I recently started learning Chinese and want to go into studying the characters pretty soon. Does anyone have any good suggestions for apps which are good to combine with lingQ?
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I would like to ask you a question about learning a Chinese language. Is this easy or hard?
Hai, It is very hard, yet also easy, first learn pinyin then characters
I agree. It’s hard and also very easy at the same time. From my experience, I think it’s all about knowing what strategies and memorization techniques will work best for you. I used to do spaced repetition using https://www.hackchinese.com/ where I review the characters repeatedly with increasingly longer breaks between each repetition. I remembered them better this way. Give it a try
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While waiting for someone to respond to your question, for Japanese characters, Heisig’s remembering the Kanji is very well known and often cited as a popular resource. I have used this myself and for me personally, it has helped immensely.
There is also a “Remembering Hanzi” book, but I don’t know how well it holds up for Chinese. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Remembering-Simplified-Hanzi-Meaning-Characters/dp/0824833236
For Japanese, you also have some people who ignore the individual readings/writing of a character and just focus on understanding and reading words , but not sure how well this holds up for Chinese.
I’m very interested in hearing from someone with more experience in Chinese.
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I would say it is time consuming and doesn’t need to be hard for an English speaker there are numerous similarities between the two which can make taking your first few steps quite easy.
English: Hello
Chinese Pinyin: Ha1lou2
The Chinese first tone, is a high tone which almost sung. So sing ‘‘Haaaaa’’ you should feel the force at the front of your mouth, but you actually want a short ‘‘ha’’ sound.
Now the second ‘‘Lou2’’ is actually pronounced ‘‘low’’ the final ‘‘ou’’ in Chinese is similar to the English ‘‘ow or oe’’
English: Foe
Chinese: Fou
English: Doe
Chinese pinyin: Dou
etc
Now the second tone in ‘‘lou2’’ is a rising tone. That means you start at the lower end of you voice scale and you rise up, imagine you are at the bottom of a mountain and your friend ‘‘dave’’ is climbing it you shout at him ‘‘dAVE’’ capital letters are supposed to give you picture of the tone rising. That is how you want to say ‘‘lou2’’.
You try it, sing ‘‘ha’’ and then a mountain call lOU
Other similar words Chinese use
Bai2Bai2 - ByeBye
Sha1fa1 - Sofa
Pi1sa - Pizza
Thank you so much! I will definitely try for it.
Will give this one a try. LOL!
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what is happening
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I’ve spent years learning Chinese with pinyin… and just recently (through use of text to speech on my kindle and lingq) have cut out pinyin and found That I am able to read a large number of characters…
I don’t actually have a recommendation , but I’m not sure that you need to learn characters… at the same time you probably don’t want a pinyin crutch keeping you from reading more easily available text.
If you want an app, you should try Skritter. However, nothing beats handwriting on paper for this matter.