Need advise on techniques and some questions

[大哥哥]

I am entering my 3rd year studying Chinese (started taking classes my freshman year in college in Boston) and questions have been building in my mind during this time and thought this was the best place to ask them.

1: If there are so much Chinese internet users now, why do I keep running into traditional characters on the web as much as I run into simplified characters?

2: Is it best to learn Traditional first, than simplified? Or the other way around?

3: Why when studying 汉字 I keep encountering characters that look insanly similar to the point that defies logic like for example: 市币 我找载 天夫 牛午.

4: What is the best technique at memorizing and understanding 汉字? I have been making my own flashcards, and have been writing 1 new character on my hand almost everyday. Does Rosetta Stone work? I from some places on the web that books are the best way to go, can I have some suggestions?

5: I heard having a Mandarin speaking girlfriend can really accelerate your learning. Any tips on how to pick up one? (I have been visiting resturaunts, even had one girl that likes me but her ass is old lol) Also having chinese friends help, I do have some friends that are in China that I met at my shcool through an exchange program, but thier knowledge of English if very limited.

6: One chinese girl I talked to in a resturaunt told me she knew another college student that did a program that you can get paid/ supported to stay in a mandarin chinese speaking country and school and help teach English. (Paid enough to cover your expenses there, or they will just give you a place to stay and food to eat etc..) Any of you know of this, I hear being in a mandarin speaking country for a while is the best way to learn. I am open to doing internships in mandarin speaking countries too, I am a major in International Business.

7: (somewhat of a silly question lol) Has there ever been a study done on Chinese people to see if all the damn characters they memorize impairs thier brains ability to process and memorize anything in anyway? I find it austounding how much characters there are to memorize, which lack in logic and structure which probably makes a further requirement for brain space.

~~ Thanks to those who took the time to read this, 谢谢。

[Silent]

1) both are used by Chinese people.

2) I don't think the jury is out on that one, but it depends on your wishes/needs. What do you want/need to read most? Where do you intend to go?

3) How should they make 50000 or more characters without similarities?

4) Flashcards, download anki, download a (HSK) deck and just start memorizing. After learning a few/decent number reading helps a lot too.

5)

but thier knowledge of English if very limited

these are the kind you want. Little chance of changing to English

[edelweis]

4) don't forget to learn the radicals!

I suggest that you also learn the stroke order, even if you don't want to learn to handwrite.

When you learn a new character, trace it a few times at least. Every time you review a character in SRS, trace it once on your knee or something.

Even if you are not able to recall how to write the character from memory, tracing characters when learning to recognize them enables you to distinguish similar looking characters, because the stroke order will be different.

PS: 市币 我找载 天夫 牛午 look very different to me after 3 years of self study.

[li3wei1]

3. Look at our alphabet: C/G, O/Q, C/O, b/p/d/g/q, I/T, M/N. All we need is 26 different symbols (52 if you count upper and lower case), and yet many of them look very similar.

[大肚男]

I agree with what everyone has said. I would like to suggest getting Heisig's book, I used it and it helped me a lot.

From my experience having skype friends whose English is basic is much better than having a Chinese girlfriend. The reason is, the better their English, the less Chinese you'll be using, unless you want the relationship to feel like a job to her.

Also, I believe that trying to "pick up" a waitress (and a chinese one at that) is kind of a fools errand. I'm pretty sure many people do that, but I think that waitresses are generally nice to clients (and a bit flirty) for tips, so beware.

(Disclaimer: This will sound extremely racists)

You would probably have a better chance going to the university's basketball court and try to pick up a game with the Chinese kids.

[abcdefg]

Does Rosetta Stone work?

Probably not a worthwhile investment. Here's a detailed review: http://www.fluentin3...a-stone-review/

I do have some friends that are in China that I met at my shcool through an exchange program, but thier knowledge of English if very limited.

That's a good thing; not a bad thing. You need to speak Chinese with them.

I heard having a Mandarin speaking girlfriend can really accelerate your learning.

