New App to learn and remember Chinese characters (Zizzle)

[Tim Ao]

Hello everybody,

I'm a German studying at Shanghai Jiaotong University and I'm crazy about learning Chinese. Me and my team are working on a Chinese education startup that I'd like to introduce to you to get some feedback:

 

Basically we're working on a smartphone app that will help you to learn and actually remember (long-term) Chinese characters. Some of you might be familiar with the approach. We give a fixed meaning to every character and character component and make up short stories (mnemonics) from those meanings to help you remember the character.

In those stories we'll include meaning, pronunciation and tone of the character! Also every story has pictures to go along with it to make it even easier to remember it.

There'll also be a smart flash card function, so you can revise your characters.

And btw, for those of you who used books like Heisig to learn characters before: We will not force you to learn characters in a certain order. You just input the characters you need to learn, and we'll teach you the components before we teach you the story. Easy.

 

I hope this gives you guys and understanding about what we're developing. Please feel free to check out our website and leave us some feedback in the comment section below: http://zizzle-app.com/

If you're interested in the app or want to be a beta tester, just sign up for the newsletter on the website.

 

Thank you guys so much!

 

Tim

 

 

[Demonic_Duck]

I get how "hand + pigeon = to push", along with the picture, could be a good memory aid (though a better one would also involve pointing out that “隹” [zhuī] is the sound component), but I'm confused about how "the bulldog was sweating in the sun" is supposed to help one remember “日”, other than that the character is superimposed over the sun in your picture. Am I missing something?

[Tim Ao]

@Demonic_Duck: Hi, I see how you got confused here. See those pictures on the website don't represent a full story, a full story normally has 3 pictures and two written parts of the story. In every story there is a hero representing the tone and a word with similiar pronunciation to the character. In 日 the RI in river represents the sound and the bulldog represents the fourth tone. In the other part of the story you would see the river getting involved into that story.

[tiantian]

When does the beta start?

 

Can you post 2 or 3 complete stories here, so that we can get a better idea how tone, pronunciation and writing are combined in your stories?

[Demonic_Duck]

@Demonic_Duck: Hi, I see how you got confused here. See those pictures on the website don't represent a full story, a full story normally has 3 pictures and two written parts of the story. In every story there is a hero representing the tone and a word with similiar pronunciation to the character. In 日 the RI in river represents the sound and the bulldog represents the fourth tone. In the other part of the story you would see the river getting involved into that story.

 

Ah, I see, that makes sense. Out of interest, does the bulldog represent the fourth tone in all stories, or do the various stories have different things to represent the same tone?

[Junso1]

It seems like every other Heisig spinoff. I find this model to be incredibly slow and cumbersome for drilling characters. What we need is a Skritter clone without the outrageous fees, not another heisig /learn a few characters with some stories/ clone. I'll never understand why some people believe learning a thousand stories about pushing bulldogs and pinching pigeons is easier than just memorizing the actual shapes. Are you really going to try recalling pigeons for every character you try to read? Seems ridiculous.

[hoshinoumi]

I'm afraid my initial thoughts are the same as the previous user post, thought I've gladfully signed up for the beta to test it and check whether it will really be something different or not.

[Tim Ao]

 

 

 

When does the beta start?

 

Can you post 2 or 3 complete stories here, so that we can get a better idea how tone, pronunciation and writing are combined in your stories?

[Tim Ao]

Ok first off, I can't figure out how to properly quote you guys. So I'm gonna do it manually. Could anyone help me out here?

 

 

tiantian

Posted 19 May 2015 - 07:28 AM

When does the beta start?

 

Can you post 2 or 3 complete stories here, so that we can get a better idea how tone, pronunciation and writing are combined in your stories?

We hope to have a beta out by November, can't make promises though.

We're working on making a couple of small videos explaining 2-3 stories to help you understand our approach.

 

 

 

Junso1

Posted 23 May 2015 - 04:34 PM

It seems like every other Heisig spinoff. I find this model to be incredibly slow and cumbersome for drilling characters. What we need is a Skritter clone without the outrageous fees, not another heisig /learn a few characters with some stories/ clone. I'll never understand why some people believe learning a thousand stories about pushing bulldogs and pinching pigeons is easier than just memorizing the actual shapes. Are you really going to try recalling pigeons for every character you try to read? Seems ridiculous.

My business partner that had this idea actually learnt 3000 characters for HSK 6 within one year using this method. Me personally I probably learnt 1/3 of my characters using a similar approach.

I think there are two different cases here: If you're new to Chinese and you still have thousands of characters to learn, this is a clean approach to go all the way and not have any mixups. If you are at a high level like I am, you just go and learn the hard to remember characters with stories.

 

See that's what makes our app different from those book approaches: You don't need to follow any order. You just add the characters you actually want to learn and the app teaches you what is necessary. Do you get the difference? 

 

 

 

Ah, I see, that makes sense. Out of interest, does the bulldog represent the fourth tone in all stories, or do the various stories have different things to represent the same tone?

 

Yes, the bulldog represents the fourth tone all the time. There are 5 heroes reprenting the tones and they all have their own personal characters, for example the bulldog is aggressive and dumb. These characters traits are woven into the stories and therefore make it easy to remember which hero was in what particular story.