the thing about the heisig method is that it takes a while to get to common characters because he presents them in an order that makes the more complicated looking ones easier to remember because of the components that make up them
You're missing the point of RTH. It isn't meant for reading comprehension as that is fairly easy to learn. It's purpose is to make writing them thousands times easier than traditional methods. By the traditional methods you can easily mix up and forget small radicals. Heisigs ingenius method introduces radicals in a such way that you will never mix them up.
I think the main thing to remember with Heisig is that, although he presents it as a sort of all or nothing approach, it really doesn't need to be that way. You can study frequency lists AND the Heisig order, and mix and match them as you want. It's the systemisation of it that's most important, not the order.
I think you missed the point of Heisig. It's not to learn to read as you go along. It's to get to the end and not only be able to recognize characters but to also be able to reproduce those characters. So maybe the characters you learn at first aren't the most common but they're probably an element of a more common character and it helps to have those modular pieces that will allow you to remember the big ones. But to each their own. Also I think it's important to remember that Heisig is focused at Japanese so you could come onto issues trying to use it for Chinese given that some characters have different usage in Chinese.
Mandarin Blueprint have adapted Heisig to integrate pinyin and tones into the mnemonic scenes. They've done this by have people represent pinyin initials, locations represent pinyin finals, and rooms within locations to represent tones. It works brilliantly. They also provide sentence cards in Anki with native audio to show characters in context from the beginning. I've been going through their system for 6 months now and have learned 840+ characters. Like you say, a character-centric method (rather than, say, 'speak from day one') is all about building a solid foundation. I'm very happy with my progress so far. I've really enjoyed your interviews with other language TH-camrs during lockdown, It'd be great to hear you interview these guys (Luke and Phil) about their method. I genuinely think it's a game-changer.
The fact that you weren’t able to remember bullseye is an indication that you weren’t using Heisig correctly. That kanji combines white and ladle through a visual picture. The whole point of heisig is not just mnemonics but images in your head, the image of a white bird in a rusty ladle as being that of the white spot in a bullseye is difficult for me to forget in part because it is so peculiar. To anyone with a similar issue please focus on visualizing the components, not just trying to remember the words. The visualization and emotional reactions are what is supposed to help.
For those of you who got to the end of book 1 or 2 of the Integrated Chinese series and felt a brain collapse of remembering and understanding the hanzi- highly recommend Heisig. Heisig is an excellent supplemental learning tool for building a strong foundation of hanzi recognition and recollection. If you can read the hanzi dialog between Wang Peng and Li You and understand it... but are unable to write the characters without looking- Heisig will greatly help.
@@Wondrousname Oh hi! I'm surprised someone found my comment, and I'm saddened that people continue to see this awful video by Richards. I am now finishing Year 3 of Heisig. 1 year was doing books 1 & 2 to learn the core definition and composition of the 3k hanzi. 1 year of doing my own way similar of Heisig to learn the pinyin and tone of each of those 3k hanzi. 1 year of continuous review. Wondrousname, I speak to you as someone who struggled with a traditionally Mandarin 101 course from a high school / college / once-a-week structured setting. It works. It truly does work. I'm able to now go back to the 101 course book and read and learn it. The foundation of understanding and distinguishing each character is now a part of me. Its a surreal experience. Use anki with it. I promise you it works.
I've used this method before, i got to 1300 kanji, it's very useful bc u can recognize them later while reading, but u do have to start reading, flr them to stick in your memory
hilton hacks yea, I started it and got to 500 characters in a month or so then quit because I thought it sucked. After a few months I realized that all the words that I’m understanding while reading are mostly from those 500. Now I’m back grinding away with vengeance lmao. It’s a phenomenal method to create out of context connection to westerners subconscious.
I haven't even bought his chinese books yet but I looked at it briefly on Amazon and I can still remember this. It sticks in my brain so well I never thought learning could be this easy.
的 has multiple readings (de0 di1 di2 di4) Heisig's bullseye meaning comes from the compound 目的 (mu4di4) which means "goal", although less used than the possessive form it's quite often used on everyday life. Funny is 我的目的 "my goal", here we see two different pronunciations really close of each other, reading it quickly proves difficult when beginning. Anyway, any characters frequency list is good in itself but not sufficient, you have to couple it with reading words as Chinese characters aren't often used standalone as you already know. I've noticed that reading a character's dictionary entry with several compounds helps understand its meaning as one can see how it changes based on other characters it is associated with. Happy Chinese hacking!
adamaka interesting. I've just realised I already knew 目的 (もくてき) from Japanese and didn't even make the connection... just goes to show how debilitating a lack of context can be. Word lists with single characters - true, but presumably there are frequency word lists out there containing compound words?
