Kobo-Daishi,
> >When are you going to write your Taishanese dictionary and grammar
> > books?
>
> Since Chinese is just a hobby of mine I don’t feel qualified to write a
> dictionary or a book on grammar.
Have you ever thought about it though? When I first started wanting to learn Cantonese I was surprised at its status and its lack of documentation, compared to English for example. I can only imagine and empathise for how much worse it must be for Taishanese. These are my perceptions of the situation only, and It's not my intention to offend anyone. But I'm still am amazed that there is so little info on such a widely spoken language (in the number of people that speak it in the number of places around the world).
You don't need to be 'qualified' to provide a resource. One could wait another millennia for some 'qualified' person to do it. If no interest in publishing, then it could be posted on a web site. You seem to have a love for your language. It's a hobby; You could make it available like that.
I say all this partially tongue in cheek of course. It would be a big, tedious job. And maybe you'd regret it.
Regards,
rathpy
Memorizing Characters
-
Mixi'er
Re: Memorizing Characters
I haven't gone through all the previous messages, I just wanted to tell you how I memorize them as a Westener. It may well be that this has been sad over and over again.
When learning them, you start noticing how certain parts constantly return. You have the radicals, but even minor aspects seem to return. I usually name each of these compounds or parts. Some names are not correct: I choose whatever name I feel fits with a compound. Or you name them after words you know that character is also used with.
When I learn a new character, I unconsiously break it down into small pieces. I notice that when I am about to forget a character, I can still recall it by naming the compounds.
For example:
mao2 猫 (cat)
animal-radical + grass + field
meng4 梦 (dream)
two trees + moon
song1 shu3
When learning them, you start noticing how certain parts constantly return. You have the radicals, but even minor aspects seem to return. I usually name each of these compounds or parts. Some names are not correct: I choose whatever name I feel fits with a compound. Or you name them after words you know that character is also used with.
When I learn a new character, I unconsiously break it down into small pieces. I notice that when I am about to forget a character, I can still recall it by naming the compounds.
For example:
mao2 猫 (cat)
animal-radical + grass + field
meng4 梦 (dream)
two trees + moon
song1 shu3
-
Kobo-Daishi
Re: Memorizing Characters
Dear Rathpy,
>Have you ever thought about it though?
Yeah, I’ve thought about it. And I do have a little Taishanese glossary that I’ve made for my personal use. I guess that a lot of overseas Chinese that speak a dialect other than Mandarin have their personal glossaries. But I don’t really see the point of putting it out for public consumption especially when there are so few people that speak or are interested in the dialect.
>But I'm still am amazed that there is so little info on
>such a widely spoken language (in the number of
>people that speak it in the number of places
>around the world).
In my 1987 copy of “The Languages of China” by S. Robert Ramsey, the Chinese dialect group breakdown is as follows:
1. Mandarin-----------679,250,000
2. Wu------------------80,750,000
3. Gan-----------------22,800,000
4. Xiang---------------45,600,000
5. Hakka---------------35,150,000
6. Yue-----------------47,500,000
7. Min-----------------38,950,000
I’ve read that there are only about 1-1.2 million Taishanese speakers in China and 1-1.2 million Taishanese speakers outside of China.
So, I don’t really think there would be much of an audience for material on Taishanese.
Just look at the Hakka forum. According to the above statistic there are 35,150,000 speakers of Hakka in China, yet hardly anyone ever goes to the Hakka forum. Maybe they’re all at the asiawind.com Hakka forum. But a lot of the posts there are just posts lamenting the loss of their dialect.
>One could wait another millennia for some 'qualified' person to do it.
A millennium? In a millennium, Taishanese will probably be extinct as most of the other Chinese dialects except possibly Mandarin.
Let the guy at UCLA do it he’s a linguistics major after all.
Though I could probably recreate a rhyme dictionary from information gathered off the Internet. Well not the definitions but probably the pronunciation information. Oh well.
Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.
>Have you ever thought about it though?
Yeah, I’ve thought about it. And I do have a little Taishanese glossary that I’ve made for my personal use. I guess that a lot of overseas Chinese that speak a dialect other than Mandarin have their personal glossaries. But I don’t really see the point of putting it out for public consumption especially when there are so few people that speak or are interested in the dialect.
>But I'm still am amazed that there is so little info on
>such a widely spoken language (in the number of
>people that speak it in the number of places
>around the world).
In my 1987 copy of “The Languages of China” by S. Robert Ramsey, the Chinese dialect group breakdown is as follows:
1. Mandarin-----------679,250,000
2. Wu------------------80,750,000
3. Gan-----------------22,800,000
4. Xiang---------------45,600,000
5. Hakka---------------35,150,000
6. Yue-----------------47,500,000
7. Min-----------------38,950,000
I’ve read that there are only about 1-1.2 million Taishanese speakers in China and 1-1.2 million Taishanese speakers outside of China.
So, I don’t really think there would be much of an audience for material on Taishanese.
Just look at the Hakka forum. According to the above statistic there are 35,150,000 speakers of Hakka in China, yet hardly anyone ever goes to the Hakka forum. Maybe they’re all at the asiawind.com Hakka forum. But a lot of the posts there are just posts lamenting the loss of their dialect.
>One could wait another millennia for some 'qualified' person to do it.
A millennium? In a millennium, Taishanese will probably be extinct as most of the other Chinese dialects except possibly Mandarin.
Let the guy at UCLA do it he’s a linguistics major after all.
