How do I memorise Chinese Characters?

[Shi Tong]

Hello all,

I've been doing a lot of studying writing and reading Chinese. I've been deviding my time between drilling around 230 words a day, adding a few new words, or practicing those which I have forgotten. I'm up to about 530 words right now.

However, I'm really struggling with the small nuances of characters which can change them from one meaning to another completely- things like 住 and 往 are confusing the hell out of me because I cant remember which radical belongs to which character.

I also have trouble with: 际, 粽 and 除 because they all possess similar attributes which I find hard to seperate.. finding myself sometimes writing all of these wrong.

I know it's probably just a "keep practicing reading and writing and they will eventually all go in", but I've been stuck at this 500-ish mark for a while now and it's starting to grate when I practice an evening and find myself forgetting 20 characters or something and having to retrain those instead of moving forward.

Any suggestions?

[calibre2001]

I think you are already doing the right thing. Writing out the characters will help burn the characters into your memory quicker and arguably permanently. You could just write it in the air with your fingers if you don't want to use a pen. If you're getting confuse between 住 and 往, just write it more. It's like exercise, the more you practice the better you get at it. Writing will to physcally familiarise you with the character. When when you're writing a character wrong, your hand will tell you that.

And being fully conscious about the subtle differences between 际, 粽 and 除 is a good sign, it helps in recalling characters and also helps you to mentally draw it in your mind. It's very normal to forget how to write characters but you should just trudge on. Eventually when you read more you'll bump again into characters you already forgot. Usually the plateau stage starts at the 1000 character mark. Or so they say...

[renzhe]

Are you using SRS to help you?

Most people hit a wall between 500 and 1000 characters without SRS.

What also helps is picking out the characters you have particular trouble with and concentrating on them, for example by using mnemonics.

[Glenn]

Right, and knowing the meanings of the components helps too. For isntance, with 住 and 往, you've got a person versus "going" (borrowed from 行), and what I learned as a candlestick on the right (as a primitive, because it sort of looks like one). So a person staying home in their dwelling with a candlestick versus a person going on a journey with one should help you with those two. Or I guess you could stick with the meaning of "main" or "master" for 主, and come up with something for that (like the master is the person who controls the dwelling and the master can command someone to get going on their way, or something).

Also note that 际 and 粽 have a different shape than 除. It's 示 for the first two, and something like a combination of 于 and 小 for the last one (not sure how etymologically correct that is).

[jbradfor]

I think it's time to stop focusing on characters and start focusing on words.

I was having the same problem, but for me it was especially acute for characters that have different pronunciations.

By focusing on words, which are typically less ambiguous, over time I've found the characters are easier to distinguish. It's a slow process, and I'm not there yet, but thus far it seems to be working.

[dumdumdum]

write more read more, no shortcut to it. of cos, you can learn to read and write efficiently/effectively, but you can skip the process.

[Hofmann]

Shi Tong,

I discourage anything that resembles rote learning. If you have trouble differentiating certain characters, I suggest looking them up here so that you can relate their composition with their meaning and/or pronunciation.

[mmgalitz]

I definitely suggest mnemonics. Tuttle - learning chinese characters suggests creating visual images in your mind about each character - its tone, sound, and components. You do need to memorize the radicals and their meanings to help generate the stories in your mind.

For example: The component for 木 (tree) and 不 (not) joined together = 杯 (cup)。Tuttle suggests the mnemonic do NOT use that Red (tone) CUP hanging on the TREE, it belongs to the GIANT (tone) who uses it for collecting syrup for his BACON (phonetic) (BEI).

Suggestions are:

Use the Giant and the color RED to signify 1st tone.

Use the Fairy and the color GOLD to signify 2nd tone.

Use the Teddy bear and the color GREEN to signify 3rd tone.

Use the Dwarf and the color BLUE to signify 4th tone.

For the radical 人 Tuttle suggests giving it a person's name such as Harry Potter.

For the radical 口 Tuttle suggests locating your story near the MOUTH of a cave.

Anyway, this will help with writing and remembering the sound of the characters.

For example, this is my mnemonic for 药 （medicine). Use the blue (tone) silky (component) grass (radical) to make medicine. Yell (sound) when it's ready. The dwarf (tone) will ladle (component) it out for you.

You may want to start your story with the first component that you write. This beats rote memorization any day.

