Does no one here use Reviewing the Hanzi?

[Ando]

I can't seem to find any mention on this forum about Remembering the Hanzi, a book on remembering the writing and meaning of the Hanzi by James W. Heisig.

I find this particularly curious since it is such a good resource and often recommend to learners online. Granted, his Remembering the Kanji for Japanese is more well known, as it is far older than the Hanzi edition, but I have to say I've used it to great success for Japanese and hope to do the same with Chinese.

So it looks like this thread might have already deteriorated to a "How did you learn the hanzi?" thread.

*Edit*

Made a mistake in the title, I meant "Remembering the Hanzi"

[Gleaves]

Pretty sure there's a good bit. Never used Heisig myself.

[creamyhorror]

Personally, I find it curious how the books are titled "Remembering the Kanji/Hanzi"? Which kanji? The ones your grandfather received from Japanese he met in his younger days and has now passed down to you? ;)

[Gharial]

Well, the Chinese version of Heisig's work came a bit late, is too recent, to have been of much use to me (and I suspect, many others on the forum). Another reason for (still) using resources other than Heisig for Chinese is that while multiple readings (of kun-yomi in addition to on-yomi for the kanji) may be a problem in Japanese (and thus more necessitate Heisig's multi-volume approach there), it is much less of a problem in Chinese, where each character generally only has one pronunciation...all of which helps explain the adequacy of existing, generally one-volume resources for learning the hanzi (e.g. Wieger, Karlgren, Ann, Harbaugh, Hoenig, ...?), and the potential reluctance to start investing in what is "clearly" designed to be a series ("Vol 1 now available...equally padded-out Vol 2 coming soon! Both only £19.95 each!"). That is, I wonder if Heisig's Chinese stuff isn't ultimately a publisher's money-spinner. That being said, it is probably more "on-the-level", less love-or-hate, than the Matthews' book (only 800 characters?!), which also excited some initial interest, but again doesn't seem, compared to other resources, to be the sort of thing one continues to hear about day in and out on the forums.

Basically, if something isn't approaching a dictionary and compendium in terms of scope and content, I'm usually not that interested in it.

[daofeishi]

Aside:

...Chinese, where each character generally only has one pronunciation...

Wait, what? :blink:

会议 - 会计

没有 - 沉没

给 - 给予

我的 - 打的

得了 - 不得了

中国 - 中毒

大人 - 大夫

以为 - 为什么

和平 - 暖和

慢慢地跑 - 地方

要么 - 要求

活着 - 着火

我得走了 - 得到

行为 - 行业

看孩子 - 看电视

and these are found among the most frequently used characters. A significant proportion of Chinese characters have multiple readings

[Gharial]

Note that I said generally, Daofeishi, and was making an explicit comparison to Japanese (where multiple possible readings seem to be the rule rather than the exception). Sure, there are some exceptions in Chinese (there's a pretty extensive list that I was already aware of, and more extensive than yours, in Yin & Rohsenow's Modern Chinese Characters for a start), but am I so completely wrong in saying that the majority i.e. a "more significant" proportion of hanzi have no more than one pronunciation each? (Anybody got some figures to hand? EDIT: I dug out my Yin & Rohsenow, and this is what they say on page 151: "Statistics show that of the 11,834 characters listed in the Ci Hai dictionary, 2,603, or 22 percent, are polyphonic characters... There are about 700 polyphonic characters that actually come into use; of these, about 300 are frequently used - still not an insignificant number. The phenomenon of polyphonic characters constitutes one of the difficulties of learning characters." Of course, Y&R are right with that "still not an insignificant number" and "one of the difficulties of learning characters", but then, I wasn't claiming that polyphony wouldn't be a concern at all to the learner of Chinese!;)).

[Hofmann]

I don't think you need it for Chinese.This is why.

[Ando]

Yeah, I guess for most of the people here it boils down to the fact that these books are "late on the scene" so to speak.

I still prefer it due to the method. I would have never had the retention for kanji, particularly the ability to write those kanji from memory, were it not for these books.

And interesting side note was bought up... just how common is it for hanzi to have multiple readings? I thought that it was a real rarity and most characters are read the same way in most situations.

Furthermore, out of those ones that have multiple readings, how many readings do they have?

[Hofmann]

The vast majority have one reading. Some have more than one, with only one being common and the rest being rare. A few have two or more common readings.

A rough guess of the ratio would be 100:5:1 respectively.

[Gharial]

Ando, see the stats I quote from Y&R in the edit in my above reply to Daofeishi. The majority of polyphonic characters have only two readings, but some have three, and a very small minority four or more. You'll usually be able to tell what are the less common readings simply from the definitions given and the general length of the comparative entries in any good dictionary (by which I mean cidian rather than zidian!). From a quick count of the 150 or so 'more commonly used' 多音多义字 ('heteronymic characters', i.e. characters whose differing pronunciations signal differing meanings) in Y&R, 17 have 3 pronunciations, 2 have 4 pronunciations, and all the rest have just two. The much smaller subset of polyphonic characters called 异读字 (and dubbed 'heterophonic characters' by Y&R, i.e. those characters whose differing pronunciations express similar meanings, e.g. xue4 versus xie3 for 血 'blood') have only 7 examples given in Y&R, with six of those characters having just two readings each, and only one character (指) having three readings (all tonal variations on the syllable 'zhi'). Finally Y&R mention a category of heterophonic characters "that have different pronunciations even in the same linguistic environment. These may be called pure heterophonic characters. Usually these different pronunciations arise from people pronouncing the same character differently, or from different pronunciations arising at different periods of time. Of course, among several different pronunciations of one character, some are more generally used and some less so." One example of the standardization in Putonghua of heterophonic (to 'monophonic'?) pronunciations is 呆 ai2/dai1 > "only" dai1.

[Ando]

700 common and 300 frequent polyphonic characters I can deal with.

If it were going to go up to 40,50,60% of the characters having multiple readings, I might have to reconsider how much easier Chinese is over Korean ;-)

(I can't deal with the difficult Korean grammar. I have Japanese grammar down, not looking to go down the difficult grammar road again.)

[bande]

I happen to like the various Heisig books even though I came across them to late to go through the standard sequence. The character stories have been very helpful for systematically remembering characters that I've forgotten. Still, they're not for everybody. However, if someone was doing a chinese program ahead of time, I would tell them to start with Heisig the summer before.