How to remember for the characters?

[Viktor_77]

Gosh, I just understood!
Thank you!
My biggest problem was to connect the story to the 汉子。 I just realized how easy it is with the matching topic

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I am not sure if this is of any help or not.

Also if your English isn't so good, the method might not work so well, perhaps translate the key words and stories into Hungarian, I donno.

I think I can speak English quite good (Not a C1 But above b2 as I always refer to my knowledge ), so no translation needed .  
Anyway, I will translate everything in my mind ofc. The world of the Hungarian folk songs and folk tales are pretty awesome so It will be easy, I guess

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As in a traffic officer walking about brush in hand enforcing parking laws

or

Doing an investigation by walking around crime scenes taking notes.

I just didn't get the eager need of connection between the story and the 汉子。
This is the most important message of the book... How stupid I was..... Gosh... Thank you for your help guys, I think I have such a 漂亮 weekend ahead of me.

I really appreciate all the help what you gave to me
Thank you so much!

I am still accepting any ideas about this topic, more is better then less (in this case).

I Think I will make my own deck, according to New Practical Chinese reader 1 And the official material of HSK II and HSKK Beginner.

When the end of august arrives, I will be much better than I was a half year ago.

[Shelley]

I am glad it is making sense for you.

 

@wibr Point taken, I will let the OP decide what method to use. I will carry on with mine

[Lumbering Ox]

6 hours ago, Viktor_77 said:

I Think I will make my own deck, according to New Practical Chinese reader 1 And the official material of HSK II and HSKK Beginner.

 

Make a separate deck for vocab and RtH. The order of Hanzi in RtH will be very different from that of the vocab you will learn via other methods.

 

In the introduction he mentions that the order of the Hanzi in the book is based on building blocks. You learn an element, then you learn all the Hanzi that uses that element and previous onces you have learned. So for every Hanzi introduced you should only need to add one new element to what you already know. Although for the Hanzi books as I understand it he does try to fit in the more common used ones in the first book.

 

Ideally, as far as I am concerned, it is better to take the 300 hours for RtH or 200 for RtK and pound it down first before getting into the actual language. The idea for RtK was to give an English [or Hungarian] person at least part of the advantage that a Chinese person has, it is said that if you know Hanzi it shaves about 1000 hours off of reaching the C1ish level for Japanese.

It serves as a multiplier to your efforts, so the more and earlier you do it, the more it will benefit you.

Having learned some Chinese you should of course keep at it to a degree, pure RtH can be done [I did RtK before anything Japanese] but it can be dismotivating as you are learning how to walk when you really want to run.

If you can you should clear off the RtH as soon as possible IMHO. Unless of course you need the language quickly.

At the very least try to pound back the first book of 1500 or as much of it as you can as you have HSK3 aspirations this fall.

 

I had Hungarian neighbors growing up back in the 70's. If I could go back in time, aside from investing advice and telling myself about a certain girl that actually did like me, I'd probably tell myself to get to know them better. Nice couple, no kids, and Hungarian is a very difficult language, would of been nice to pick it up as a wee lad.

 

Bah, you can figure it out. Much like an AK, RtH is also a tool, adapt it to your needs.

[Lumbering Ox]

5 hours ago, Shelley said:

Point taken, I will let the OP decide what method to use. I will carry on with mine

 

To be fair, I had the exact same reaction to the book that you did. Hell no I ain't doing that.

I just gave it a shot with doing things differently and thankfully it worked out. I guess I am pretty gangster that way. Yo.

[Viktor_77]

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In the introduction he mentions that the order of the Hanzi in the book is based on building blocks. You learn an element, then you learn all the Hanzi that uses that element and previous onces you have learned. So for every Hanzi introduced you should only need to add one new element to what you already know. Although for the Hanzi books as I understand it he does try to fit in the more common used ones in the first book.

 
And you mean the radicals with this right ?

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I just gave it a shot with doing things differently and thankfully it worked out. I guess I am pretty gangster that way. Yo.

I am happy about it, I will restart the book today 

[Lumbering Ox]

9 hours ago, Viktor_77 said:

And you mean the radicals with this right ?

Radicals or sometimes whole characters

100 for example is white and 1 which are two other characters. Well in Japanese.

White would be drop which is a radical I believe and Sun/day which is a full fledged Kanji.

 

 

[akahime]

Is my first reply. Hi！ ^^
This is my way of memorising.

I first learn radicals we can see more often on characters.

So I repeat on my mind how that hanzi (with 2 or more radicals) is formed.

Then I just remember some of their radicals or try to imagine images of radical meanings to make a story for that character.

Is how I remember them.
Everyday you try to read something short like your weibo timeline or a manhua.
I have a notebook to write some daily rotine phrases. 

Keep improving! Jia You! ^^

[Viktor_77]

Thank you so much for everyone! I will keep going on, the next stage is HSK 3! You all gave me a big cup of faith It helps a lot!
Still opened for any ideas, connected to the topic!
Thanks everyone!

