Are you aware of the 8105 simplified Chinese characters of the PRC?

[Guest realmayo]

@gwr71 Listen, forget for a moment that people think you can't do it. Let's say that you can. Okay. I believe you can memorise those 8000 characters.

But the point is that, it won't help you be fluent in Chinese.

You've set yourself a difficult goal and the sad thing is that, if you succeed, your Chinese will be worse than if you don't succeed.

It's like, you've decided that running lots of marathons will make you a great 100-metre runner. You decide to run one marathon every week for two years. Everyone says you can't do it. You do it. You feel really happy. They were wrong, you were right. But then you realise: even though you ran all those marathons, you're still a really slow 100-metre runner.

I'm not saying you can't memorise all those characters. Just that, if you do, it won't help you be fluent.

 

[gwr71]

I fully agree with you but this is my journey into discovery of fluency in mandarin. At the end I will report what I find.  It maybe most likely that you and others are correct that 3,500-4,000 characters is all I need for fluency.  I am not doing this to prove others wrong.  Nor am I doing it to prove that I am right.  It is the goal I set for myself.

[Xiao Kui]

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Listen, forget for a moment that people think you can't do it. Let's say that you can. Okay. I believe you can memorise those 8000 characters.

But the point is that, it won't help you be fluent in Chinese.

Exactly. I do think 8000 characters in 2 years is achievable, I just don't think it's the path to fluency.

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3,500-4,000 characters is all I need for fluency.

3000 characters +  hundreds of hours of comprehensible input + hundreds of hours of real life practice/output

 

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 I am not doing this to prove others wrong.  Nor am I doing it to prove that I am right.  It is the goal I set for myself.

This sounds humble, but you've rejected a lot of sound advice from experienced learners who are trying to help you make the most of your time.

 

[Guest realmayo]

9 minutes ago, gwr71 said:

I fully agree with you but this is my journey into discovery of fluency in mandarin

Enjoy the journey & as you've found out there'll always be lots of signposts to slightly different routes, for better or for worse, here on these forums.

[DavyJonesLocker]

51 minutes ago, Xiao Kui said:

Exactly. I do think 8000 characters in 2 years is achievable, I just don't think it's the path to fluency.

 

i disagree, I think its next to impossible anyway. As we all know learning is not linear, its starts to slow down when we proceed into our studies as you spend so long just maintaining ones you have already learnt.

 

when I hear people say "I know 5000 characters" or whatever I usually ask if they use a SRS system to actually test their abilities. The answer is invariably no or that its just a guess as they have read so many books,  articles, or studied it at one point in the past

[imron]

5 hours ago, realmayo said:

Here are some characters pasted from that list of 8000, at around the 7000 mark:

I know exactly 0 of those characters.

[gwr71]

Thank you all for your comments and suggestions.

[DavyJonesLocker]

11 minutes ago, gwr71 said:

Thank you all for your comments and suggestions.

 

Don't let people put you off though. Learning Chinese has to be enjoyable or you will pack it up so if your chosen system is one you like doing, fire away

[Publius]

34 minutes ago, imron said:

I know exactly 0 of those characters.

Lol. I know one and unsure about another.

翦 is a typical 人名用字: 王翦, a general from the Warring States period; 翦伯赞, a Marxist historian who committed suicide during the Cultural Revolution.

鹣 looks familiar to me. Turns out it's in the chengyu 鹣鲽情深, and 鹣 is none other than the legendary 比翼鸟. 在天愿作比翼鸟，在地愿为鳎目鱼～

[carlo]

As others have noted, the usefulness of new characters when ranked by frequency does not decrease linearly, it falls off more or less exponentially. If you go down far enough, you may spend a week inside a library in China reading 10 hours a day, and you won't come across them.

 

Moreover, once you know the first 4-5000, learning an additional 2-3000 is quite easy -- they're just combinations of elements you already know. So if you later start learning Classical Chinese, learn chengyu or have friends with unusual characters in their names, you'll pick them up in a second.

[Guest realmayo]

1 hour ago, imron said:

I know exactly 0 of those characters.

 

33 minutes ago, Publius said:

Lol. I know one and unsure about another.

 

Pah! I knew over half!

 

A kind of fish; another kind of fish; some sort of bird; another bird; oh another bird; something hot; hmm and wet wet wet wet.

 

And the funny thing is I can't even remember when I studied them.

[Tomsima]

> writes out 8000 characters billions of times, including loads of ancient and rare characters

> Can only write 8000 standardized 楷體

> Mfw when can't read 禮器碑 bcos too many non-standard forms

[roddy]

Here's the thing...

 

The OP has said he'll be using other resources and visiting Taiwan. I don't think he has quite the *exclusive* focus on characters that you might assume. He has an unnecessary and excessive focus on them, but I don't think it means he's going to do nothing else. 

 

"I wrote out PAVC Books 1 and 2" - you don't avoid picking up grammar and vocab doing that

"  I have added A Course in Contemporary Chinese to the list." Not sure what happens with books on the list, but again...

"I found the grammer book: Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammer.  Then I found the Longman's Visual Dictionary on Chinese Culture; and the Dictionary of Measure Words.  I then found the book on Verb: 201 Verbs for everyday uses.  " - he's not just staring at a list of characters

" I would be a well rounded learner with a vocabulary of about 15,000 words." - and he's not just taking about characters. Although someone should work out how many characters he *actually* needs for that level of vocab.

"The other half is listening and speaking.  " - see. 

"My method is flawed as it has little or no listening and speaking.  I will rely on the cds/mp3s and websites, and youtube with movies, news etc in Mandarin to assist.  There is really no substitute for the real thing.  I don't have an online tutor so I can speak mandarin regularly.  I will have to go to Taiwan and then to HK and spend time there to practice all that I have learnt.  " - he's likely going to end up with weak listening and speaking skills, but that's hardly unusual for an independent learner far from resources. 

