Dear all,
What is the best way to learn characters?
Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.
Memorizing Characters
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Dylan Sung
Re: Memorizing Characters
By repetition and circumstance. Repetition to get used to seeing them, circumstance meaning how and why those characters are placed next to other characters forming compounds, phrases and sentencing.
The best way to gain some reading fluency, IMHO, is to begin learning the most frequently used characters. It is said that the most frequently used 400 characters accounts for 67% of text. The 1200 most freq used chars account for 91% or there abouts of characters used.
For HongKong school kids, they are taught 2600 characters over 6 years, and this stands them in good stead for reading proficiency. There may be around 4800 most commonly used characters used in the media today, with many more less frequently used characters appear when needed. When you encounter the less frequently used ones, a dictionary is useful to find out its pronunciation and meaning.
Writing is important too, and after meeting up with a few hundred characters or so, you can see that there are only a limited number of parts which appear over and over again in other Chinese characters. Once you know how these basic parts are composed, more complex characters should be fairly easy to write.
Cheers,
Dyl.
The best way to gain some reading fluency, IMHO, is to begin learning the most frequently used characters. It is said that the most frequently used 400 characters accounts for 67% of text. The 1200 most freq used chars account for 91% or there abouts of characters used.
For HongKong school kids, they are taught 2600 characters over 6 years, and this stands them in good stead for reading proficiency. There may be around 4800 most commonly used characters used in the media today, with many more less frequently used characters appear when needed. When you encounter the less frequently used ones, a dictionary is useful to find out its pronunciation and meaning.
Writing is important too, and after meeting up with a few hundred characters or so, you can see that there are only a limited number of parts which appear over and over again in other Chinese characters. Once you know how these basic parts are composed, more complex characters should be fairly easy to write.
Cheers,
Dyl.
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Kobo-Daishi
Re: Memorizing Characters
Dear Dylan,
I take it that you think it would be a bad idea to go to Jilin to take a free intensive 100-day course in the basic 2500 characters. :}
So, how should one go about mastering characters?
By writing the characters over a million times? With flashcards?
How did you do it or do it?
Also, since your first dialect is Hakka how do you read Chinese? In your mind are you reading them in Mandarin or in Hakka?
Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.
I take it that you think it would be a bad idea to go to Jilin to take a free intensive 100-day course in the basic 2500 characters. :}
So, how should one go about mastering characters?
By writing the characters over a million times? With flashcards?
How did you do it or do it?
Also, since your first dialect is Hakka how do you read Chinese? In your mind are you reading them in Mandarin or in Hakka?
Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.
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Dylan Sung
Re: Memorizing Characters
Hi Kobo-Daishi,
With regard to Jilin, it is an awful long way to go. I've no doubt that so many characters could not be mastered by someone with zero knowledge of Chinese for the average adult person.
Besides, SARS has put paid to visiting China for the time being
We were planning to go this month since my wife wants to visit her relatives.
I think the approach set out in John DeFrancis' red coloured Chinese Readers is quite useful. Basically, learn characters by their frequency of use, and meeting them as much as possible in meaningful compounds. As you might have guessed, I have the books, or at least, four of them.
As for memorising how to write them, it helps if you've seen them often enough, so you do know the way they look. I do write them a few times over, but a million might give me repetitive strain disorder.
I read in Hakka. Anyway, I've also written my own programs to convert Big5 into romanised syllables, as an aid to read the characters recently.
There's one for Mandarin (hanyu pinyin), Cantonese (my modified version of jyutping) and Hakka.
http://www.sungwh.freeserve.co.uk/misc/dialect.htm
Runs under 32 bit windows dos prompt.
Dyl.
With regard to Jilin, it is an awful long way to go. I've no doubt that so many characters could not be mastered by someone with zero knowledge of Chinese for the average adult person.
Besides, SARS has put paid to visiting China for the time being
We were planning to go this month since my wife wants to visit her relatives.I think the approach set out in John DeFrancis' red coloured Chinese Readers is quite useful. Basically, learn characters by their frequency of use, and meeting them as much as possible in meaningful compounds. As you might have guessed, I have the books, or at least, four of them.
As for memorising how to write them, it helps if you've seen them often enough, so you do know the way they look. I do write them a few times over, but a million might give me repetitive strain disorder.
I read in Hakka. Anyway, I've also written my own programs to convert Big5 into romanised syllables, as an aid to read the characters recently.
There's one for Mandarin (hanyu pinyin), Cantonese (my modified version of jyutping) and Hakka.
http://www.sungwh.freeserve.co.uk/misc/dialect.htm
Runs under 32 bit windows dos prompt.
Dyl.
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Andrew
Re: Memorizing Characters
As for my own personal opinion, I think(and also from my own experience),one of the effective ways to write a character is to scribble it down on paper again and again.as the saying goes,"practice makes perfect".
In Korea,schoolchildren are taught about 1800 characters,and are expected to use and utilize them by the end of high school.
In Japan, characters are also taught, but only the very important ones used in daily conversation.
Kangxi radicals also help a lot.For instance, if you know a certain part of the character, it makes it a lot more easier to write.