[mlescano]

Since no one has already suggested, I'll suggest Heisig's books. It's what pretty much every student of Chinese ends up doing anyway: Making up stories and mnemonics to piece together the characters. I used Heisig with Japanese back in 2004-2005 and again with Chinese in 2015. I doggedly stuck with it to the end, and it paid. I have a lot to write about how exactly I used it and modified it, but I keep forgetting to do so.

[YordLama]

I use Tuttle Remembering Chinese characters, but that doesn't seem so popular here any more, maybe because it doesn't go through as many characters? I think that once you've done the 800 characters in the book, you should have a good handle on the technique. I tend to find that the characters I've leant through menomics I've made myself are a little easier to remember.

[Viktor_77]

4 hours ago, mlescano said:

 

Since no one has already suggested, I'll suggest Heisig's books. It's what pretty much every student of Chinese ends up doing anyway: Making up stories and mnemonics to piece together the characters. I used Heisig with Japanese back in 2004-2005 and again with Chinese in 2015.

 

Please tell me the story!

[Viktor_77]

Hello eveyone! 

I would like to ask you about the following: 
Did you ever hear about Chineasy? 
It's like the Heisig's books ( I guess)


Link: https://www.chineasy.com/

[wibr]

@mlescano Heisig was mentioned before (Remembering the Hanzi), I am also curious about how you modified it

 

@YordLama That's actually the first book I used, for beginners who learn simplified characters it's quite good I think, since it includes pronunciations and provides a smooth learning curve

 

@Viktor_77 You can use the search function of the forum if you want to learn more about a certain book, Chineasy has beautiful illustrations but that's pretty much it

[OneEye]

Chineasy is not worth buying unless you like the pictures. Victor Mair has written two articles talking about why.

 

I'm biased, but I recommend my company's Chinese character dictionary for Pleco. It's not finished yet, but since you're a beginner it will have enough to keep you busy for a while. Our dictionary explains exactly what each component (not radical!) is doing in each character, so you get a clear idea of how the character is structured, which allows you to see the real connections between other characters. It also integrates nicely with Pleco's flashcard module.

 

If you prefer paper books, Harbaugh's Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary is decent, but there are a lot of inaccuracies.

[Lumbering Ox]

On 2017-08-06 at 8:22 PM, mlescano said:

I used Heisig with Japanese back in 2004-2005 and again with Chinese in 2015.

 

 

I'd be interested in knowing more about the angle of using Heisig for one after learning the other.

 

If you already have RTK done and some experience with Japanese, is it worth going through RTH.

On one hand it shouldn't take nearly as long as in ANKI or similar SRS you will end up marking many characters as easy and blasting through them, on the other hand if you finished one and have some familiarity with the language, you are basically going over similar ground and redeveloping a skill set you already have.

 

Unless you did Japanese and then forgot most of it before doing the Chinese.

[roddy]

Viktor, I'm afraid it's time to stop looking for ways to learn Chinese characters and start learning Chinese characters. Pick one of the suggestions, do it for a week or two, then come back and tell us how you get on. 

[Lu]

On 7-8-2017 at 2:22 AM, mlescano said:

It's what pretty much every student of Chinese ends up doing anyway: Making up stories and mnemonics to piece together the characters.

Yeah, that's how I did it: a combination of brute force/repititions and stories for the characters that didn't stick. I didn't use Heisig or any specific method, I made up my own stories. The main thing is to make the story or the image memorable. Sometimes it works to make it as absurd as possible (lawyer walking in and painting the floor read?!), or very close to your actual life (your uncle who is a lawyer walking around with a brush). You can adopt other people's stories as well, be it Heisig or OneEye's or your classmates.

 

Something else that works is when very strong feelings get attached to a character: if you learn it from someone you're in love with, or at a moment you're angry about something, or if you're humiliated in front of the entire class for not knowing it, you'll never forget it. Although this method is of course not always practical, and not always a good idea either.

[roddy]

I'd question how many characters we do that for, though. Do we do it for all of them, or just ones we find tricky for some reason? I distinguished 左 and 右 by remembering the one with 工 in was hard 工作（zuo） to remember. I don't recall a mnemonic for 邪 or 繁 though, as I suspect by that point I was just remembering components and characters, rather than stories.

[Lu]

If you want to do it for all of them, it's probably good to borrow a consistent method that someone else has already put a lot of thought into (like Heisig or OneEye). I personally prefer only doing it for a few tricky ones, but that may be just because that's what I ended up doing. Like you, after a few years I could just learn by remembering the components.

 

My 左/右 mnemonic: 左 is left because the communists are leftist and they're about workers/工人. I learned one for 已/己 here on the forums, 已 is 已經 half closed off.

[Shelley]

My 右/左 mnemonic is that the 工 which is the workman's square ruler is held in the left hand leaving the right hand to work. These are the only sort of stories I use, ones that are based on the actual components of the characters and nothing too far fetched and not difficult to remember. I also only do it for this kind of character, very similar in look and the opposite of each other or similar, but now I don't need to go through the story, I now just know 左 is left.