These relationships sometimes work out, but they are seldom drama free. There must be more between the two of you than just you language need.

[大哥哥]

3) How should they make 50000 or more characters without similarities?

Well since half of them arent even used, im pretty sure the extremely similar looking ones could have been avoided. How the hell can I memorize 50k characters, when there is no structured logic system to differentiate many characters, wouldnt this take a large amount of brain space lol?? Assuming I am wrong and 汉字 does have a good logic structure how does 牛午 have anything in common? How can the little line on the top of 牛 mean the difference that the character means ox instead of the time of afternoon?

I agree with what everyone has said. I would like to suggest getting Heisig's book, I used it and it helped me a lot.

Can I have a link to this book?

3. Look at our alphabet: C/G, O/Q, C/O, b/p/d/g/q, I/T, M/N. All we need is 26 different symbols (52 if you count upper and lower case), and yet many of them look very similar.

Are you talking about Bopomofo? My 老师 told me its only used for typing input in places like 台湾。

Also, I believe that trying to "pick up" a waitress (and a chinese one at that) is kind of a fools errand. I'm pretty sure many people do that, but I think that waitresses are generally nice to clients (and a bit flirty) for tips, so beware.

I had some luck believe it or not, one waitress actually asked if I had a girlfriend and eventually gave me her number, but I wansnt feelin it with her. I order my chinese food in chinese and speak some chinese with them when I pick up my food. They get a kick out of it lol.

Thanks for the responses guys.

[edelweis]

Re: "the little line on the top of 牛" what little line? there is no little line. 牛 and 午 have exactly the same number of strokes, just the order is different, therefore the end result looks different. If you see an additional "little line" on top of 牛, it becomes obvious why you're having difficulties.

At to meaning/shape, you need to read a character etymology dictionary.

English is also not devoid of similar words. How will you ever know the difference between "advice" and "advise" if you don't check the dictionary?

[大哥哥]

At to meaning/shape, you need to read a character etymology dictionary.

Interesting, so are you saying learning character etymology can help you better read/ understand and remember characters? Can you give me an example how etymology can determine the difference of 牛 and 午?

[Glenn]

I believe there are only about 5000 characters used commonly enough to be called "common use", which would be 1/10 of the 50,000 said to have existed throughout history. Outside of that are the rare ones you're likely never to see.

There is a logic to the characters, although it isn't immediately evident to beginners. 牛 was a pictographic character that depicted the head of a cow/bull/ox. 午 is a bit more complicated, as its original meaning ended up moving to a different character, although it was also a pictographic character depicting the mallet used for pounding grains, at least according to one source. 說文 says it meant 牾 (oppose; gore), which is along the same lines. The other source says it's the same as 杵 (the aforementioned mallet). Usually, though (as in around 85-90% of the time), you'll be looking at a character with a component that carries a general meaning and a component that indicates the reading, sometimes also with both components contributing to the meaning.

3. Look at our alphabet: C/G, O/Q, C/O, b/p/d/g/q, I/T, M/N. All we need is 26 different symbols (52 if you count upper and lower case), and yet many of them look very similar.

Are you talking about Bopomofo? My 老师 told me its only used for typing input in places like 台湾。

No, he was not talking about bopomofo.

[li3wei1]

I heard having a Mandarin speaking girlfriend can really accelerate your learning.

Learning a language in order to pick up women is natural and healthy and an example of proper motivation. Picking up women in order to learn a language will lead only to pain and suffering, on her part if not on yours, and probably for both of you. Find the woman first, then learn her language. Of course learning Mandarin gives you a whole lot of beautiful women to choose from, but you wouldn’t want to rule someone out just because they don’t speak the language you’re working on, would you?

