Search for radical not PinYin

[Andrew78]

Hello Everyone,

 

it's only two months I'm studying and now I'm able to read text of 300 characters (like chinese breeze) without much problem. Cannot say the same for listening, since I know very few sounds, because my main goal is to read novels in original chinese. Now my question is this: many textbooks help students with pinyin, namely, let students search for a characters they don't know using pinyin. But would it not be more useful for a student to search for radicals, in order to learn them? I only look up in a dictonary searching for the radical, of course it takes much time and sometimes I'm not able to find the radical at all, but I see that I'm already speeding up a lot my searches as I learn new radicals. What do you think? Moreover, I find useful tool like Google's that make you write the characters you want to search, but I always try first the radical. How do you look up characters in dictonary? do you use a classic dictonary or online dictonaries?

[edelweis]

I agree that it is useful to master the radical method, as well as the stroke order.

Both will be useful when you encounter characters in the wild with no indication of pinyin.

But after you have learned those methods, as well as a lot more characters, you will learn to guess the pinyin of some new characters based on the phonetic component. That is also a useful skill to have.

Learning a shape based IME like wubi is also a useful skill to have, although for the purpose of looking up characters its usefulness is decreasing now that touchscreens are becoming common. But it has other advantages such as allowing you to practice typing characters according to their visual components instead of just pinyin.

[stapler]

Personally I see little use in learning the radicals of characters. With modern electronics and applications (Pleco!) I see little need in learning to master how to use old dictionary look up methods.

 

It's already tiring enough trying to remember the pronunciation and writing of characters, let alone trying to remember which component is the radical. With Chinese taking up so much brain space and brain power I don't think it's helpful to use that limited resource of stuff that isn't really that useful.

 

If I can't guess the pronunciation of new character I just handwrite it into Pleco. Haven't hand any problems remember/learning new characters because I don't know the radical.

 

/2 cents

[Andrew78]

Personally I see little use in learning the radicals of characters. With modern electronics and applications (Pleco!) I see little need in learning to master how to use old dictionary look up methods.

IMHO it's like when you want to drive a car with automatic change gears: first you have to learn to drive a car with clutch. I think searching for radicals is a good way for studying characters and, also, at least to me, quiete fascinating, to break down characters and see the radical, which convey meaning. I guess one can use both way, but to ignore the radical at all I think it's a mistake.

[Shelley]

I think it is a good idea to know how to use a paper dictionary and to be aware of radicals and their place in helping learn, pronounce and remember characters.

 

I wouldn't learn the radicals in isolation, but as part of the whole character learning process, for each new character I encounter I like to learn about its constituent parts and which is the radical. Sometimes the part that is the radical can be very surprising and I find this interesting.

 

Also if you find yourself with only a paper dictionary for whatever reason I would feel embarrassed at my stage of learning to not being able to use it.