[Altair]

I use Glenn's mnemonic approach. I find that writing (in the air) was very important at first to familiarize myself with the shapes, but was insufficient in the long run, especially since I am not interested in doing the amount of writing by hand that Chinese kids use to learn characters. I use writing to test and review, not to learn.

I also share Hoffman's apparent distaste for rote learning. I believe it to be necessary up to a point, but minimize its use beyond that point.

I started a thread elsewhere on mnemonics that no one seemed interested in, but will use the characters mentioned on the original post to show what possibilities lie in using mnemonics and being familiar with the meaning of character components. The specifics are unimportant and would vary from person to person according to whatever they find most memorable.

住： 亻 is 人 (person). 主 has many origins, but I also use "candle." 住: Wherever you light the candles is where you reside. If you recall that 主 means "master," you could use: "Everyone is a master in the home in which he or she resides. If you can't remember the strokes of 主, you could use a mnemonic like: "A candle is the king of flames."

往: 彳 is a left step and is often associated with meanings of "going (on foot)." 主 can again be "candle" (even though not correct, etymologically). 往： Diogenes headed from person to person with a candle/lamp in his hand, looking for an honest man in ancient Athens.

际： 阝 (as an element on the left) is a terraced hill. 示 is an altar. The top stroke is the sacrifice. The second stroke is the table. And 小 represents the tripod legs. 际 can then be: "the edge of bordering hills where you put altars to keep foreign demons away."

粽： 米 is a rice plant. 宗 is ancestor. You need an altar (示）in the home (宀）(really a roof) to the ancestors. 粽 can be: "making Zong dumplings from rice flower on holidays while thinking of one's departed ancestors.

除： 阝 is terraced hill. 余 can represent attic storage in a barn and can mean "excess." 人 could be the roof. 二 could be the storage bin/space. 小 could be the structural support. 除 could then be: "If you can't fit the excess rice harvest in the barn, you might as well remove it and put it back on the hills for fertilizer." I actually think of "removing excess dirt from the hills in order to excavate." Since it sticks in my mind, it works.

[Gleaves]

SRS, mnemonics, and plenty of reading have served me well.

[stelingo]

skritter.com

[calibre2001]

There's no one right method. You'll just have to experiment with what suits you and vary it from time to time.

I suggested more rote learning because from the original post I gather the following:-

-getting mixed up between different radicals that look nearly alike. I gather the TS hasn't reached the critical point yet where he can mentally see the components/radical that make up the character

The suggestion on learning words is good. It's slightly more efficient because essentialy you kill 2 birds with 1 stone.

I do agree that rote learning will be less efficient after crossing over the critical point in number of characters. But I'll maintain rote learning has its merits and brings solid results simply because it helps build a very solid foundation.

[Shi Tong]

Interesting suggestions everyone, thanks for the input.

I've been using a lot of my own mnemonics, but I'm missing a lot of components where I dont understand the parts of a word and therefore cant learn the word.

For example, while I use my own kind of memorisation skills to learn a word like "教", I still dont understand all the bits- I know the right hand side is someone holding a stick and I remember it in my head in Chinese as "一个人拿了一个棍子来教人家", but the other bit (though I DO remember it) just sticks in my mind as something which looks like 孝.

While this is useful because it's correct.. it still doesn't tell me what 孝 means or give me any direction.

Is there anywhere I can get hold of a GOOD useful list of radicals to look up? I'm still looking at zhongwen.com, but I find it really quite hard to look through and not easy to navigate.

One other thing is that, I dont want to forget the 500 i've already achieved, and I would like some sense of forward movement, so that's why I'm still practicing those ones by rote (as it were).

I suppose I should pull those appart and look at all the components myself and see if I can make sense of them all.

Thanks again!

[Glenn]

孝 is filial piety. It's in the word 孝行.

You can click on it at zhongwen.com and it will take you to the entry. I just got there from 教. Basically anything in blue is clickable. I think you should be able to get any component that way. However, if you're looking for a list, I don't know where to tell you to get that. RTH probably has one, but I don't know if you want to go that route. You could probably check it out at a bookstore and see if it's something you'd be interested in. I know there are other books that break them down, but I don't know them off hand.