Here is how I feel about frequency lists vs Heisig's approach of building upon more and more radicals gradually, irrespective of frequency. The more characters you learn, the harder it is to keep on top of them all, and the harder it becomes to persevere through to the end. If you learn in order of most commonly used, you are learning very useful characters at the beginning, but as you begin to approach a couple of thousand, the usefulness starts to tail off, and it becomes harder and harder to wade through all these characters that you are not going to be seeing very often. With the Heisig order, yes there are a lot of characters that you don't really need at the start, but it is also the case that you will encounter new and useful characters in every chapter, all the way through to the end, which for me at least, really helps with motivation.
白勺 的 is bai, shao, so probably heisig is using the initial letters of character components for his b.s. fauxtymology. It is a bright white spoon and symbolizes to own。 Probably in ancient chine anyone had his or her very own white ceramic spoon.
I can appreciate Heisig's method (mostly via an Anki deck I had found, which I use whenever I have downtime), but you're right, it's not the all-encompassing method. I'm going to keep using Heisig's method off and on, while also using more context-based methods, and other flashcards that are more based around frequency of use.
Lmao I remember like a year ago seeing 的 in Heisig and using that stupid white ladle mnemonic but luckily that kanji is very commonly used in Japanese so I don't need the mnemonic now. Honestly, I got very frustrated with Heisig when I started out and I quit after about 400 when I realised I was learning loads of obscure kanji. So I switched to just learning through vocab but eventually I got to a point where I just couldn't tell the characters apart, and ended up deciding to dedicate a few months to finishing Heisig all the way through. I'm so glad I did it now, like sure it was frustrating knowing almost 2000 characters but having the last like, 300 holding a large proportion of the most commonly used in Japanese so until I finished them all, there was a lot of simple stuff I couldn't read. But looking back now, I can really tell apart similar kanji so easily now. I understand that with Chinese, you've got like 3000 minimum to read fluently and it can be frustrating if a lot of the most common are in the last 500 or so, but I'd still recommend it while keeping that in mind.
For reading, try thechairmansbao.com and Du Chinese app. They have texts of varying difficulties, where you can turn on and off pinyin, and can click on any word to see its meaning and to which HSK level it belongs. I hope you find it as useful as I have! Oh, and also, thechairmansbao has audio recordings for all their texts also, so it’s a great tool to practice your pronunciation also.
Olly hi! The thing that worked for me was to learn the radicals first, which are the compounds. It's like learning the ABC. Otherwise you will be learning each character on its own and it will be harder. Skritter has a radicals list. All articles about learning characters recommend doing that and it really gets easier. Wish you best!
I'm surprised by your rationale. Doesn't sound like the thinking of someone who's studied many languages. For maximum efficiency, Chinese reading and writing should be separate from learning to speak. If you slow down your vocabulary building process and speaking progress to the speed you'll be learning characters, you'll have a very long road ahead of you. Even Chinese learn to speak fairly quickly but literacy can take up to 12 years of education. Furthermore, Chinese characters are not like phonetic alphabets. They have meaning and can. Be used in many different languages. A primary meaning of 的 is target, aim or capture. For a foreigner it's much easier to remember this character with a tangible mnemonic, as opposed to a vague concept like "indication of possession" If you had been studying Chinese conversation separately from your character study you'd have learned this on day 1and it's a simple aha moment to tie this meaning to the character. Heisig method groups characters by radicals and introduces them in a way that makes bulk learning very easy. If you studied characters by frequency lists, you would be introduced to difficult characters early on and furthermore character 10 on a frequency list might have nothing in common with character 11. Learning unrelated.characters by rote would be extreme waste of time. As a Westerner who is fairly fluent in Japanese and conversant in Cantonese and Mandarin and who had a good grasp of a few thousand characters and their multiple readings, I can tell you that your new plan would be inefficient. I don't believe there is a fast track to Chinese literacy. To conversation and vocabulary building, yes, but not too literacy. Heisig method is as good as any to rapidly learning to recognize, remember AND write Chinese characters. And keep your character study separate from vocabulary and conversation study. Progress will be much faster AND gains more lasting than by trying to pretend Chinese is like Spanish. Fluency and literacy in Chinese take many years of exposure and hard work. There is no fast track. But there are some slow tracks, like the one you've suggested, which provide a beguiling temptation to the impatient. Hang in there.
