I was looking at comprehensible input videos for chinese on YouTube when I got recommended a TED video (here’s the URL for those that are curious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=troxvPRmZm8) about a picture-based method for memorizing Chinese characters. The method seems interesting but I was wondering:
What do you all think about memorizing Chinese characters? Is it worthwhile or does it make more sense to spend that time on more input?
If you are in support of memorizing characters or have used Chineasy before, what do you think about this method? Is it actually helpful or is it over-gamified like Duolingo?
I tried it for a few weeks. I found it to be so fun. I have no idea if it’s a good way to learn characters though. Curious to see what other people here say. Also Good luck on your Chinese ry123!
I am not a learner of Chinese, but have spend some time with Hanja (for Korean) and dived a bit into the mini stories for Japanese. Therefore I am no expert, but I’d like to share my thought, if I may.
Trying to use mnemonics is indeed useful to some extent, if you are able to make up one fitting the respective sign. It helped me even for learning Hiragana/Katakana. However, I wouldn’t expect to be able to rely on this alone, considering that there are characters much more complex and abstract. It is a good starting point, though.
Another aspect that may be useful is that as far as I know 80% of Chinese characters are semantic phonetical composits. This means, that they are build out of two existing characters, of which one refers to the semantics, so the meaning, whereas the other refers to the phonetics, so its pronounciation.
Am example:
語 contains the character 言, which itself contains the character 口. The latter is mentioned in the video, it means mouth. 言 is speech. So the character 語 could potentially have something to do with speech in a broader sense.
五 is the character for 5. In Korean it is pronounced like a long o, in Japanese it is go. In Korean the character 語 is pronounced with a short o, in Japanese it is go. So as you can see, it denotes the pronounciation (but has nothing to do with its meaning).
Both in Korean and Japanese (and most likely in Chinese, too) language names are usually formed by adding the above character/syllable at the end of a country’s name. So 日本 (Japan) becomes 日本語 (Japanese). In Korean ilbono, in Japanese nihongo.
A lot of the characters are build up like that. So the more characters you already know, the more likely it is that you can recognize this patterns which aids you at memorizing them.
Another aspect that I have noticed while reading the Japanese mini stories is, that due to the repetition I’ve became quickly able to recognize the characters. The funny aspect is, that this mainly related to the semantic. So I see the character and know what it means, but not so much how to pronounce them. This is an interesting experience for someone who has grown up with a phonetical alphabet and actually somewhat mind-blowing.
So to sum things up. I wouldn’t try to memorize tons of characters as a beginner, but more the basic ones while trying to unterstand the patterns and concepts behind them as well as just reading a lot in order to memorize through repetition in context. It is probably easier in Japanese as it uses a mixture of Chinese characters and phonetical symbols, but maybe it’s applyable for Chinese, too.
I’m intermediate in Chinese. When I learn a language, I learn words. That means all 3 things: spoken, written, and meaning. I don’t like any method that shows the writing without the sound. That is not learning a language.
Each Chinese character is one syllable, with one sound. Many of them are used as 1 syllable words, but are also used in many 2-syllable words.
Chinese has a phonetic writing (“pinyin”) that people learn first, before they learn characters. So a sentence in pinyin tells you the sound and meaning. For example, “I like your friend” is “wo xihuan ni de pengyou” (我喜欢你的朋友). I might forget a character, but I still know the sentence and grammar, if I know the pinyin.
Chineasy might be useful to convince people that they can learn characters fairly easily. But it isn’t a way to learn Chinese, in my opinion.
Hey ry123 did you end up using Chineasy? the past couple of weeks I have been spending tons of hours each day using the app, and I think is it such a great app! I feel like I am learning so quickly.
Mark, I didn’t ended up looking into it more and seeing that it isn’t really cohesive with my preferred learning style. It’s really important for me to prioritize reading and listening comprehension early on so that I can begin to consume enjoyable content (for example, netflix shows instead of dumbed down stories for kids) as soon as possible. Since I only have an hour or so to spend on Chinese every day, I decided to not use Chineasy. Glad it’s working for you, though! Good luck on your Chinese journey
