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Is there a trick for memorising Chinese characters ?

Moderator: PtolemysXX

Jim606185
Australia

Is there a trick for memorising Chinese characters ?

Post by Jim606185 »

Sorry if this post seems naive, but I'm a total beginner to Chinese characters and I'm up to about 276 "words" according to Duome. Some characters such as hǎo 好 (mother and child) are easy, and I've kind of worked out how some characters look a bit like the meaning. For example chá 茶 looks like a gas burner that you'd put an old fashioned kettle on, and in Yīngguó 英国 , I always picture the English drinking tea. Shuǐ 水 looks like water splashing etc . Cat and dog 猫 狗 look a bit like the respective animals and they both start with the same radical (?) but when it comes to more complex characters, it gets more difficult. At this stage I'm concenrating on recognising the characters first.

Are there any simple guides, childrens learning resources or mnemonics for remembering Chinese characters. I know that Taiwan uses bopomofo, which I don't know much about, but it seems to use radicals as a grounding. Maybe that's a better way to go.

I find it difficult when we see a 汉字 on Duolingo without knowing anything about its meaning.

Native English Speaker. Currently studying French, German (basic), Dutch (Beginner), Italian (Intermediate), Russian (basic), Chinese (beginner), Scottish Gaelic (Intermediate), Norwegian (Basic)
Ic rǣde englisc spræce.

User avatar
duome

Re: Is there a trick for memorising Chinese characters ?

Post by duome »

Chineasy by ShaoLan Hsueh

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images.jpg (9.82 KiB) Viewed 2165 times
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Jim606185
Australia

Re: Is there a trick for memorising Chinese characters ?

Post by Jim606185 »

谢谢你。 这很有帮助

Native English Speaker. Currently studying French, German (basic), Dutch (Beginner), Italian (Intermediate), Russian (basic), Chinese (beginner), Scottish Gaelic (Intermediate), Norwegian (Basic)
Ic rǣde englisc spræce.

bubness
Great Britain

Re: Is there a trick for memorising Chinese characters ?

Post by bubness »

I wouldn't say a trick per say but repetition is key, the more you use and see the characters the more familiar you will become with them so I wouldn't worry too much about it.

icantspell
Canada

Re: Is there a trick for memorising Chinese characters ?

Post by icantspell »

Not only is repetition is important, I think it will help you greatly if you search up the character on Wikipedia to take a look at the history.
Many Chinese characters are pictograms / glyphs. For example, 山 looks like three mountain peaks .

Jim606185
Australia

Re: Is there a trick for memorising Chinese characters ?

Post by Jim606185 »

I remember from a short course many years ago that the radicals are important, and you can "spell" characters using their radicals. So for example with 猪 and 朱. If there is confusion, you could ask 什么 (猪) Shenme zhū ? - and they would reply perhaps with 犭(quǎn zhū) where quǎn 犭is the radical for dog-like animals in this case. I've forgotten the detail of this, but you can literally spell out loud using the radical names. I think it's used a lot to spell names out loud, for example a policeman writing down a name or any situation where the spoken word is transcribed.

This could be covered later in the course. Maybe I haven't got that far yet.

Native English Speaker. Currently studying French, German (basic), Dutch (Beginner), Italian (Intermediate), Russian (basic), Chinese (beginner), Scottish Gaelic (Intermediate), Norwegian (Basic)
Ic rǣde englisc spræce.

icantspell
Canada

Re: Is there a trick for memorising Chinese characters ?

Post by icantspell »

Yes isolating the radicals is important too.
I recommend buying or searching up a 中文小学生字典 Chinese Dictionary for Elementary Students. Not only can you search up words by pinyin but you can also search words up via radicals. I remember searching words up with the dictionary really helped me learning the radicals when I was in elementary in China.

Actually I just googled and found an online tool for that: search by radical

For example, Let us take: 说 (Shuō) from 说话 (Shuōhuà) meaning Talk.