+Philip Butt thanks for the comment. I appreciate your rationale, although there are many who disagree with you (see other comments), and I found myself caught firmly between the opposing perspectives. Intellectually, I find myself on your side - I.e. Separate the tasks of speaking and reading, in order to make the task more manageable. However, that's contradicted by my previous experience of languages (which you reference) that says holistic learning is always preferred. Indeed, I learnt kanji in Japanese primarily by texting with friends (learning from context) not by learning discrete characters. However, I do see how that might be less speedy overall. I've never known a topic in language learning on which people disagree so vehemently. I'm trying to make up my own mind
Agreed. I came to pretty much all this same conclusion within about 10 megaseconds (3.5 months) of a grueling and for me less-than-helpful "study abroad" "accelerated" Chinese Mandarin program in China (taught at the Southwestern Ethnic University in Chengdu city, Sichuan province). Rather crap; storybook teaching, lots of rote drilling, and teaching the writing, reading, speaking, and listening together at once. After that, and a TON of stress and blowout (due to not just the program but also the group I was with - did not fit in due to psych. differences, background differences, and more) I wanted to figure out a plan for how it could be done better. And what I came to as a conclusion was that first off, the spoken and written Chinese should, as you've said, be learned separately. After all, there is only one written character set, but _many_ spoken Chineses (Mandarin is the most common, Cantonese many have at least heard of, but there's also Sichuanese, Hunanese, and many more). Spoken Mandarin should be learned solely with Pinyin. The words are multisyllabic for a reason - from historical linguistics studies it evolved from a more heavily monosyllabic ancestor as the syllables/phonotactic structure simplified and became more rigid. If you can recognize words in spoken speech without thinking they are ambiguous, which is a common refrain given for why you need the characters, then you can do the same with Pinyin. Written Chinese is a separate class - should be a separate lecture. This even not just because there are many spoken Chinese but often what you write and what you speak are considerably different - even within Mandarin itself, e.g. you write 小时 for "hours" but speak 钟头 ("clock heads"). The learning of Written Chinese should be done with something like Heisig's method or another that exploits the internal logic of the characters, not simply pounding the information in by rote drilling the same character over and over from strokes. The human brain learns best by forming hierarchies and networks, i.e. association. This because it itself is physically built out of connections - neurons connect with other neurons and the information is stored in the ways they connect. And the way the Chinese characters are built is PERFECT for this. Literally PERFECT. It's a fractal hierarchy of simpler components building to larger and more meaningful components. You use the most efficient information input method for the hardware. Yes, you still have to repeat/drill it but you're drilling sensibly, not brute-force (the need to drill to learn things is due to another aspect of the brain, long-term potentiation, which is how it recognizes what connections to form and maintain, so is not avoidable, but you want to _maximize_ the efficiency, and failure to do that equals waste, something that further helped to contribute to the overall 糟糕 nature of the experience as I got more and more Really Insecure(TM) as it started rubbing on my personal problems along the way.). Moreover, when it comes to the spoken Chinese, if this is being done in a study-abroad environment like the one I was subjected to, then you should not go for "storybook" fictive Chinese as was done in that course (complete with a soapish romance plot - tacky as hell! God DAMMIT, I don't want to learn how to get LUVVZ I want to learn how to get FOOD!), but rather I'd say straight for immediately-useful simple phrases that could get you around on the street. "Where is this?" How to recognize directions. "Help!" Things like that. Grades would be based on how you can do with a simulated situation in the classroom. "Homework" is _go out on the street and try to do something_ . After all, the purpose of going on a study-abroad program is to be able to be immersed with speakers of the language all around you and to maximize usage opportunities; with this, there was virtually no possibility of exploitation until several courses later (which I didn't even manage to make). Atrocious! Then you build on that to more complex conversational forms. Literally the course that was taught at the study-abroad program could have been taught _with identical content_ and with _identical_ success or failure _entirely in a United States classroom surrounded by nothing but monolingual English speakers for 100 km (60 mi) all around_ . It is a complete waste to spend $10,000 in scholarship and government aid money to shoot someone off to China to learn from a shitty ass course that is literally IDENTICAL to any you'd get in the US, just perhaps as they said "accelerated" meaning not "more efficient/optimized" but rather "we'll keep you in 3 hours [11 ks] of lecture every day so that it effectively lasts the same length in terms of total time accumulated as a standard course, just packing more into the day". Yes I'm mad as hell about this, and for what I think is good reason. Education is seriously messed.
