with their phonetic and radical counterparts which I can access somewhere?

How about other methods of memorising words? What do you tend to think of when you're writing a character to help you remember?

I use things like "休" is a person leaning on a tree to rest, and thinks like "树" is a tree radical plus the right hand side parts which belong to other characters I already know (a character I cant think of right now!! :blink: )

Either way I'd be interested to see if there's some aid I can use for memorising!

Thanks!!

PS: I have looked for another thread similar and I cant find anything. If there's any admin who knows of a similar thread then please move it/ merge it for me! Thanks!!

[Hofmann]

I posted the following somewhere else about learning Chinese characters:

1. Just learn it.

2. If that fails, actually pay attention to it and try and remember. Writing it once might not hurt either. Writing it once while paying attention is better than writing it 100 times and not paying attention. Don't write it more than 5 times.

3. If that fails, get more information about the character. More information associated with something makes it easier to remember.

4. If that fails, then try a mnemonic. If possible try to use the real etymology.

5. If that fails, then try something like Heisig's method.

Another thing one might try is examining the details about the character's strokes and construction. The most thorough way to do this is getting brush, ink, paper, inkstone, a model with the character, and copying it until what you write is basically the same as what is on the model. Students of calligraphy do this. This most likely entails beginning serious study of calligraphy. The payoff is that it's basically impossible to forget the characters you copy like this.

Seriously. (Sometimes I wonder whether or not people are taking me seriously when I say stuff like this.)

[Jose]

I think the only general rule is that it is essential to remember characters in terms of their structure, so I think the approach you describe is basically a good one. For example, the 'whale' character 鯨 should be remembered as '魚 + 京'. Once the association 'whale = jīng = fish and capital' is stuck in your mind, it is difficult to forget the character, even if you don't usually write it by hand.

The important thing is that you should keep to a minimum the 'atomic' characters that you remember as a raw succession of strokes. If you learn a character like 給 by copying it several times and you never stop to analyse its inner structure, you're very likely to forget it soon no matter whether you write it down 100 or 1000 times. However, if you spend some time thinking about the fact that it is made up of '糹+ 合', the character will stick in your memory as a variation of 合 that includes the 'silk' signific, and you're less likely to forget it in that way. A resource I like is the zhongwen.com dictionary (in traditional Chinese) because it helps to remember the characters in families that share one common element, making it very easy to locate and review all the 合-based characters, all the 扁-based characters, and so on.

Regarding mnemonics, I think not all mnemonics work for all people in the same way, so it's probably better for you to make up your own. I also think it is better to use one's own native language rather than Chinese for the mnemonics. Chinese people may remember a character like 默 as '黑犬 hēiquǎn' but if English is your first language, it is easier to remember it as 'the black dog character'.

[roddy]

I posted the following somewhere else about learning Chinese characters:

。。。

Seriously. (Sometimes I wonder whether or not people are taking me seriously when I say stuff like this.)

Sometimes I wonder if you think everyone studies at the local 私塾

I can see where you are coming from, but for the bulk of students surely a pen will do.

For the OP: Skritter, tablet, lots of time. That's enough if your aim is solid recognition and reading, and being able to scrawl ugly out-of-proportion characters on the rare occasions you actually need to write something. If you want to write attractively - pen, paper, a strict teacher, and lots more time.

[Don_Horhe]

Don't write it more than 5 times.

I'm curious, why don't you recommend writing a character more than 5 times?

[Guoke]

This is how my elder sister taught me to learn to recognize Chinese characters when I was a little kid. She would use a piece of paper with a small hole in the center to cover a page of my textbook and randomly pick a character for me to read out.

[valikor]

Roddy has succinctly summarized my personal attitude towards writing:

That's enough if your aim is solid recognition and reading, and being able to scrawl ugly out-of-proportion characters on the rare occasions you actually need to write something.

In fact, I might take it a step farther and say "with the aid of my cell phone". :-/

I wonder how many people these days think that this is a bad idea? Honestly I rarely write English with a pen and paper, why should I waste what I feel would be ENORMOUS amounts of time learning how to do it in Chinese? (I might consider doing it eventually, if I ever reach a level where other priorities have already been addressed..)

[Shi Tong]

Thanks very much for all the advice!!

Hoffman, I always take what you say seriously, and it's very good advice. I do love caligraphy, but it is a pain to actually try to draw with ink and maobi.

One thing I strongly agree on though is that it's easier to remember how to read (and write) a character if you actually do write it, rather than just read it. I quite often find that I cannot read the small seperate elements in a character until I've taken the time to pull it appart into it's components.. I good example is 警察 which I just learned to write. I dont really know all the meanings of the seperate radicals, but I've linked it in my head with other parts to make up it's components (like the top left hand side of jing has a grass radical, the right hand side the right hand bit of 教, the bottom is 说's left hand side (but in a traditional form)), and I find this quite handy.

Other methods I've used are like mnemonics- including both Chinese based ideas and English ones (I remember learning the zhuyin "ao" sound looks like someone bashing his knees on the floor- therefore "ow", but as mentioned before I usually remember 休 as "ren kaozhe mutou" (person next to wood/tree) which is how my wife said it to me).

Jose, again, thanks, I agree- I must have a good look at zhongwen.com for all of the radical lists- and I must learn what all of them mean. I know quite a few already, but some evade me, and they pop up quite frequently.. and I wish I knew what they actually signified. Thanks for the link!

Roddy, with Skritter, I've tried the trial and found it really easy. How does it pan out from there? Does it actually figure out your Chinese level quite quickly and then try to push you in logical directions, or does it tend to just take you step by step learning simple stuff until you (I) get angry? ;) And may I ask what you mean by a "tablet"?

As I said at the start of this post, because I'm writing a LOT of chracters, they are actually in the process of getting "prettier" as I write more- to the point where some of them I'm getting quite pleased with.. I think there's a thread somewhere where you can upload your writing and take a look at other people's.

My wife still thinks they look like kids writing (which I agree with), because they're all quite uniform, not scribbled and have some strange out of proportion parts.. though I'm trying to cure that.

Anyway, it's been interesting, I will look up zhongwen.com and see if I can get a good idea of that radicals list!

[cababunga]

And may I ask what you mean by a "tablet"?

Something that lets you write with a stylus instead of a mouse. Something like this:

http://www.jksalesinc.com/catalog/images/TC1100.jpg

[roddy]

Roddy, with Skritter, I've tried the trial and found it really easy. How does it pan out from there? Does it actually figure out your Chinese level quite quickly and then try to push you in logical directions, or does it tend to just take you step by step learning simple stuff until you (I) get angry? ;) And may I ask what you mean by a "tablet"?

It can only test you on what you feed into it. Add in the character lists you want to learn, set it to add new items at a rate you can handle without a massive queue piling up and away you go. If it's easy I'd imagine you added in only characters you knew well already - very quickly those will stop appearing and you should start adding in less well known ones.

[Shi Tong]

Oooh.. right, ok, so it's not very prescriptive (if that's the right word), and you add everything you already know and go from there in directions which you want to yourself? Can you set it to concentrate on characters which are strictly of certain radicals ETC?

I had a look at zhongwen.com, it's really useful, so thanks for that- I'm going to have to get my head really crammed into that site one day and see what I can remember.

Tablet. Yes, I suppose this would be very useful for online writing- certainly using the mouse for Scritter was a bit annoying, so I can see why this would be useful in this sense.

Thanks again