Beginner: how to learn and remember words

[kdjupdal]

(this should probably be in the "general study advice"-forum)

 

Hi

Do you have any techniques for remembering words?

(not characters, but pronunciation)

As a beginner of Chinese I find it very difficult to remember Chinese words. The problem is: unlike in West-European languages, there are no connections between Chinese words and words of my language. When I study Spanish or German I can usually easily make associations with words I already know. It is not hard to remember that "carga" means load in Spanish (think cargo), and that "Haltestelle" means bus stop in German (Halt!).

 

With chinese I try to remember the sound of the words and associate with a mental image.

I read the book by Berry Farber where he explains the technique of creating random new associations. As an example he would remember Kuàizi (筷子) by thinking of the river Kwai. This kind of association technique actually works but it feels strange to depend on a lot of irrelevant new images.

So what techniques do you use?

[Zbigniew]

I've seldom used mnemonics like the kuaizi example to remember the meaning of Chinese words, part of the reason being that Mandarin has such a small number of possible syllables relative to, say, English, that you can quickly run out of associations when you're faced with, for example, yet another yi or ji word to remember.

 

I think the soundest technique in the long run for remembering the meaning of words in Mandarin is to learn the basic meaning of the characters that any given word is made up of so that you can see the logic of why the compound word means what it does. There almost always is an obvious logic to the compound, just as there is in English words, though it might not be very obvious unless you're familiar with the major languages from which today's English lexicon is derived.

[kouch]

The first year I learnt Chinese, I also found it very hard to remember words. You learn a completely new way of writing, our brain and our hands are not used to write this way so you have to give you the to adapt to this new way of doing.

 

Now, as weird as it sounds, I'd say the best way to learn hanzis is learning hanzis. The hanzis you've learnt will always come back in others. Let's say you know how to write the word 天气 (weather). Later, you will learn the words 暖气 (heater) and 气温 (temperature). Well, you will already master half of those characters. And with this example I point to point out the importance of learning radicals. I remember my Chinese teacher asked us to learn radicals which I never dit but I am trying to do it now because I realize how helpful it is to learn them, it helps you to build and picture the character in your mind. As you are still a beginner, I would advice you to learn them now.

 

And of course, you have to be patient. Learning a language is not an easy thing especially when it is so different from our language. In a few weeks, months, you will realize it is so much easier for you to write Chinese !

[Shelley]

This topic was much discussed here https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/54705-how-to-remember-for-the-characters/

 

It might be of help to you.

[kdjupdal]

It is interesting that even though I specified "not characters, but pronunciation", all three replies said that the way to remember chinese words is to learn the characters. Maybe that is true. But I think it is useful to keep concepts separate:

- characters is a writing system

- words are sound. Pronunciation of these has to be learnt either through pinyin or audio clips. Or am I missing something?

[Zeppa]

I think there's a strong argument for learning to speak independently of characters. Sometimes it helps to know the meanings of the two parts, and here it is easier when you know the characters. The examples given in characters by kouch are tianqi, nuanqi and qiwen, where qi means something like air or gas. tianqi: day/sky air, nuanqi: warm air, qiwen: air temperature. It's probably easier to make sense of these compound meanings when you get into the characters, perhaps because that's the way Chinese dictionaries work. And as Zbigniew says, there are masses of characters that sound the same, so it's only by pinning a sound to a character that you can be sure.

I've got an intermediate book that takes this 'pinyin first' approach by Julian Wheatley, Learning Chinese: a foundation course in Mandarin - the elementary volume is free online, but I don't know it. It may help.

https://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-21g-003-learning-chinese-a-foundation-course-in-mandarin-spring-2011/index.htm

[i__forget]

Another beginner here, facing the same problem. What seems to be working well is listening to the same tape a gazillion times   Eventually the word will stick to your passive memory, I believe. You will need lots of tapes. So far I have accumulated more that 30 mins of Chinese speach that I try to listen to when on the move through various point of the day. It's hard! I also keep adding to my library.

Characters I do them independently and as of now they haven't helped me in any way as I am not reading yet. 

[stapler]

The words which I am most comfortable with are words I have heard many times and in particular scenarios and have actually said aloud to someone else a few times. These words don't have mnemonics, they're tied to particular scenarios or have lots of repetition.

 

For example, I've managed to learn some Chinese dialect just by constantly hearing and needing to use phrases like "no more alcohol", "could you add a little bit more alcohol?", "have you eaten yet?" "i'm really full". I have no idea what tones these words and phrases are, and I'm pretty sure they can't be written down. But they're seared into my mind and I can reproduce/recognise them with ease just from extensive use in particular situations.

 

It's like that with Mandarin for me too. I know the word for plastic bag because every time I'm in Chinatown I hear and use "要袋子吗？" I don't need anything elaborate to remember it. Something like metabolism (新陈代谢) however, because I rarely use it, requires me to pause, think hard, and say it. And I'm often unsure about it. However if I had to talk about metabolism every day because I was a dietitian or something I'm pretty sure I'd rattle this word off without effort. The words I've actually had to use/hear in "real life" I can use in almost spontaneously, words I've only "studied" require lots of cognitive effort to recall, and words I've only read or heard occasionally just fall through my memory bank.

 

Sorry. To make it short: Use the words often and use the words in real life situations. As someone just starting out that can even just be small dialogues to yourself (actually speak it aloud) can be okay. "Do you have chopsticks? - Yes I have chopsticks", "where are those bloody chopsticks?!?!?!" etc.

 

(one last story. I once saw a Chinese kid, maybe 2 years old. Someone told him what the word for a bus was. He spent the next 1 hour just walking around yelling "公交车!". Pretty sure he'll remember that word for the rest of his life. And it's probably more effective than using flashcards)

[kdjupdal]

Thanks for all the perspectives.

 

I noticed that the pronunciation of characters is always one syllable, while a word is often two syllables. I often found that it is better to remember a word as one unit and not as compunds of characters. Do you agree? As an example: nü3 ren2 - literally "female human" - it is easier to learn this as one word - nüren - meaning woman - and not two characters.
 

[Flickserve]

28 minutes ago, kdjupdal said:

I noticed that the pronunciation of characters is always one syllable, while a word is often two syllables. I often found that it is better to remember a word as one unit and not as compunds of characters.

 

If it works for you, then continue.

[Shelley]

18 hours ago, kdjupdal said:

But I think it is useful to keep concepts separate:

I disagree, learn everything at the same time pinyin, characters, pronunciation ( including tones), definition, and grammar.  After awhile you will stop "learning" pinyin and concentrate on characters.

Tying a sound to a character is very useful in my opinion. Don't separate tones and pronunciation, tone is pronunciation.

The best way to learn and remember words is to use them, read them and speak them. A flashcard tool is also very useful. When you come across a new word put in in your flashcard list.

Read and listen to as much as you can, speak and listen as much as you can, it is only going to go in if you use it.

 

It may seem boring but its the only way, I think, of learning and remembering. There is no shortcut or quick fix, you are in for the long haul.

 

The more you learn the easier it will become as you begin to make connections between words and characters they share. Soon you won't necessarily be learning new characters just new combinations.

[abcdefg]

On 8/25/2017 at 8:51 AM, stapler said:

(one last story. I once saw a Chinese kid, maybe 2 years old. Someone told him what the word for a bus was. He spent the next 1 hour just walking around yelling "公交车!". Pretty sure he'll remember that word for the rest of his life. And it's probably more effective than using flashcards)

 

That was more or less my first method, or at least a large part of it.