not learning characters

[cai]

hi everyone,

I have some friends who have taken some chinese courses and ask me to talk to them to partice their chinese and to help them with some problems. They are really smart and study hard, therefore the improvement is amazing. However they only learn pinyin so far. therefore they can only speak but cannot read. I think the learning progress would be much faster if they can read, but they seem to be unwilling to learn chinese characters because they think that is too difficult and costs lots of time. I think it is almost an impossible mission to be able to speak good chinese and meanwhile know nothing about characters. Does here anyone speak fluent chinese but not learn characters at all? If yes, what problems do you have when learning chinese and how do you solve it? And how much time does it take for you to communicate with native speakers without difficulty?

Best Regards,

cai

[gougou]

I've asked the same question a while back, some answers here.

[wushijiao]

Does here anyone speak fluent chinese but not learn characters at all? If yes, what problems do you have when learning chinese and how do you solve it?

I work with a Chinese girl who grew up in the US, an ABC. She speaks great Chinese, but she can't read at all. For her, the most embarrassing moments come when she has to get on a bus. At the bus stop, she has to ask the other people waiting in line if this bus stop has a bus to X place. The people are people usually get confused and curious, why is a young Chinese girl asking me? Can’t she see the see the big sign right next to me? So, they usually answer her question but also derogatorily ask about her, “you are Chinese. Why can’t you read Chinese?” She says this line of questioning is all fairly humiliating sometimes.

I think it is almost an impossible mission to be able to speak good chinese and meanwhile know nothing about characters.

I agree. I outlined why I think learning characters is necessary in this post:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/4-favourite-chinese-film848

Although it's not 100% essential to learn characters if you just want to order food and chat with people. But, cai, your friends sound fairly ambitious, so I would suggest learning characters. If nothing else, as your Chinese level improves, most good learning materials use more characters and less and less English and pinyin.

[trevelyan]

Not learning how to write is probably the reason for their quick progress in spoken Chinese. Much harder to advance quickly if you have to remember how to write/recognize the words you're trying to say.

[Yuchi]

I use to be like that, but I only learned more by copying what my native speaker friend says, or what a movie star says. I only just started memorizing characters (only at like 400) and it's been a big help the last 3 weeks I was in Shanghai, especially when my aunt gave me the wrong directions at the metro and my cell phone coincidentally died at the same time.

Although it's not 100% essential to learn characters if you just want to order food and chat with people. But, cai, your friends sound fairly ambitious, so I would suggest learning characters. If nothing else, as your Chinese level improves, most good learning materials use more characters and less and less English and pinyin.

I agree, I could barely understand what was going on in the movie Hero (infact I still only understand 70% of the chinese movies and tv shows I watch now) and can only get the gist of the news on CCTV.

Even ordering food is a pain! I couldn't read the menu and only ordered the ones that I could partially read.

Not learning characters is a definite "no-no" in my book.

On a partially related note, I asked my friend if she had finished her "作业", she got confused and when I explained to her that it meant homework, she got weird on me and said "you mainlanders" (she's ABC taiwanese). Apparently the only word she's ever known for "homework" is "功课". I picked it up from another forum conversation, and it was the first time I knew a word she didn't (unfortunately in a non-english language, but nevertheless I felt good about it!) Moral of the story? You never know what advantage you'll obtain from knowing more (and in this case, chinese characters).

That brightened my morning up

[tigerx9]

cai... i agree with u that learning characters plays a big part in learning chinese. whilst not essential when u want to just want to have an effective communication in chinese with others, it will really help in alot of situations. one example illustrated was the ABC girl on the bus being 'looked down upon' by others - embarassing... and also learning characters adds more vocab and understanding of the meaning of words which will further enhance your communication.

i think the main barrier that stops people from learning the characters, is already mentioned by u, that people think it's hard and costs time. with these negative thoughts and lack of confidence, they're chances of learning have reduced by more than half. simply because without the optimism or confidence, they are not as likely to give it a 110% go in putting in the effort to learn it. i must say there's no easy solution or shortcut to learning the characters. they simply just and must put in the hard effort to learn it. without being immersed in a chinese environment where there's chinese characters everywhere, except in chinatown, the learning process of course is slower.

one suggesting is breaking the task now to bite sized managable pieces. like deciding on how many characters u want to learn by a certain time, and then breaking it down to day by day. Or reverse that and say, learn one character a day, 5 days a week. and really really learn and understand that one character. write it down, stick it on the desk, in the car, bathroom, diary, etc, whatever - so that it's there visually in front. say it in the mind, repeat it again and again, say the meaning, use the meaning in a sentence and really understand the meaning. i mean, don't have to go crazy with it, but do that for half an hour a day, or more if want. i'm pretty sure that one character will be well digested by the end of it. 5 days a week will bear 250 words a year. but don't have to be that slow. as more words are being learnt, the confidence and interest (v important) builds, and the number of words can be increased each day. it's a visual thing too. if they can group similar looking characters together, perhaps based on, say, a radical, perhaps they can learn it quicker that way. it all depends on how each student learns, and what makes them learn quicker. if they know the words and can speak already, well, it will all be much easier! 2000 characters are sufficient enough to get around and read papers and understand news. so that could be an initial 'ultimate' goal to aim for...

so, confidence, optimism, and interest are big factors, and then management and consistency... hope this helps!

[cai]

thanks guys, I think your responses help a lot. Learning chinese is really not something easy. As a native speaker, I could hardly understand the problem my friends have. I'll suggest them to learn Hanji step by step. In fact, for me it is Hanji the best part in chinese language. It would be a pity if you learn chinese but do not learn the beautiful characters of this language.

By the way, a response to Yuchi. I am Taiwanese, and use "hui jia zuo ye回家作業" or "zuo ye作業" to refer homework. Of course we also use "功課gong ke" or "回家功課hui jia gong ke". I think both of them are quite common. Maybe it is because your friend grown up in US, therefore the context of her learning chinese is different from Taiwan?

[Yuchi]

Maybe it is because your friend grown up in US, therefore the context of her learning chinese is different from Taiwan?

Ofcourse, her parents are the only people aside from me that she uses chinese with, not much formal education to absorb from.

[beirne]

I studied Chinese two years before I started learning the characters. I was studying for a trip to China and figured the spoken language would be most important and I had a limited amount of time. That worked well for me when I got there because I mainly spoke with people and didn't have to read much. It was a bit annoying being illiterate, though, so I started learning the characters when I got back home. I still don't particularly like learning them but it is fun trying to read stuff.

Another benefit of knowing characters is that a lot more textbooks become useable.