[陳德聰]

3. In the realm of Chinese characters... those characters do not really look all that similar. They look as similar as:

C/G, O/Q, C/O, b/p/d/g/q, I/T, M/N

[大哥哥]

C/G, O/Q, C/O, b/p/d/g/q, I/T, M/N

Oh I get it now, well I don't think it is very logical to compair similarities to the Chinese character system to our roman letters when the chinese characters typically compose of 5-10+ strokes when roman letters are 1-2 strokes. Not to mention there are only 26 roman letters and there are over 80000 chinese characters... And it would probably take a person 10 days to memorize to write and understand our 26 roman letters, when it would take person to learn 10 years to learn around half of all of the Chinese characters. Many times when I would go to my foriegn exchange student friends from china for help with characters, quite a few times the Chinese university students told me they forgot what some of the characters are called... Could that mean they are technically illiterate? lol.

At to meaning/shape, you need to read a character etymology dictionary.

English is also not devoid of similar words. How will you ever know the difference between "advice" and "advise" if you don't check the dictionary?

Can you give me an example of how you can use etymology to decipher the difference of 牛 and 午 for example? Whats site do you prefer for a etymology dictionary?

There is a logic to the characters, although it isn't immediately evident to beginners. 牛 was a pictographic character that depicted the head of a cow/bull/ox. 午 is a bit more complicated, as its original meaning ended up moving to a different character, although it was also a pictographic character depicting the mallet used for pounding grains, at least according to one source. 說文 says it meant 牾 (oppose; gore), which is along the same lines. The other source says it's the same as 杵 (the aforementioned mallet). Usually, though (as in around 85-90% of the time), you'll be looking at a character with a component that carries a general meaning and a component that indicates the reading, sometimes also with both components contributing to the meaning.

午 a character derived from "to gore". Hmm isnt that what Bulls or 牛's are known for? Goring people to death with their horns? So doesn't that mean 午and 牛 are actually not that different after all? Not to mention why would 午, a character used to describe noon have anything to do with goring or opposing?

but you wouldn’t want to rule someone out just because they don’t speak the language you’re working on, would you?

Well no, but when you are attending military college comprised mostly of men, your not meeting with much women in the first place. Obviously I'm looking for a casual relationship in the first place and would obviously let them know that.

Thanks again, 谢谢。

[Glenn]

Oh I get it now, well I don't think it is very logical to compair similarities to the Chinese character system to our roman letters...

The point was that with even just 26 letters, we still end up with many shapes that look similar.

doesn't that mean 午and 牛 are actually not that different after all?

They don't seem to be related historically.

Not to mention why would 午, a character used to describe noon have anything to do with goring or opposing?

This is probably due to the rebus principle, whereby a character started out with one meaning, then another word came along with the same sound, and to differentiate the meaning they created a new character (usually based on the original) with the original meaning moving to the new character. There are a few examples of this (來 to 麥 being another example, if I remember correctly). In that case, 午 to 杵 makes sense.

Anyway, all that probably won't do you much good in these early stages. You can argue that the characters don't make any sense until you're blue in the face, but if you want to read Chinese, you have to learn them. Worry about the logic behind them later. That is, unless this whole thing is going to put you off the language completely, in which case you'll never have to worry about any of it ever again. If you are going to learn them, just make sure to pay attention to those differences, because as you've seen, they do make quite a difference.

[Glenn]

I just checked the etymology dictionary to see if that may be helpful, but I'm not really seeing it:

午

牛

If you find that helpful, go for it. If not, I suggest just paying attention to the details, as above.

[陳德聰]

I think to address the problem you would face with all these supposedly similar characters is quite simple though, if I can bring it back to the OP...

The simple solution is exposure. The more you see them and make the mistake of thinking 牛 is 午, the easier it will be to distinguish.

E.G.

丁立波： 小明，你什么时候出去玩儿？

小明：今天下牛出去玩儿。

I don't think dialogues often feature errors like that, so it may be a bit easier than you think...

[T-revor]

On point number 3: I have a 99 cent iPhone app that helps you study chinese in groups of similar-looking characters. It's called LingoSpring Chinese Memory Game. It's a matching game but the characters you match are groups of similar looking characters. There are 1500 characters grouped like that. If you don't want to do matching, there's also a study mode.