Though I could probably recreate a rhyme dictionary from information gathered off the Internet. Well not the definitions but probably the pronunciation information. Oh well.
Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.
-
Kobo-Daishi
Re: Memorizing Characters
Dear all,
I originally posted this at another forum but since it applies to this thread as well I'm reposting it here:
I use a word processing program to make sheets of characters to study, usually about 10 characters per sheet. I include copious notes about the characters to help me remember them. Usually etymological stuff gleaned from books and web sites. A good web site for such stuff would be http://www.zhongwen.com/
Sometimes I just make up something about a character to use as a mnemonic to remember how it’s written.
For instance, when I was learning the character 嬾, a variant form for the character 懶 (Mand: lan3, Cant: laan5) meaning “lazy” which I already knew, I remembered it by thinking if you remove the heart what are you left with. A girl. And girls are lazy. Okay bad example. I was going through a misogynistic period. But, I was able to remember this alternate way for writing “lazy”.
You can find characters to learn from many places. On-line forums, names of places you frequent, newspapers, etc. But a really good source for characters to learn would be the CEDICT dictionary.
The CEDICT is a freely downloadable text file available at the http://www.mandarintools.com/cedict.html web page. I cut and paste entire entries into my word processing program. I then change the font to a comfortable reading size. (Hint: When choosing a Chinese dictionary always get the largest edition available. A condensed edition with its small font size is murder on the eyes.)
I usually print out a sheet a week for study and if I lose it I can always print out another copy. I go over the sheet whenever there is free time; breaks, lunches, sitting in waiting rooms, etc.
I don’t have a palm, but I do use a flashcard program on my laptop. Unfortunately my operating system is Windows 95 so there aren’t many flashcard programs that support it.
The one I use supports Unicode fonts so I can enter zhuyin symbols, pinyin with tone marks, simplified characters, etc.
I usually have the flashcard program running in a separate window when surfing and during downtimes (waiting for downloads to finish, etc.) I go through the cards.
Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.
I originally posted this at another forum but since it applies to this thread as well I'm reposting it here:
I use a word processing program to make sheets of characters to study, usually about 10 characters per sheet. I include copious notes about the characters to help me remember them. Usually etymological stuff gleaned from books and web sites. A good web site for such stuff would be http://www.zhongwen.com/
Sometimes I just make up something about a character to use as a mnemonic to remember how it’s written.
For instance, when I was learning the character 嬾, a variant form for the character 懶 (Mand: lan3, Cant: laan5) meaning “lazy” which I already knew, I remembered it by thinking if you remove the heart what are you left with. A girl. And girls are lazy. Okay bad example. I was going through a misogynistic period. But, I was able to remember this alternate way for writing “lazy”.
You can find characters to learn from many places. On-line forums, names of places you frequent, newspapers, etc. But a really good source for characters to learn would be the CEDICT dictionary.
The CEDICT is a freely downloadable text file available at the http://www.mandarintools.com/cedict.html web page. I cut and paste entire entries into my word processing program. I then change the font to a comfortable reading size. (Hint: When choosing a Chinese dictionary always get the largest edition available. A condensed edition with its small font size is murder on the eyes.)
I usually print out a sheet a week for study and if I lose it I can always print out another copy. I go over the sheet whenever there is free time; breaks, lunches, sitting in waiting rooms, etc.
I don’t have a palm, but I do use a flashcard program on my laptop. Unfortunately my operating system is Windows 95 so there aren’t many flashcard programs that support it.
The one I use supports Unicode fonts so I can enter zhuyin symbols, pinyin with tone marks, simplified characters, etc.
I usually have the flashcard program running in a separate window when surfing and during downtimes (waiting for downloads to finish, etc.) I go through the cards.
Kobo-Daishi, PLLA.
Re: Memorizing 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 .
Re: Memorizing Characters
Hello,
memorizing character is in my view a hellish part of learning Chinese. Sometimes I read that the radical + phonetic structure should help to recognize/memorize words but for the most part, I find that you just have to take Chinese the way it is and just put the effort to learnby heart.
Anyway the lack of easy correspondence between the character - the sound - the meaning makes it quite difficult (for me and I guess for other students).
To use my learning time efficiently, I developed (initially for myself) a memory game called Pingrid. It uses a spaced repetition scheme to focus on the more difficult words. And unlike other memorization programs, it is designed from the start to learn Chinese vocabulary.
In case it could interest other members: check out the web site at
http://ehaton.blogspot.com
Pingrid is free, donations welcome to support me in this solitary effort!
Emmanuel
memorizing character is in my view a hellish part of learning Chinese. Sometimes I read that the radical + phonetic structure should help to recognize/memorize words but for the most part, I find that you just have to take Chinese the way it is and just put the effort to learnby heart.
Anyway the lack of easy correspondence between the character - the sound - the meaning makes it quite difficult (for me and I guess for other students).
To use my learning time efficiently, I developed (initially for myself) a memory game called Pingrid. It uses a spaced repetition scheme to focus on the more difficult words. And unlike other memorization programs, it is designed from the start to learn Chinese vocabulary.
In case it could interest other members: check out the web site at
http://ehaton.blogspot.com
Pingrid is free, donations welcome to support me in this solitary effort!Emmanuel
-
simplyolaf
- Posts: 5
- Joined: Thu Sep 17, 2009 5:47 pm
Re: Memorizing Characters
Learning how to write chinese characters is the easiest way in which you can memorize chinese characters. Try visualmandarin's Chinese stroke order dictionary where you will see the basic chinese strokes for many chinese characters.