To me, it makes sense (and works very well for me) to learn characters of words I am learning to speak. You get a more in-depth review and exposure. Just my opinion. I've tried many different ways and have found the way I do it now very efficient and highly effective (for me).
Can you recommend me some books or apps I could use to train my vocabulary and speaking ability in Mandarin? I totally recognise my problems in learning Chinese in your post!
Agreed. I took Chinese classes when I was younger and was learning everything at once like learning English or even Spanish (my mother tongue is Spanish). After some years, I felt so discouraged because I felt it wasn’t working as I wished. Now I started with the Heisig method and everything became so clear and easy, of course it is a different approach method but for me it makes more sense, definitely studying the written and the spoken separately.
(1) for every Heisig character I learn, I shop around for common Cantonese expressions since I am learning Traditional characters to read and write Cantonese (2) I don't care about some strange memnonics, since the huge number of characters - 3000 only covers the basics, but let's be honest, it's a huge amount, we are not even talking words here - means that you simply need a way to remember to write the character, and not confuse the location (top, bottom, left, right) of the primitives and similar characters (3) from day one, I use dictation: when I don't know the character, I spell out the Jyutping (pinyin for Cantonese), when I know the character, I write it - most characters have so many meanings, it does not really matter too much which meaning you initially use (I had no problem with the ladle and the white bird, and its one of the characters you find yourself spelling out quickly when you write dications) (4) as I learn more characters, I can write more parts of a sentence, which is encouraging; since the dictation comes as part of my Anki cards ( I have English Cantonese, Cantonese English, Cantonese with need to write Jyutping, Cantonese spoken with need to write the character), you get lots of practice through spaced repetition (5) then you have some very common characters in Cantonese, that don't show up in Heisig - well, I have his technique, so any very common Cantonese character that is not in his books is on my separate list (6) as you work along, after 500 or so characters, Heisig reduces his stories to primitives only, so anyone is free to make up their own stories - Heisig basically teaches a concept or a method, anyone is free to adapt it and the keybwords. The point is, making up everything entirely on your own is easier said than done.... I saw a site for Japanese jpdb.io that claims its working with "better" keywords - so everyone feel free to adjust the keywords (7) Actually, I have started to use a mix of English and German, since some characters and their primitives have a good fit with German (German is my mother tongue); probably everyone who is not a native English speaker is better off mixing in some of his own language; Heisig was published in German as well, but my Anki cards are English; are wonder what the rest of the world does who don't speak English but what to apply the Heisig technique? Do they learn English first? Or stick with wrote learning.... (8) There is a funny and entertaining side effect - I learned some cultural references through Heisig's wild stories that build on cultural knowledge of the US / English speaking world, which adds a gist of fun...I had to look up quite a few of his keywords... (9) Finally, Heisig / Richardson cover 3000 characters, and 3000 characters does not really cover you for reading texts you would really want to read....You want to aim for 5000 to 8000 characters, and that means, sooner rather than later, you will reach the end of Heisigs/ Richardsons footsteps and will need to trudge on on your own through the snow - better use a spaced repetition system, stories, dictation, ...hmm grumble (10) Finally, for all those writers out there that lack inspiration, every time you lack any ideas for your script, take a break and learn a new Chinese character and make up an associated story - maybe your script won't progress, but at least your Chinese literacy will, and you have a long way to go before you run out of characters.... (11) One tool that helps for reading is SmartHanzi, google it, unfortunately does not really cover Cantonese, only Mandarin - that's due to the linked dictionaries (12) Finally, you start wondering if there is a way to speed up your writing, even if you don't know that many characters. What I found was, "use Simplified" instead of Traditional to reduce the number of strokes (a) there you go, you now have a motive to learn Traditional (Cantonese web info available seems overwelmingly using Traditional) and Simplified (to speed up your writing) (b) use Handwriting - the more useful search term is cursive. There are different cursive styles, but I only know of an Anki deck to teach you, based on Simplified megamandarin.com/?product=practical-cursive-flashcard-deck (no affiliation, honestly). Obviously you select only some frequent characters you like, that happen to be the same in Traditional and Simplified, and then play a little bit with the cursive style. Variety is also the spice of learning, and it begins to feel cool if every now and then your hand-drawn characters look "somewhat cool". Not convinced? No need to try it out, it's just one more idea out there for you to copy....
