How I learned 4,000+ characters or Tuttle/Matthews “Learning Chinese Characters – Part 2”

[China_Fanboi]

Has anyone gotten any updates from HSKPro?? This product sounds incredible!

[mac n cheese]

Yearly check-in, I still so want this. Using the Matthews character learning method was some if the most fun I've ever had language learning. Any update appreciated.

[TheWayfarer]

@HSK Pro Looking back over the thread, I wonder that no one suggested you contact Tuttle about publishing your work (at least, I didn't see the suggestion). Have you tried getting Tuttle to publish it?

[Andrew1267]

@HSK Pro Hi, is it possible to publish the full list of mnemonics (soundwords) for Chinese pronunciations?  Similar to what is listed on pages 362-365 of the Tuttle's book by Matthews (in my edition), but it's incomplete and it's often difficult to find the right soundwords for missing pronunciations.  Since you've done 5000 characters, you must have a complete list of soundwords.  Is it possible to publish such a list / table for everyone?  Thank you!

[williamwu123]

Did anyone hear an update on this?

 

I would pay through the roof for something like this. 

[Matthias]

Since some people have been asking for updates but @HSK Pro has vanished, I hope it's okay if I hijack this thread.

 

I've been working on a very similar thing: writing mnemonics including the pronunciation for Chinese characters. The method for including the pronunciation is a bit different though. I use the Marilyn method instead of the Tuttle method. I don't have an exact number right now but I think I created mnemonics for around 3400 (simplified) characters. The mnemonics for the first few hundred characters are a bit wacky though and probably need to be rewritten; writing mnemonics is a skill which improves with every created mnemonic.

 

For some mnemonics I've also created comics. Mostly by mashing together SVG images, but some are AI generated. The advantage of SVG images is that components can be reused in comics for other characters.

 

All mnemonics are freely available on my website www.mandarinbanana.com. There's no download button yet, because no one uses that site except for me; but if there's enough interest, I'll implement a download feature. For now though if you'd want to use Anki for example, you could embed an iframe with the url www.mandarinbanana.com/hanzis/将 to get the page for 将 on the back side of your card (haven't tested it but it should work). Replace 将 with {{hanzi}} (or whatever your keyword is).

 

There's the possibility for anyone to add their own mnemonics and comics on the website, but in that case I kindly ask to subscribe to the paid level to share the server cost. I currently pay almost USD 200 monthly, and that is virtually without any load on the site. Fortunately my day job allows me to sustain this rather expensive hobby.

 

Most Chinese learners think this method stinks. For me it worked extremely well. If I can only help a  handful of people to learn Chinese characters, and be it only two or three, I would be extremely humbled.

 

By the way, although I invested thousands of hours into this project, all content will be freely available for anyone, forever. I wouldn't have been able to do this without the content freely shared by others, so I think it's only fair if I make this available in return as well. Instead, I would be extremely humbled if other learners find this helpful or even join creating more mnemonics and comics.