Most importantly, if you can find someone accustomed to the Chinese language,try asking for help.Thanks a lot.
Andrew
In Korea,schoolchildren are taught about 1800 characters,and are expected to use and utilize them by the end of high school.
In Japan, characters are also taught, but only the very important ones used in daily conversation.
Kangxi radicals also help a lot.For instance, if you know a certain part of the character, it makes it a lot more easier to write.
Most importantly, if you can find someone accustomed to the Chinese language,try asking for help.Thanks a lot.
Andrew
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Jordan
Re: Memorizing Characters
In reference to what Dylan said, I have been using the red DeFrancs book to try and learn some characters. I have had good success so far. When I showed the book to a Chinese friend, she was shocked to see that I was learning the "traditional" characters and not the "simplified" which are much easier. Anyway, and interesting conversation here .
Jordan
Jordan
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Dylan Sung
Re: Memorizing Characters
Jordan,
What is there to be shocked about? They can be both used for learning Chinese. If you look carefully in the back of Part II of Beginning Chinese Readers, you'll find that simplified characters are also introduced in supplementary lessons, so you could actually learn them within the same set of books. This is also true of Intermediate Chinese Reader II and the last volume Advanced Chinese Reader.
In the paperback version of this set of red books, the characters for the simplified characters are all displayed on the front cover of ACR. On the cover of the intermediate set, are all the characters in the ICR I and II.
Cheers,
Dyl.
What is there to be shocked about? They can be both used for learning Chinese. If you look carefully in the back of Part II of Beginning Chinese Readers, you'll find that simplified characters are also introduced in supplementary lessons, so you could actually learn them within the same set of books. This is also true of Intermediate Chinese Reader II and the last volume Advanced Chinese Reader.
In the paperback version of this set of red books, the characters for the simplified characters are all displayed on the front cover of ACR. On the cover of the intermediate set, are all the characters in the ICR I and II.
Cheers,
Dyl.
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Jordan
Re: Memorizing Characters
Dylan,
I have the paperback edition of BCR Part I. Its red and has pictographs on the cover. It doesn't have the section that you are making reference to. I am not ready for BCR Part II yet, but thanks for the information.
My friend was merely suggesting that it would be easier to learn the simplified Chinese characters in that they are the ones used in newspapers and in mainland China. In fact, there is a Chinese school for young children near where i live here on Long Island and they are having a big problem regarding what system of characters to teach the children. The parents from Taiwan want the traditional characters used, but the parents from mainland China want the simplified characters used. Things have gone so far that the groups may split and open separate schools. It is a very spirited battle going on.
Jordan
I have the paperback edition of BCR Part I. Its red and has pictographs on the cover. It doesn't have the section that you are making reference to. I am not ready for BCR Part II yet, but thanks for the information.
My friend was merely suggesting that it would be easier to learn the simplified Chinese characters in that they are the ones used in newspapers and in mainland China. In fact, there is a Chinese school for young children near where i live here on Long Island and they are having a big problem regarding what system of characters to teach the children. The parents from Taiwan want the traditional characters used, but the parents from mainland China want the simplified characters used. Things have gone so far that the groups may split and open separate schools. It is a very spirited battle going on.
Jordan
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Dylan Sung
Re: Memorizing Characters
It seems that outside China, one is likely to encounter Chinese descendents of migrants from pre-war era, who use traditional characters more. It wasn't until 1958 onwards that simplified characters was made official script. Previously, there were simplified characters used unofficially, including lots of traditional character variants. The big step came in 1964 when a list of over 2000 simplified characters were officially published.
Dyl.
Dyl.
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Kobo-Daishi
Re: Memorizing Characters
Dear all,
Thank you for your replies.
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Dylan,
I also read using my native dialect (Taishanese) which I learned from my parents. But it’s difficult when I come upon a character that I don’t know how to pronounce in Taishanese and have to resort to using its Mandarin pronunciation since there are no Taishanese dictionaries.
I guess you don’t have this problem since there are Hakka dictionaries and you have that Hakka character list of Professor Lau’s.
I haven’t had a chance to try your converter programs yet but was wondering how your program handles characters with more than one reading. At Thomas Chan’s site for his Cantonese text to speech program he just uses the first Cantonese reading of characters from the Unihan list and disregards the rest.
Also, where did you get the list of characters & readings for your programs? I guess the Hakka list would be the one by Professor Lau.
Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.
Thank you for your replies.
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Dylan,
I also read using my native dialect (Taishanese) which I learned from my parents. But it’s difficult when I come upon a character that I don’t know how to pronounce in Taishanese and have to resort to using its Mandarin pronunciation since there are no Taishanese dictionaries.
I guess you don’t have this problem since there are Hakka dictionaries and you have that Hakka character list of Professor Lau’s.
I haven’t had a chance to try your converter programs yet but was wondering how your program handles characters with more than one reading. At Thomas Chan’s site for his Cantonese text to speech program he just uses the first Cantonese reading of characters from the Unihan list and disregards the rest.
Also, where did you get the list of characters & readings for your programs? I guess the Hakka list would be the one by Professor Lau.
Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.