I learnt the de character as "of" being the meaning . but it is more subtle than that but it is a good start , Zhong as in Zhong Guo (China) Is a picture of a target and the sound of the word is like a bow string when you loose the arrow , so you aim at the middle of the target hence Zhong means middle and Zhong Guo means Middle Kingdom . I am learning from a series called The Elementary Chinese Reader , but I learn as a hobby and have no interest in learning quickly . Sadly this series is no longer in print 😭😭
The original meaning of 的 is "sunlight so glaring to cause your eyes to open from sleep" In the Book of Explaining Grammar and Understanding Characters ( 說文解字), the meaning given is "bright". It is a many sounds character. Different pronunciation different meanings. One cannot try to use current written form to deduce the meaning. You really need to go back all the way to the oracle script. Changes are made during the centuries for either simplification (法 law, is actually a simplification used in ancient times because the full form has too many strokes and this is a common word... 灋. The top right part is a mythical animal that eats the guilty is always present in the Chinese Court as a psychological warning. The water part denotes "equality" since water is always level no matter how the container is tilted, and 去 = to dispense. So the entire meaning is "to dispense justice"; in the same vein as modern simplification of 風 (wind is caused by the flapping of insect wings according to Chinese philosophy) vs 风) or from aesthetic point of view in calligraphy. A most important aspect of being educated. You are judged on how beautifully you write the script. If your handwriting is terrible, don't even think of taking the imperial examinations. The "ladle"part if looking at the earlier forms is actually an "eye". For example, 又 is actually a hand as in 取, "to take". In ancient times, they cut off the ears as evidence of how many enemy soldiers were killed to get their reward. It is more efficient to carry the heads. Your method is excellent in most cases but you needed historical context, culture etc to gain fully the meaning. For example, try explaining "sin" 孽 which composes of 薛 and 子.
I think everyone has to find his method fitting best. I learned all radicals first and now remembering new characters is really easy by making up short story (the funnier or the more stupid it is, makes it easier) Like „a tree with eyes 👀 MISSES/ WANTS a heart“ Xiǎng 想 consists of a tree 木mù，eye 目mù and heart 心 xīn and means to miss, to want.
I enjoy creating my own lists, I have a Anki account and every time I find a word I want to learn I just add it to a flashcard deck. Some time ago I spent some time looking for frequency lists and I wasn't able to find many resources. HSk lists are pretty useful, even though they don't provide any context (which it's a pity). Chineasy is a good book too, you may like it :D Good luck!
So in the Heisig method you don't learn the pronunciation of the characters and you memorise them by coming up with stories for each character? I think this works for some type of characters such as 山水日上休 etc which are invented to look like what they mean. However, the majority of Chinese characters are not of this type. Contrary to popular belief, the Chinese writing system is actually semi-phonetic (I'm no linguist so I'm probably not using the correct technical term) with the majority of characters being composed of one component which indicates the meaning of the character and the other component gives a hint of the pronunciation of the character. For example the character 謝 means "to thank". It is made up of 言 which means "to speak" and 射 which means "shoot". So why would you shoot someone you are thanking? The reason the character is written this way is because 謝 sounds like 射 and the meaningful component of 謝 is the radical 言. In the Heisig method you don't learn how to pronounce the characters. I think this makes sense if you are learning Japanese (in fact in your earlier videos you mentioned that the Heisig method was originally for learning Kanji) because in Japanese the same Kanji can have multiple different pronunciations. However, in Cantonese, with a few exceptions, all characters have only one pronunciation and as a mentioned above most characters are "semi-phonetic" so by not learning their pronunciation you are missing out on an, in my opinion, a very useful way of remembering the characters.
+RedArcher1000 Great point. The rationale for not learning the pronunciation in this method is actually not because there are multiple ways of pronounces the characters. The rationale is that by excluding the pronunciation at the beginning you reduce the amount that needs to be learnt, therefore making it possible to learn Chinese characters much faster - at least at the beginning
It's actually not entirely based on pictograph but rather mnemonic devices that have nothing to do with the true origins of the kanji themselves. I'm sure 壇 has nothing to do with people in top hats coming to a mound of dirt to talk about things several times until nightbreak, but never the less it helps me not only remember to recognize it but to be able to write it out by hand.