 

That's all just the first page. 

 

What we have here is someone with a plan for learning Chinese which is no worse than any other we've seen (ok, it is worse. But it's not THE worst), and an odd personal goal of memorising lots of irrelevant pictures he'll never use. In two years he'll have a passable level of Chinese, and a party trick to impress Chinese people with.

[艾墨本]

18 hours ago, carlo said:

Moreover, once you know the first 4-5000, learning an additional 2-3000 is quite easy -- they're just combinations of elements you already know.

It's important to differentiate 字 and 词. 字 is often "characters" while "词" is words. 8000 characters and 8000 words are two very different things and learning objectives. OP wants to learn 8000 characters.

 

19 hours ago, DavyJonesLocker said:

hen I hear people say "I know 5000 characters" or whatever I usually ask if they use a SRS system to actually test their abilities. The answer is invariably no or that its just a guess as they have read so many books,  articles, or studied it at one point in the past

Agree. Hopefully, OP will invest enough time into learning how to use ANKI fully.

 

1 minute ago, roddy said:

What we have here is someone with a plan for learning Chinese which is no worse than any other we've seen, and an odd personal goal of memorising lots of irrelevant pictures he'll never use. 

Just heard “汉字叔叔" lecture on characters. He also falls into the category of knowing a lot of characters. Perhaps OP can look him up. You might find in him some inspiration because he is indeed an interesting man and knows the meaning of many "irrelevant" pictures (though historically important) mostly found on charred tortoise shells and animal bones. That said, while he could speak in front of the crowd comfortably (impressive as is), there were quite a few times when understanding him was difficult due to pronunciation and lack of tones. I hope you can also learn from him in this regard.

 

20 hours ago, realmayo said:

Enjoy the journey & as you've found out there'll always be lots of signposts to slightly different routes, for better or for worse, here on these forums.

You make a good point. I'm curious to see what OP will think of his goal once he hits 3000 characters in active memory (which is to say he can recall all 3000, not just memorized at one point in time previously).

 

OP, You've set a lot of long term goals. What do you hope to have accomplished in the next three months?

[DavyJonesLocker]

45 minutes ago, 艾墨本 said:

You make a good point. I'm curious to see what OP will think of his goal once he hits 3000 characters in active memory (which is to say he can recall all 3000, not just memorized at one point in time previously)

Just on this point, I do recall struggling a while ago retaining 词  and like many of us I assume, often you can recognize one of the 2 character words but that's enough to recall the word.

I did go and learn little over 1000  字 (characters) and I admit it helped tremendously with reading. After 1000 I  found it to be a law of dimishing returns and to be honest I lost interest. However I do think there is merit in recognising individual charters to some level.

[imron]

4 hours ago, 艾墨本 said:

It's important to differentiate 字 and 词. 字 is often "characters" while "词" is words. 8000 characters and 8000 words are two very different things and learning objectives. OP wants to learn 8000 characters.

I'm sure carlo realises this (he's a long term member with excellent Chinese), his point being that once you know 4-5,000 characters, then next 2-3,000 characters are simply just combinations of those first 4-5,000.

 

Have a look at the ones realmayo posted earlier.  Like I said, I know 0 of those characters, but I do recognise every single one as being made up of combinations of other characters I know.

[Publius]

I very much doubt that.

They just look familiar, because you already know all the components. But the meaning is hard to pin down. Even if you whip out a dictionary and learn them properly, they are so rare you will soon forget them again.

Of course you'll get better at guessing the meaning of a character you've never seen before. But that doesn't mean you know it. In spelling bees you have to use the word in a sentence to prove you're not just very good at guessing. Same rule applies to character knowledge.

And it will get worse because as you learn more characters, the chance that a new one looks just like an old one increases. Which will result in you alternating between déjà vu and jamais vu...

Just for fun, do you know these characters? 鍚荼壼

[gwr71]

It seems that a lot of person are concerned about the number of characters I am going to learn.  Let me say for clarification, it is the consensus of this forum that a knowledge of characters alone will not achieve fluency in mandarin. I agree with that statement.   Learning characters including: nouns, measure words, phrases and verbs do not make a person fluent in any way .    I have said in other threads that GRAMMER is the key.   I will say it again. Grammer is the key to fluency. You can learn all 8,000 characters and 2,000 verbs and 150 measure words as what I will be doing but without a full understanding of grammer you better off doing something else with your time.  

For me I have taken a 2 approach for the learning and reinforcement of grammer.  First, by learning on a linguistic level the ins and outs of Mandarin grammer.    Then when I have understood the book I will then take the second step which is to use a modern grammer text with characters and workbooks etc.   which is what many persons in this forum have done or are doing.  I am not doing anything new but just added more categories at the same time.  As you would appreciate I have a lot of time on my hands so I am making the most of it.

As pointed out my listening and  speaking will be weak but so are most persons who self study Mandarin without a coach whether live or on the net.

[carlo]

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Just for fun, do you know these characters? 鍚荼壼

This is way off topic by now, but I can honestly tell you that, at least for me, realising that 荼 was not 茶 came a lot easier than remembering that 如火如荼 was not 图, or learning how to use that phrase at all.

 

If I can give one more piece of unsolicited advice before I shut up, I also once spent a small fortune in grammar books, only to realise that beyond a very basic level, reading and hearing a lot of native material is by far the most efficient way to make progress.... Of course we all learn differently.

[gwr71]

钖  or  鍚= yang

荼 = tu

壼= kun.

 

anymore challenges.

the 8105 general table is very good.