The radical for this word is 讠which require 2 strokes to write it. Search for all the radicals that have 2 strokes and you will find 讠which the website says it means "words".
Then after that, in a physical dictionary you would need to count the number of strokes remaining to find your word, but on the website, you can just find it visually. Technology, gotta love it

Jim606185
Australia

Re: Is there a trick for memorising Chinese characters ?

Post by Jim606185 »

That site looks really useful. Thanks for the link.

Native English Speaker. Currently studying French, German (basic), Dutch (Beginner), Italian (Intermediate), Russian (basic), Chinese (beginner), Scottish Gaelic (Intermediate), Norwegian (Basic)
Ic rǣde englisc spræce.

User avatar
MoniqueMaRie
Germany

Re: Is there a trick for memorising Chinese characters ?

Post by MoniqueMaRie »

I have practised the use of Chinese dictionaries with the help of radicals for many years. It was necessary because my Chinese reading skills are very low. I own several dictionaries.

But you first have to learn how to count the strokes.
With 口 , I first assumed that there are 4 strokes. But there are only three.

Here are some "pictograms" my chinese teacher taught us in one of the first lessons that I could remember most easily.

A person: 人
A tree: 木
A forest: 森林
Top/above: 上
Below /down: 下
The middle/center/ China (as the center of the world - how all great countries thought about themselves 3000 years ago): 中

And it is as easy to count to three as in latin: 一 二 三

A little bit more complicated: to sit 坐 (two people sitting on a ladder)

Native :de: / using :uk: / learning :fr: :cn: :it: / once learnt Image / trying to understand at least a bit :poland:

icantspell
Canada

Re: Is there a trick for memorising Chinese characters ?

Post by icantspell »

I really like your pictogram examples! And that is true, there are specific stroke orders for writing characters. Perhaps the dictionary look up is a bit more advanced for beginners...

A good resource I found is https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary. It is an excellent english-chinese dictionary and clicking on the brush icon shows the stroke order. You can also search up a word by writing it.

Image.

Regarding stroke orders:
I think that by observing how the characters are written, one can start to notice some patterns.

For example, stroke order for anything boxy is pretty much the same. For instance, the stroke order for is very similar to 。 The only diff is the 一 in the middle. Almost all rectangular shapes go with that flow.

There are some general principles of character writing too: (summary from studycli.org)

  1. Top to bottom
  2. Left to right
  3. First horizontal, then vertical
  4. First right-to-left diagonals, then left-to-right diagonals
  5. Center comes first in vertically symmetrical characters

But again, this might be too advanced. Now I think about it, I think we did learn the general principles of writing Chinese characters before we started to use the dictionary!

wayfarer

Re: Is there a trick for memorising Chinese characters ?

Post by wayfarer »

duome wrote: Sat Jul 09, 2022 12:06 pm

Chineasy by ShaoLan Hsueh

This is intriguing. Does it work? Have you found it constructively useful? I'd be interested in hearing the opinons of anyone who has used it in their studies.

User avatar
duome

Re: Is there a trick for memorising Chinese characters ?

Post by duome »

It's actually a book full of those illustrations and explanations (and a few optional sets of accompanying flash cards) in many language pairs published in many countries around the world, and it is supposed that in the end you would be able to read a fairytale in Chinese. So yeah, it kind of works, more or less the same way memrise explanations help you to memorise the characters, but ShaoLan's take on this is way more visually pleasing (which probably makes a lot of sense on its own).

At the very least it helps to fix your mindset about your chances of learning Chinese, and get the concept in a beautiful way :)

McGonnagle
Japan

Re: Is there a trick for memorising Chinese characters ?

Post by McGonnagle »

Jim606185 wrote: Fri Jul 08, 2022 9:55 pm

Sorry if this post seems naive, but I'm a total beginner to Chinese characters and I'm up to about 276 "words" according to Duome. Some characters such as hǎo 好 (mother and child) are easy, and I've kind of worked out how some characters look a bit like the meaning. For example chá 茶 looks like a gas burner that you'd put an old fashioned kettle on, and in Yīngguó 英国 , I always picture the English drinking tea. Shuǐ 水 looks like water splashing etc . Cat and dog 猫 狗 look a bit like the respective animals and they both start with the same radical (?) but when it comes to more complex characters, it gets more difficult. At this stage I'm concenrating on recognising the characters first.

