Remembering the Hanzi Simplified Book 1 - when should I learn pronounciation?

[Glenn]

@淨土極樂

I'm pretty sure 詔 is in there, but not 誂. I'm not concerning myself with either of them. I don't really study characters anymore, and haven't for some time. I actually didn't even think 誂 existed when I started writing that until I looked it up. The point was that if you just focus on reading for one of the components, you can end up confused about which one of those it is. Like I said, that probably wasn't the best example, but it was in my head since it was mentioned earlier in the thread (as Ruben pointed out).

And 兆 is almost always read as tao/tiao when it's the phonetic.

匋 is also a tao phonetic. So is 舀. 淘, 滔, and 洮 are all "water and tao." While 洮 may not be used that often, 淘 and 滔 are common enough. In this case, you still have two to choose from with exactly the same signific and phonetic (sound, not shape). But 兆 can be read tiao too. Interestingly, 召 can also be tiao as a phonetic. This, to me, is an advantage of assigning a meaning to the components and learning them that way. If 兆 is "portent" and 召 is "seduce", they're going to be "portent" and "seduce" in all characters.

You may say, "so what if they're the same sound? I learned them just fine." That's fine by me. I'm sure it's fine with most people using Heisig. I found that when I started using Heisig, my ability to understand what was on the page jumped tremendously, and in a much shorter time than it had previously, when I was trying the rote memorization method. I also noticed that I was much better at telling characters apart and was much more tuned in to the intricacies and small differences between them (like 犧 and 犠, for instance, although they're 異體字). Again, it worked well for me, so I have a hard time believing it to be a waste of time in all cases.

On a side note, my vocabulary building is mostly through reading (with some listening), and it's mostly passive. I'm getting more listening in lately because I feel like I need it a lot more (than reading and than I currently get). I had the advantage of knowing over 2100 characters before starting studying Chinese, and already understood how they were constructed and functioned for the most part, though, so that was quite a help.