mission impossible: 300-400 characters a month?

[c_redman]

How fast you can learn characters or words isn't going to be a simple number. It's going to be easier to learn more frequent characters and words because you will be exposed to them much more. Learning the top 1500-2000 characters is not as challenging as the next 500 which are more likely to be obscure, easily confused with more frequent characters, or bound forms which don't have much memorable meaning by themselves. Words are also more difficult to learn as they become more rare. Strael's 2808 new cards means nearly through the HSK 1-5 lists and not yet started on level 6, which has a very different frequency profile from all the others. I hope Strael keeps us updated on his progress.

[WestTexas]

20 a day, so, 100 a week, so, you learned 3000 in 30 weeks? Or did you keep going for a whole year and get to 5000

I got up to 2500 on the "3000 most common characters" list then decided it would be better to focus on other things.

[WestTexas]

Well I just checked at all the words in the new hk list and it seems I know 98% of the words from level 1 too 4 and about 80% of level 5. Last level about 30% or more.

Yeah, a lot of the words on the level 6 HSK are not very common or useful.

[renzhe]

I was one of those binge learners, so I can add my perspective.

It is definitely possible to learn 1000 characters in a month. But people are correct that it levels off after a while. Think of this as only temporary -- you will not KNOW these characters until 2 years later. If you maintain the same effort, you will be spending more and more time for reviewing old stuff and less for learning new stuff. So for me it went roughly: 800 in the first month, about 2300 after one year, about 3000 after two years, about 3500 after three years. Might be slightly off, but that's basically it.

IMHO, there are many ways to skin a cat, and eventually a really hard working, consistent learner can know enough characters to begin reading serious stuff after one to two years, and know all the characters they need relatively well after 2-3 years. Strategy doesn't matter much, you won't be faster than that, and if you are really rolling up your sleeves and working hard, you won't be much slower either. The reason for this is that your brain takes a certain amount of time and a certain frequency of exposure before things are committed to long-term memory, and 3500 characters are a lot of stuff to deeply inside your brain. Whether you binge in the beginning or take a very steady "3 characters per day" approach doesn't really matter in the end, different people have got good results with both methods.

So, as a summary, use whatever works for you, but keep at it for several years. You're rolling a barrel up the hill, and if you stop before it's on top of that hill (the 2-3 years), it will roll back down.

That's just the characters. Learning the rest of the language will have all the same problems as other languages (phonology, grammar, vocabulary, listening, developing reading speed, etc) and some unique twists (tones).

[imron]

and if you stop before it's on top of that hill (the 2-3 years), it will roll back down.

And if you stop at the top of the hill it rolls back down also

[anonymoose]

So, essentially, learning Chinese is a Sisyphean task.

[Olle Linge]

So, essentially, learning Chinese is a Sisyphean task.

Except that there is no top of the mountain and we can keep on pushing forever! Yay!

[Glenn]

Nah, I think it gets (relatively) downhill at some point.

[Kobo-Daishi]

I usually consider a "word" to be made up of one or more characters.

I never looked at the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi material before because I don't have any intention to ever take it, but, out of curiousity for this thread I did look up its entry at Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanyu_Shuiping_Kaoshi

They've a link to a study aid at NCIKU.

http://blog.nciku.com/blog/en/2011/03/09/hsk-character-list-and-stroke-order-animations/

I clicked on a few entries and couldn't believe that this is all there is to the test material.

For instance, under the character "xue" (study, learn) they've only got "xue xiao" (school), "tong xue" (classmate), and "xue xi" (study, learn) for "words" that have the character "xue" within them.

What about "xiao xue" (elementary or primary school), "zhong xue" (middle or high school), "da xue" (college or university), "xue yuan" (academy), "guo xue" (studies of Chinese culture), etc.?

All of those characters are within level 1 of HSK.

I even checked to see if the missing word entries might not be under the accompanying character, the one paired with it to form the "word".

No "academy" either.

Is this a shortcoming of HSK or of NCIKU?

For instance, under "ba" (eight), they don't include any "words" that contain the character "ba" other than itself.

It says "No other HSK words containing "八".

So no "ba yue" (the eighth lunar month or August)?

Under "ri" (sun; Japan), no "ri ben" (Japan).

Ditto for "ben" (root; origin). No "ri ben" (Japan) either.

So is this a shortcoming of HSK that they only test a small subset of words or did NCIKU just not include everything from HSK?