TH-cam decided to show me this old video so here’s my comment. I used and loved Heisig at the start of my Japanese studies. I don’t know if it’s as effective for Chinese. Anyway, for me I learned and forgot all the characters in in his book. Well I remembered some and forgot most. Because I didn’t keep up the SRS. But the primitives all repeated in all the kanji so I remembered the primitives without having to devote time to SRS. Then when I learned new vocabulary I would review the RTK for that character as I reviewed the vocabulary. For years I found it useful to know the RTK meaning of a kanji but eventually that went away. I guess I’m just used to kanji now. I seem to be learning simplified hanzi really quickly and without any mnemonics having read so much Japanese over the years. Look at how long it takes natives to learn Chinese characters and don’t expect it to go faster for you because you’re using mnemonics. Sure they’re helpful and you can cram stuff but you need to see all the parts of a kanji or hanzi and think probably. After years of looking at it just the generally shape of the kanji will be enough. Thank god. There’s light at the end of the tunnel but it’s years away. I don’t write hanzi by hand unless it’s for homework mind you. I just read them.
The character, a noun, you call "Bullseye" (dì, a noun meaning target or bullseye) is just that. It is also "de" for the possessive. All you had to do was look it up in a dictionary and you would have known that.
Yeah when I figured that out I felt a bit dumb. But this is a commentary on the Heisig method, and unless you’re gonna look up everything in the dictionary you’re stuck with what you’ve got in the book ... ie not very much.
The best frequency list is one you make on your own. Hanping Dictionary has an awsome Anki support. Just "star" the word and an anki card is created. Try not to make your deck too big. It should contain 1000 - 1500 words that cover every aspect of our life. Avoid adding a new word if you have already added a synonym. Try to avoid adding very frequent vocab: you'll memorise it anyway by constantly seeing the same words in different context. Flashcards are only supplementary tools, you should read something in chinese nearly every day. Don't forget about grammar. Study it separately. From Russia with love.
On your blog page "New Project: Learn To Write Traditional Chinese Characters," someone named Pablo Pankun Roman recommended Heisig to you. I've never used it--but if I do someday, I'd do it his way. He said, "I did it for Japanese and now I can read and understand most novels. I didn't use the books for the readings of the characters though, and just learned them when I learned the words that use those characters." If I understand correctly, he read interesting materials in the language, and when confronted with a new character, then he looked it up in the Heisig book. So one option you could do is to start using Heisig as a reference rather than a textbook. Furthermore, other authors have created similar series, such as "Fun with Chinese Characters." So if sometimes Heisig's mnemonics don't work for you, you can look up the character in similar sources.
Hi Olly, Routledge publishes a Frequency Dictionary of Mandarin Chinese. You can find it on Amazon. I don't know anything about it since I don't speak Chinese and haven't studied it. Tom
While at the beginning, I can see how it might frustrate someone that you don't learn the most commonly used characters first, the point of the book is to learn all the characters you need for minimal literacy (2000-3000 of them) in one fell swoop in a space of, ideally, no longer than 2 months. If you're aiming for actual literacy, not to be able to order from a menu, it's going to take some effort in the case of chinese characters. As you seem to realize at the end of the video, the problem isn't really the characters that you run into all the time, it's the ones that you really don't, yet are necessary for functional literacy. Having learned Chinese only after I had learned Japanese, I can't speak for how Remembering the Kanji works for first time learners of Chinese and I imagine some of the keywords might not match as well. But shouldn't you be using the Remembering the Hanzi books that are designed for Chinese characters used in Chinese? My advice is to give the book all your intellectual attention apart from the daily routines (work, school etc.). Make studying 50 characters a day fit into your routine along with SRS (Spaced Repetition System) reviewing of the already learned ones (using Kanji koohii or ANKI or w/e). You probably also want to start with more than 50 characters at the beginning, even past 100 and slow down the further you go as your SRS piles are going to keep you busier and busier the more flashcards you attain. After you've studied the first book you can go for the second or just immerse yourself in whatever reading material of that language you would like to read. It's surprising how fast you can attach readings to characters you already know. I certainly had that experience when studying Chinese as most of the characters were already familiar to me. As a side note, it's also refreshing how the different languages tend to use different characters more frequently so some of those less frequently encountered characters end up being reviewed quite often in the other language.