Are there any simple guides, childrens learning resources or mnemonics for remembering Chinese characters. I know that Taiwan uses bopomofo, which I don't know much about, but it seems to use radicals as a grounding. Maybe that's a better way to go.

I find it difficult when we see a 汉字 on Duolingo without knowing anything about its meaning.

Believe or not, simplified characters are harder to remember than traditional ones. It's a lot easier to learn simplified ones after learning traditional ones. (No kidding, really!)

Here is the reason;
https://www.hackingchinese.com/are-simplified-characters-really-simpler-to-learn/

If I remember it right, the original flashcards by ShaoLan Hsueh are all traditional characters. 

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MoniqueMaRie
Germany

Re: Is there a trick for memorising Chinese characters ?

Post by MoniqueMaRie »

I don't know if language drops has only had the kangxi radicals for a short time or if I didn't notice it before.

In any case, I am currently using my free five minutes on language drops to practise Chinese kangxi radicals.

Native :de: / using :uk: / learning :fr: :cn: :it: / once learnt Image / trying to understand at least a bit :poland:

Piero
Italy

Re: Is there a trick for memorising Chinese characters ?

Post by Piero »

So am I. I think it's essential to know very well all the kangxi radicals. However, with traditional characters it's a little easier to identify the kangxi radicals, with simplified ones it's very difficult.
Philology also helps a bit, for those who want to read up (?)

User avatar
ararat-tempest
St Helena

Re: Is there a trick for memorising Chinese characters ?

Post by ararat-tempest »

要不要试试我们国家通用(almost)的小学一年级语文教材?
get a try if you can access this link.

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=Mzg4Mj ... 480a349#rd

native: 🇨🇳 a teacher of: 🇺🇸🇯🇵 primary: 🇳🇴🇩🇰🇸🇪🇫🇮🇮🇩🇳🇱🇭🇹🇪🇸🇧🇷🇮🇹🇫🇷Image secondary: 🇻🇳🇰🇷🇹🇷🇨🇿ImageImage planned: ImageImage🇪🇪🇮🇸🇫🇴🇱🇨🇨🇼🇿🇦🇹🇱🇱🇺🇰🇮🇲🇾🇸🇰🇲🇪🇧🇦🇷🇸🇭🇷🇬🇱

User avatar
MoniqueMaRie
Germany

Re: Is there a trick for memorising Chinese characters ?

Post by MoniqueMaRie »

ararat-tempest wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2023 8:00 am

要不要试试我们国家通用(almost)的小学一年级语文教材?
get a try if you can access this link.

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=Mzg4Mj ... 480a349#rd

I better have a look at my old Chinese textbook again - with explanations in German. Much easier for me

Native :de: / using :uk: / learning :fr: :cn: :it: / once learnt Image / trying to understand at least a bit :poland:

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Schnickschnack
Germany

Re: Is there a trick for memorising Chinese characters ?

Post by Schnickschnack »

I just came across two books that might be useful to learners (I haven't looked into any of these yet, but the descriptions and reviews sound quite promising). There's a freeware software suite written around these books, as well.

Software: Remembering Simplified Hanzi Project
https://github.com/rouseabout/heisig

Books:

  1. ISBN 9780824833237: "Remembering Simplified Hanzi 1: How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Chinese Characters", Timothy W. Richardson, James W. Heisig, UNIV OF HAWAII PR, 15. December 2008, 432 pages.

  2. ISBN 9780824836559: "Remembering Simplified Hanzi 2: How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Chinese Characters", James W. Heisig, Timothy W. Richardson, UNIV OF HAWAII PR, 15. Januar 2012, 336 pages.

Description from Amazon:

At long last the approach that has helped thousands of learners memorize Japanese kanji has been adapted to help students with Chinese characters. Book 1 of Remembering Simplified Hanzi covers the writing and meaning of the 1,000 most commonly used characters in the simplified Chinese writing system, plus another 500 that are best learned at an early stage. (Book 2 adds another 1,500 characters for a total of 3,000.)