As a side note is there a program that takes a bunch of characters and outputs all possible word combinations that are formed from the list of characters?

Kobo.

[Olle Linge]

Nah, I think it gets (relatively) downhill at some point.

Not if "downhill" means that you will progress without putting in any effort (that's the picture I get whet you say downhill anyway). Yes, it becomes easier, but whatever level we reach, it will decline (the stone will roll back) if we stop pushing. If we integrate Chinese into our lives in various ways, we can probably keep on advancing without "studying", but we're still applying force to that stone. If we don't, it will roll back.

[xiaoxiaocao]

As a side note is there a program that takes a bunch of characters and outputs all possible word combinations that are formed from the list of characters?

This may be what you are after. If it is, and you think of a good way to use it within an SRS program please let me know.

Words.doc

[Mekkalomp]

So is this a shortcoming of HSK that they only test a small subset of words or did NCIKU just not include everything from HSK?

You cant just take a look at one part oft hsk list. You should consider list 1 too 6 as 1 list and then you will see that those words you mentioned are in the list.

And the example you mentioned is pretty straight forwarded and should be known or easy to comprehend when studying Chinese.

[David Wong]

If we don't, it will roll back.

I don't know. If you refrain from using your mother tongue for say 10 years, how much of it will you forget?

Once Chinese gets ingrained to the same degree, I think you're set.

Edited to add: Whatever you lose should come back with a lot less effort than it took the first time round.

[Olle Linge]

I don't know. If you refrain from using your mother tongue for say 10 years, how much of it will you forget?

This might be true in certain areas, but remember that native speakers forget how to write characters quite often, especially if they don't use much handwritten Chinese in their daily lives. In general, I think everyone forgets, including native speakers. Of course they don't lose everyday language, but only those bits they haven't fully internalised completely. I still think it's always uphill, albeit not very steep.

[li3wei1]

I let my Mandarin lie dormant for about 20 years, after studying for three and living in Taiwan for four years. Much of the 20 years I was in Hong Kong, so exposed to characters and occasionally reading a bit, and in fact making two trips back to Taiwan where I used it fairly intensively, but I also spent 7 years in the UK not using it at all. Then I needed to relearn it, and apart from switching to simplified characters and pinyin, it's been a LOT easier. I've lost a lot, sure, but occasionally I'll come across a character and think, 'oh, that's that word I would use a lot but never learned how to write'.

[renzhe]

Just like any other language, people can and do forget their mother tongue. Never completely, though, and passive skills tend to remain good for a long time.

[Silent]

I don't know. If you refrain from using your mother tongue for say 10 years, how much of it will you forget?

It's hard to quantify how much, but from my own experience language loss, also from your native language, sets in much faster then you'ld expect. I noticed myself that after only 8 months of (virtually) not using my native language but still hearing it on a fairly regular basis I had a noticeable loss. That is, I noticed that I made literal translations of english expressions to my mothertongue and it took more effort to find the right words. For more then a year afterwards I noticed that I unwillingly tossed in English expression while speaking in my mothertongue. Maybe a lot of what I noticed was not really loss, but mixing of languages but still, it's a degradation of the native language.

Once Chinese gets ingrained to the same degree, I think you're set.

Define set. If you really learned the language a lot of it will retain unconsciously sure. Nevertheless, your level will degrade. Not only when you don't use it for a long while, also if you use it only very limited. If you get 'fluent' using it intensively in China and then you go home and use Chinese only for a couple of hours a week in a limited setting it's very likely your Chinese will degrade (significantly). I've seen it with my mothertongue, and even more with English that at some point felt more comfortable then my mothertongue. It's pretty much use it or loose it.

[Mekkalomp]

There is no doubt that you will lose your mastery in Chinese or any other language if you don't use it often.

Scientific researches are stating these facts. And I dont know if you guys are familiar with polyglots but these people have mastered several languages on native level and have to use there language every week to maintain their skill.

[David Wong]

What I mean by set is that whatever you lose can be relearned orders of magnitude more easily than learning it for the first time. That may or may not apply to the mother tongue because I dont know if anyone finds learning that difficult. It should take a lot less time though.

[GotJack]

Can I ask, what people recommend in terms of? (I remember seeing a thread debating this point if anyone can link me too?)

-You learn by writing the characters over and over again on paper with a pen/pencil

-Or you learn the characters via some sort of flashcard system]

Opinions pleasE?