Kanji learners! " I can't tell how its going to end but i can tell you how it's going to begin" Glance at the order some kanji of the first 2 lessons of RTK vol.1: 十 口 .. 田 十 口 .. 古 日 月 .. 明 五 口 .. 吾 月 月 .. 朋 日 月 .. 明 日 十 .. 早 日 目 .. 冒 日 日 .. 昌 昌 口 .. 唱 ...etc... Sure you got it! After 800 kanjis or some, without even thinking, you gain at least 2 "Crazy Super-Powers": 1 --> "x-ray.ing" any kanji you see from its "parts" to its whole; 2 --> create your own associations to memorize it. Inteligently designed order plus some ancient mnemonic techinics (imagination, associoation, etc) = Heisig RTK. Add RTK to SRS (anki) and hacking into more than 2 thousand kanji becomes a piece of cake. and this is (just) the beggining... it's a foundation.
Yeah, you need to learn the *words* that use the characters. *Words* and their meanings and usages are how you "triangulate" the essential meaning*s* of the characters. And using frequency word lists will help you to focus on the subset of the meanings that are *relevant* in the modern language. You already have many recommendations for word lists. Probably any will do. I will just point out that Pleco contains a wealth of information. From a character you can get a frequency-ranked list of words *containing* and/or *beginning with* that character. From a word entry in Pleco, you can get a list of *sentences* in which that sequence of characters appears (although sometimes it's just the chance juxtaposition of those characters, not actually that word!).
You don't make much sense. The point is that it takes a native speaker half their lives to commit all the characters to memory by brute force - but that is time you don't have - you are already an adult, and as you said, you want to get going quickly. It does not matter whether you learn a few character that are not very common, if you can learn 2.000 characters in 40 days in a structured approach, now does it? Why am I saying this? You already know this, because it says that in the introduction of your Heisig... and so the problem here is the same as with anybody who goes out to make a video or blog entry on the subject - you likely didn't really take the time to pay attention to the method, i.e the instructions in the introduction, and just generally, I don't think you are doing it properly. Now, I bought my Heisig 20 years ago, but I know for a fact that there is a very good memorable story for Bull's Eye, so the fact that you decided to make a point out of this in your video gives away that whatever you are doing, you are doing it wrong. I kept bumping in to the same guy for like a decade at a Japanese forum, and every few years, when the Heisig subject came up, he would diss it. So I finally told him that my suspicion is that he never bothered to look in to it properly, because he had kanji knowledge already and thought that it is probably beneath him to start from scratch, and so it was. If you learn such random complex characters as Weekday, which look like a lump of spaghetti to the uninitiated, the only way to remember them is through constant usage, that is brute force. A few month later, you will inevitably forget them, but with Heisig, you can still remember them even after years without looking at them. There are many accounts of that, and I have experienced that myself. Heck, Japanese people forget half their kanji after living abroad for a while! Why would you want to learn the most used characters only/or first, if you can learn them all in the same time?! Obviously you are doing something wrong... I have learned almost 5.000 kanji with Heisig, vol. 1 + 3, and then I simply picked all the others out from the large Hadamitzky/Spahn dictionary, starting from page 1... there is no problem to learn them all, except for it is kinda pointless, which is why I stopped, but I could add the rest to 6.000 if I badly wanted to some day. It saddens me every time I see someone like you who makes a half-assed attempt and then bails out impatiently and then goes on to lecture on the subject... Also, whether it is Japanese or Chinese, you will eventually find that what is being sold as the basic set of characters, is not really enough. So Heisig has added another 1.000 kanji based on frequency where it matters for literacy - something where your "500 most used characters"-books have long left you to your own devices... and it is all indexed and cross referenced with the first two volumes; and it seems to me there is a 2nd volumes for Chinese as well. You cannot read when you learned the most frequent characters - you can read the few things your text book has selected for you on that basis. I can only speak for the kanji here, but the reason you wanna learn them all by meaning first is because there is a lot of structure in them regarding their readings, so you save a lot of time there as well (vol 2 + 2nd half of vol 3). Also, Heisig is great for students interested in both, Chinese and Japanese, because it is basically the same thing to an extent. I had a look at the first few hundred Chinese characters in Heisig recently and only took a few notes where a meaning or the odd stroke is different from the Japanese Heisig book. It would be a complete waste of time to make two sets of flash cards, as you would be doing the same thing over twice... (I am not learning Chinese, only looked in to it for a friend who does). You are wasting your time... and this video has 35 likes, as if 35 people had picked up Heisig, formed an opinion on the subject and agreed with you... you are also wasting your time :)
+Baerchenization unfortunately you've just made the embarrassing mistake of criticising without doing your research. There are multiple videos before this when I talk about my thoughts on Heisig in some depth, and why I used it for months before making this particular video. As you can see from the discussion on these threads, there are plenty of people who like to argue about this topic. This series of videos was an attempt to try to make sense of all the conflicting advice in my own specific situation - thinking out loud, if you like. I'm not giving advice to others. You don't have to agree with me, but you don't help anybody by being so condescending.
