How to use Cracking the Chinese Puzzles?

[sleepy eyes]

Hello. I've recently acquired both the full five-volume set and the abridged version of T.K. Ann's Cracking the Chinese Puzzles. My current plan is to work my way through all of Heisigs (hopefully the second volume will see the light of day in the near future -- they had it listed on Amazon for a march or may release, but that listing disappeared already) and then tackle Ann's work in full.

However, I'm completely overwhelmed by the authors method, or his descrption of it. From the forewords onwards, after every two or three pages he gives you new guidelines in a very prolix and confusing manner. I can understand the importance of the first table and memorizing those 170 bushous, but after that I'm lost. I sort of got the importance of table 5 as well, but anything in-between is sort of lost. I understood even less what he wants with the whole dictionary look-up thing. When and where are you supposed to do that? Also, beginning with chapter 7, is there anything in specific he wants you to do other than memorizing the words and characters he throws at you?

Another stupid question: Does he count all bissylabic words given under a character as characters themselves in that 5880 total? As several of his linguistic concepts and terminology are quite muddy and personal (to say the least), I didn't quite grasp that either

I know this is a bit too lazy and I could work my way two pages a day or so and figure most of these things out, but since a few people here have used the series, I thought it wouldn't hurt to ask for help. Plus I'm already overwhelmed by my classes right now and the book did indeed left me quite confused...

Also, if someone used it in their own way, not following the author's procedures in full, I'd be willing to listen as well.

Thanks in advance!

[Gharial]

I only have the abridged single-volume paperback, so what I have to say may not completely hold true (but as far as I'm aware it does!;)).

I came to the conclusion that the best thing to do with Ann's work is to get to the point where he simply gets on with introducing and explaining the characters; in the abridged paperback edition, this is from the start of chapter seven/page 103.

I mean, his radical scheme, while generally sound, isn't standard/standardly-organized enough to be straightforwardly extrapolated to other works, and isn't even used much in his own (there isn't a radical index anywhere AFAIK), other than in the occasional mention of a radical-form in the character breakdowns/explanations, and you could grasp them easily enough from having learnt the radicals from other, more standard works (e.g. the ABC ECCE's very clear and useful guide to the 214 Kangxi radicals, or my own 'Guide to Simplified Radicals' (see thread of that name)). Then, nobody I know likes the Four-corner (four-digit numerical code) indexing method that Ann favours (and why oh WHY mention it at all in the paperback, when it doesn't have even a four-corner index, and the numbers assigned to each character and running down the page edges are just that, simply sequentially-assigned numbers rather than anything to do with the four-corner method! And what was he thinking with the stupid 'fingermouse' white-gloved hand photographs "demonstrating" the system?! In total I wasted a good half hour to hour familiarizing myself with the four-corner method, but it turned out that it was in fact going to be of absolutely no use to me...unless I invested in the full set of Ann's books, of course! Anyway, you think he'd have simply cut the four-corner index guff completely from the Abridged edition). Then there are the terms he uses like libian/libianization - perhaps I'm not widely read enough, but I've never seen this used in any other work. It is however just about easy enough I suppose for the average reader to vaguely grasp what he means by it from the definitions he provides on page 11.

But it's still worth as I say starting off in Ann from the point at which he can be more straightforwardly read through, and sticking with him until at least the point that the phonetic series (not that he quite calls them that) that he introduces become apparent and clear (then again, you could by then have switched to works that are at least better indexed in all respects, including for those phonetics - see Wieger, Karlgren, Harbaugh (etc?)).

Regarding bisyllabics, I think Ann only factors in the head (first) character itself in any formal/indexical sense, but obviously the subsequent character will (unless it is vanishingly rare or something) usually have its own (monosyllabic) entry somewhere else in the book(s).

By the way, I'm in the process of compiling a Pinyin index for the Abridged edition (but that should be of use for the full edition too, in that I'm supplying the sequential character numbers in addition to simply the page numbers), but that may take a while still for me to finish!

[sleepy eyes]

Thanks, Gharial. And double-thanks for the radical guide and the pinyin index you are preparing! As I`ll be using the book extensively, I`d love to help you with it, but as I said, time is a luxury right now.

I guess I was thrown-off by the fact that many compared it to Heisig. He gives you a baffling wealth of information, but the entries for each character are rather succint. I thought maybe you were supposed to do something else, following a method, other than just reading through those entries and trying to memorize the character.

Thanks again, this was of great help!

[ardu]

In case it is still of any use:

I have found an easy way to get to the four-corner code for a character.

Just add the (unicode) character at the end of the URL: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/

Like this: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E9%81%94

It works for most of the characters, although, from some of the the boushou has to be "axed".

I have adapted my ANKI deck based on H&R RTH1 so i get the URLs with every card.

It is then very useful to look up a character in Ann's CCP (5 vol version)

Next best thing would of course be CPP in digital (hyper-linked) form

[Stu]

Okay, it is thirty years since I attempted to use Ann’s collection of tomes to help learn Chinese. I also found the Jesuit Dr Leon Weiger’s "Chinese Characters" (Paragon Book Reprint & Dover; 1915, revised 1927, also edition 1968), to be most useful. I found Snn’s method to be plodding, cerebral, and contrary to natural language learning methods. The question I eventually asked myself was: “How did T.K. Ann learn his mother tongue (as he is from Hong Kong presumably Cantonese or perhaps Shanghainese or another dialect)? And the obvious answer is: not with the method he is advocating.  I reverted to natural methods involving conversation and listening coupled with reading of Taiwanese material with Zhuyin Fuhao (BoPoMo) beside the characters, and having a Chinese-Chinese dictionary handy, for more of an immersion experience. Don’t get me wrong; both Ann’s and Weiger’s works are great references, to enrich the language learning experience. But I suggest the learner is better off doing as T.K. Ann does, not as he says.