Of critical importance to the approach found in these pages is the systematic arranging of characters in an order best suited to memorization. In the Chinese writing system, strokes and simple components are nested within relatively simple characters, which can, in turn, serve as parts of more complicated characters and so on. Taking advantage of this allows a logical ordering, making it possible for students to approach most new characters with prior knowledge that can greatly facilitate the learning process.

Guidance and detailed instructions are provided along the way. Students are taught to employ "imaginative memory" to associate each character's component parts, or "primitive elements," with one another and with a key word that has been carefully selected to represent an important meaning of the character. This is accomplished through the creation of a "story" that engagingly ties the primitive elements and key word together. In this way, the collections of dots, strokes, and components that make up the characters are associated in memorable fashion, dramatically shortening the time required for learning and helping to prevent characters from slipping out of memory.

There are also two books by the same authors that cover traditional Hanzi.

User avatar
Schnickschnack
Germany

Re: Is there a trick for memorising Chinese characters ?

Post by Schnickschnack »

How to draw Darth Vader:

Image

Image

McGonnagle
Japan

Re: Is there a trick for memorising Chinese characters ?

Post by McGonnagle »

ararat-tempest wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2023 8:00 am

要不要试试我们国家通用(almost)的小学一年级语文教材?
get a try if you can access this link.

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=Mzg4Mj ... 480a349#rd

  

It's interesting! I have heard that a country's national character is nurtured through school education. The story of the two rabbits that appears in this textbook created by the government is a great example of how people in this country are instilled with chutzpah (no offence!), diligence, and spirit of reciprocation from the first grade onwards.

Although, personally, I think kids this age should really enjoy creative fictions. I think Luo Bin-Wang(駱賓王)'s
咏鹅 that appears in this textbook is nice and classic that kids can enjoy.

  

User avatar
ararat-tempest
St Helena

Re: Is there a trick for memorising Chinese characters ?

Post by ararat-tempest »

McGonnagle wrote: Tue Oct 03, 2023 2:10 am
ararat-tempest wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2023 8:00 am

要不要试试我们国家通用(almost)的小学一年级语文教材?
get a try if you can access this link.

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=Mzg4Mj ... 480a349#rd

  

It's interesting! I have heard that a country's national character is nurtured through school education. The story of the two rabbits that appears in this textbook created by the government is a great example of how people in this country are instilled with chutzpah (no offence!), diligence, and spirit of reciprocation from the first grade onwards.

Although, personally, I think kids this age should really enjoy creative fictions. I think Luo Bin-Wang(駱賓王)'s
咏鹅 that appears in this textbook is nice and classic that kids can enjoy.

  

確かに。でも、実は I think the Chinese characters are still challenging... even as a native speaker tbh. in comparison, bahasa indonesia is a cake walk...

native: 🇨🇳 a teacher of: 🇺🇸🇯🇵 primary: 🇳🇴🇩🇰🇸🇪🇫🇮🇮🇩🇳🇱🇭🇹🇪🇸🇧🇷🇮🇹🇫🇷Image secondary: 🇻🇳🇰🇷🇹🇷🇨🇿ImageImage planned: ImageImage🇪🇪🇮🇸🇫🇴🇱🇨🇨🇼🇿🇦🇹🇱🇱🇺🇰🇮🇲🇾🇸🇰🇲🇪🇧🇦🇷🇸🇭🇷🇬🇱

User avatar
ararat-tempest
St Helena

Re: Is there a trick for memorising Chinese characters ?

Post by ararat-tempest »

Schnickschnack wrote: Mon Oct 02, 2023 9:59 am

How to draw Darth Vader:

Image

Image

well, how about this?
Image

you think it's a fake character? check this.
Image

native: 🇨🇳 a teacher of: 🇺🇸🇯🇵 primary: 🇳🇴🇩🇰🇸🇪🇫🇮🇮🇩🇳🇱🇭🇹🇪🇸🇧🇷🇮🇹🇫🇷Image secondary: 🇻🇳🇰🇷🇹🇷🇨🇿ImageImage planned: ImageImage🇪🇪🇮🇸🇫🇴🇱🇨🇨🇼🇿🇦🇹🇱🇱🇺🇰🇮🇲🇾🇸🇰🇲🇪🇧🇦🇷🇸🇭🇷🇬🇱

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PtolemysXX
Uganda

Re: Is there a trick for memorising Chinese characters ?