[calibre2001]

Hi ShiTong,

I find the format of lining up the radicals in xiaoma cidian pretty good though it doesnt have as many characters as zhongwen.com. It's big and clear too. Only problem is it caters for simplified. And it doesnt provide that tree branch breakdown list like zhongwen.com, which ironically caters for traditional only.http://www.chinese-forums.com/public/style_images/master/rte_icons/link.png

Else I recommend a good old Chinese-english dictionary with the radical list in the model.I assume you are familiar on how to count the number of strokes in the radical.

Personally I just see 教 in my mind without knowing the actual breakdown.

[Altair]

Is there anywhere I can get hold of a GOOD useful list of radicals to look up? I'm still looking at zhongwen.com, but I find it really quite hard to look through and not easy to navigate.

Beware of the word "radical," since some people use it to refer to any of 部首 (bùshǒu, dictionary section heading)，偏旁 (piānpáng, character component)，or 义旁 (yìpáng, semantic component). What you probably want to focus on are the 偏旁.

I think Glenn has given a good description of how to navigate. To that I would add that you must remember that zhongwen.com is organized according to traditional characters, with simplified characters only listed in parentheses after the main entry for the traditional equivalent. This site is probably difficult to use if you are trying to look up characters whose pronunciation and Kangxi radicals (部首） you don't know. Otherwise, I think it is pretty good.

Besides zhongwen.com, I use Wenlin and www.chineseetymology.org/. Wenlin is expensive software, but it was crucial for my development, since it allowed me to begin reading for substance and made learning more of a fun exploration than a wrestling match with my dictionaries. I recommend it very highly.

If you find no other alternative, I suppose you could list a bunch of strategically chosen characters and ask for mnemonic suggestions or etymologies. Maybe you could even launch a study group.

As for 教, I analyze it as follows: 孝 and 攵.

孝 (xiào) is filial piety. It is a bent-over, long-haired old （老, lǎo) man, being carried on the back of his son (子 zǐ）. I just remember 老 without any help, but you could think of it as an old man with dirty (土， tǔ), long (丿) hair, using a cane (匕). When he is on the back of his filial son, he doesn't need the cane of course.

攵 is a hand holding a stick to beat with, and that's how you get 一个人拿着一根棍子来教孝子 (A person holding a stick to teach filial sons).

One other thing is that, I dont want to forget the 500 i've already achieved, and I would like some sense of forward movement, so that's why I'm still practicing those ones by rote (as it were).

I suppose I should pull those appart and look at all the components myself and see if I can make sense of them all.

For me, the etymological/mnemonic method works best when used in conjunction with some sort of drills, especially if you are concentrating on the active ability to produce a character, rather than just recognize it. The mnemonic can fall away if you don't need it, especially during reading; however, it is always there when needed. Even in English, I still use a mnemonic to spell the name of the famous river that flows through New Orleans into the Gulf of Mexico. I also use mnemonics to tell which words in English have "i" before "e" or "e" before "i." If you already know the 500 characters well, I wouldn't bother going back to learn etymologies. They will probably come out anyway as you study new characters.

[Altair]

Jbradfor listed http://chinese-characters.org/ on another thread that might be another option.

[Shi Tong]

Thanks again Calibre, Altair.

Hoffman also pointed to this Chinese Etymology site, I'll have to look through it.

Yeah, with my current 520-30 list I'm with at the moment, problem is that there are certain painfully annoying, hard to remember words which have little nuances that I find hard to remember. I think I will find these words out and try to identify what makes them up. I think understanding a lot more of the components for characters should get my studies back into shape. I like the breaking down you've illustrated there

(It is a bent-over, long-haired old （老, lǎo) man, being carried on the back of his son (子 zǐ）. I just remember 老 without any help, but you could think of it as an old man with dirty (土， tǔ), long (丿) hair, using a cane (匕). When he is on the back of his filial son, he doesn't need the cane of course.)

I think this will also help. I'll run through the characters I find annoying and make up some mnemonics for it, or use the sites you've pointed out to gather a picture together.

[Zomac]

Chinese don't seem to read every character by reading their every stroke. They read it as a whole. Perhaps - only perhaps, it will help if you pay lesser attention on every single attribute of a character.

I'm sure that no one read English words by spelling it. They just recognize its form and proceed.

[hanyu_xuesheng]

People who understand German may also consider "Täglich. Chinesisch." :rolleyes:

Until today the website "explains" 1840 characters.

Read more (in German):

http://taeglich.chinesisch-trainer.de/worum.php

http://taeglich.chinesisch-trainer.de/intro.php