Learning chinese characters/phrases

[freshie]

Hi guys, I had a bit of a glance around the whole website, very helpful info here. I want to learn a good 2000 characters for use in writing and recognition in 6 months, I grew up in a chinese-speaking background so my listening and speaking is up to scratch, it's just my reading and writing that needs a lot of work, mainly learning the characters. s

I've had a look at the Modern Chinese Character Frequency List @http://lingua.mtsu.edu/chinese-computing/statistics/char/list.php?Which=MO, which is really good because it ranks characters in frequency.

However, there are no phrases, and I know that just learning a character like 久 counts for nothing if I can't use it, (很久 etc). And also, what is better? Making single flashcards with hand or making phrase flashcards using SRS software like anki.

Thanks

[jbradfor]

You could focus on words instead of characters. Not quite the same as sentences, but closer.

There are many wordlists already created, so no need to make your own.

[renzhe]

Actually, given your situation, I don't even think that you need words but characters in isolation, with some examples of words which use that character.

For characters in isolation, either frequency lists or the HSK lists are a good resource, and there are SRS decks for both. The advantage of the HSK lists is that it concentrates on common words, whereas frequency lists often include many odd characters used for transliteration and the like.

What you could do is get a frequency list, and then use something like www.xiaoma.info to look up the character and see common words which use it. You can extend the SRS deck with such examples as you progress.

[imron]

I would start with newspaper articles or something, and build your own word lists from context based on the words you don't know. At the beginning it will be painful, but then so too will going through a bunch of unrelated flashcards based on character frequency.

[freshie]

thanks for the reply guys ! I've installed anki and installed the modern chinese frequency deck, seems to be working well. And what about chengyus and being able to write the characters as well? Even though I recognise some, i still won't know how to write some chracters, and I'm not sure if SRS decks train writing memory...

[jbradfor]

To learn to write with anki, what some people do is to have anki show the meaning / pinyin, then write the character on paper, and then indicate to anki if you got it right or not.

Otherwise, you could look at skritter.com.

[David Wong]

I use a number of apps on the iPhone - trainchinese (a site sponsor) and Hokseh for writing/recognition practice.

Apart from that, I just keep a notebook of all the new vocab I come across when reading, watching TV, listening to the radio and review them every so often.