I'd make it free, but at 99 cents, it just about covers the $100 yearly cost of being a iOS developer and having and app in the app store.

Also, there is a decent list here: http://code.google.com/p/eclectus/source/browse/trunk/libeclectus/data/similarcharacters.csv

If you like that list, you can also load them into my iPhone app by creating a custom list.

Good luck with your studies!

[edelweis]

@glenn: that website is useful for some purposes, such as checking old forms and glyph forms of characters, however I would not call it the etymology dictionary...

But actually I meant that the OP should consult one of those books that show a simple character's evolution from a detailed drawing (not ever used as a character, just for explanation) to the earliest attested form, to the current form.

Since the OP is so hung up on the "why" for characters as simple as 牛 and 午, it might help to understand how such characters evolved. I don't have a reference, however I browsed such books in libraries.

(zhongwen.com and other websites do a good job of explaining the etymology of complex characters, but I don't know any online resource that visually explains how simple characters evolved from a picture like such books do. )

@OP: the advice/advise thing was mainly a dig at the thread title+admonition to study more, accept things as they are, accept that Chinese is not more illogical than English...

Most people don't need to consult an etymology dictionary on a daily basis, since we accept characters as they are and focus on the "how" (strokes for simple characters, radicals, phonetic components, mnemonics etc. for complex characters) instead of the "why".

(if you focus on the "how", 午 and 牛 resolve themselves as "noon: a very simple character written 丿一丨一" and "ox: a very simple character written 丿一一丨", the stroke order rules explains how these characters look different, conversely the visual aspect explains the stroke order, then you move on to other characters.

For characters that you frequently mix up, you make up your own little stories like "午 is a concept and has no head, 牛 is an animal so it has a head" or "pinyin niu contains the letter (w)u, therefore 午 is contained in 牛" etc. Alternately you use books that make up stories and mnemonics for you, such as Heisig's.)

It is true that at the very beginning, you need to handwrite similar looking characters a huge number of times before it sticks. I remember doing that for 天 and 午, since I'd always forget which one has the extra stroke. However the more characters you learn, the easier it becomes (especially for 牛 which is a component of many other characters!) or at least you learn not to become too hung up on the things you are having trouble with, and just study more and/or be more patient.

I suppose everyone is entitled to looking for shortcuts and/or ranting about something/everything Chinese a few times over the course of learning Chinese... guess that's what you are doing right now

[Glenn]

So, at least we all seem to agree that pretty much what you're left with is just doing it.

[OneEye]

I don't know about any teaching English in order to study Chinese type of program, but there are scholarships available from both the Chinese and Taiwanese governments' Ministries of Education. I know the one in Taiwan will pretty much cover your expenses if you're smart with your money, and if not you can always do a little English tutoring on the side.

If you move to either China or Taiwan with the intention of improving as much as possible in a year's time, and you focus all your attention on that goal while you're here (while leaving time for play, of course), you won't believe the progress you can make. I've gone from (barely) "2nd-year level" according to the US university system (which is really next to nothing, as many university students find out upon arriving), to being able to read most anything in my field, along with being comfortable with newspapers, novels, and 文言文, in the past 11 months (dictionaries required if I want to understand every detail). I can talk about pretty much anything I need to talk about, although sometimes the right word slips my mind and I have to explain my way around it. I can understand 95% or more of what I hear around me, on TV, etc. I've had my fair share of "lazy" weeks/months, meaning I only did maybe twice what was required for class, rather than 3 or 4 times (it's very easy to maintain an A at MTC), so if you work hard enough at it, there's no reason your progress shouldn't be even better.

One tip: rather than complaining about how illogical you think the writing system is, you need to forget about what you think it should be like and just learn it as it is. It isn't going to change for you, so you have to either accept it or give up on learning Chinese. I tell my English students this all the time. English speakers aren't going to quit running words together when we speak (like "whaddya wanna do?"), so you can either decide to get used to it or quit. Same deal with any language. You have to learn it on its own terms.