Post by PtolemysXX »

This is the simplified version, right? :mrgreen:

User avatar
Schnickschnack
Germany

Re: Is there a trick for memorising Chinese characters ?

Post by Schnickschnack »

ararat-tempest wrote: Tue Oct 03, 2023 12:15 pm

well, how about this?
Image

Ah, yes, the arcane art of Chinese noodle printing. :D

Attachments
write_in_chinese.jpeg
write_in_chinese.jpeg (59.63 KiB) Viewed 1097 times
McGonnagle
Japan

Re: Is there a trick for memorising Chinese characters ?

Post by McGonnagle »

ararat-tempest wrote: Tue Oct 03, 2023 12:15 pm

well, how about this?
Image

you think it's a fake character? check this.
Image  

Com'on, this is just a ligature that is only common in Xi'an!

McGonnagle
Japan

Re: Is there a trick for memorising Chinese characters ?

Post by McGonnagle »

Schnickschnack wrote: Tue Oct 03, 2023 12:45 pm
ararat-tempest wrote: Tue Oct 03, 2023 12:15 pm

well, how about this?
Image

Ah, yes, the arcane art of Chinese noodle printing. :D

LOL to your joke, but what you're saying is true in a way. This is just a ligature (it's a kind of art). This is a historical ligature for Xi'an, but most people in China didn't know about it until 2012. And the ligature in this photo is written on the sign of the noodle shop. (I don't think they used noodles to curve this :P)

User avatar
Renfield
China

Re: Is there a trick for memorising Chinese characters ?

Post by Renfield »

What I find very useful in memorizing a lot of chinese characters is a plugin for the free Pleco-App called "The Outlier Dictionary of
Chinese Characters " (Pleco is free. The plugin costs about 28 €).
For 3000+ characters this Outlier Dictionary gives information about the components of the character, their history and if it is a meaning component, a sound component or something else. It also gives the stroke order.

In many cases I find the additional info helpful in remembering or recognizing a character.

(On their homepage you may find a demo, but it might not show if your browser is blocking scripts. I am using Firefox with "NoScript" and had to allow scripts from outlier and from invison for the demo to work.)

Last edited by MoniqueMaRie on Fri Dec 15, 2023 7:32 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Reason: Link deleted because there was no demonstation but only an offer to buy the dictionary

Deutsch: "native". English: I´m gettin along. Chinese: Learning. Swedish: just started.

User avatar
PtolemysXX
Uganda

Re: Is there a trick for memorising Chinese characters ?

Post by PtolemysXX »

If you go to Naver's Korean Hanja dictionary the main page always shows one chinese character, its old form in the seal script and a small drawing that might have been an inspiration for designing the character. It is a nice visual presentation. Something like this:

yu2 (to fish).png
yu2 (to fish).png (23.03 KiB) Viewed 192 times



(this is for the verb 漁: "to fish")

If you refresh the page another character will be shown up to a daily limit of about 5.

davidqiyuan
Italy

Re: Is there a trick for memorising Chinese characters ?

Post by davidqiyuan »

duome wrote: Sat Jul 09, 2022 12:06 pm

Chineasy by ShaoLan Hsueh
60d1fa950e8629770f2e11d0.png

images (2).jpg
images 1.jpg
images (1).jpg
images (3).jpg

Chinese characters evolved from pictographic characters. The picture shown in this picture is not very standard, but it is also very intuitive and good!

Molte persone amano gli orologi di lusso ma sono scoraggiati dal loro prezzo elevato. In effetti, un orologio è solo uno strumento del tempo. Il marchio non ha importanza purché abbia un bell'aspetto. Naturalmente, alcune persone seguono il marchio, quindi gli orologi replica sono una buona scelta.La qualità dell'incisione è molto buona, quasi uguale all'originale.

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