what I would do if I was in your situation would be to create a list of words that own so to say and look for the equivalent in chinese (not the translation word by word + grammar but the expression that preserves the same sense)
foreigners always seem scared to find a language partner. find a Chinese person who is good at English (there are many) and they will probably be more than happy to help you. that's how I learned English, just by speaking to Americans and using it. when I was only learning from the textbook, my English really sucked because they don't teach you the natural language (like the word "sucked" to mean bad).
I started Chinese a few years ago , my first book was the "" The practical Chinese reader"" it was a bit of a shock as it is all in Chinese with pinyin subtitles, I eventually read all the books form vole1 to vol 6. In some linguistic circles it is laughed at for being a little staid and boring. I have gone through the vol 1 to vol 6, if you have the moral fortitude to go through these books you will read and write Chinese at the end. In the later volumes the pin yin is dropped and you have to consult a vocab list. I think Heisigs method is a wasted effort to learn Chinese without any real world context.
Giggles Brin Hanping Cantonese dictionary for Android. It is a perfect dictionary with audio, lists for common spoken, common characters, idioms, and common written characters. You can select Yale or jyutping romanization, and you can also search by writing the characters. Best Cantonese dictionary I've ever seen!
I have all the heisig books on chinese and japanese on my shelf and have come to the sad conclusion that it is just useless for me. Reading in context is very painful but the only thing that works. Wasn't some guy in Taiwan that vaguely had something to do with glossika doing a dictionary? As to your point about component meanings, the Heisig meanings are not the historical chinese radical meanings in particular. There are books on chinese(e.g Kahlgren) that proceed that way. As you get deeper into chinese, you will discover a mountain of allusion, reference and metaphor derived from actual historical meanings. What then?
+waljsl we have discussed this in previous videos. My feeling is that as a beginner a method such as Heisig is simply a bridge. Means to an end. Or even means to a means to an end. It's been pretty effective so far, and a system that is simple to follow.
Ok, I don't just wanna make fun of you. I started to learn mandarin a few month ago and I think the HSK Levels are a great orientation. Hsk1 and 2 has a good vokabulary to communicate basic needs and actions. ther is no need for beginers to invent the wheel again. Plus there is a ton of material online and with pleco you couldn't have it easier to learn mandarin. Maybe you didn't have it a few years ago, but learning mandarin in 2020 is ridiculously easy. So there you have it. In conclusion, you started learning mandarin too early 😂 No, I'm just joking, I hope you still have fun learning it.
This one is also good. It teaches you the characters as you read a story about Sherlock Holmes: www.amazon.com/Chinese-Characters-Everyone-Marie-Laure-deShazer-ebook/dp/B00SQGW6TS
I was struggling to find reading materials too, mainly because "approachable" when you're starting out means "really, really boring." My approach was to get a text file of the Chinese translation of Harry Potter, and use frequency analysis to sort the sentences easiest first. So I got to practice on simple stuff using common characters first, when I get stuck I can go back to the source and figure stuff out from context, and I get to be entertained by Harry Potter quotes while I'm studying! Win-win-win!
Heisig sucks, its fauxtymology and does not scale. Learn the kangxi radicals, then the solitary characters, then the combined concept characters (huiyizi) and leave the phono semantic characters for LAST. Learn characters with fewest strokes first...
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Stopped at the 1 minute mark. No sense whatsoever. You either don't read enough or are limiting yourself to elementary school level material.
Don't take this as an insult but your video suggests that you don't understand the Heisig method fully and you're confusing a feature of the system for a bug. Before giving up on Heisig please consider this fellow's opinion on the matter. th-cam.com/video/TgRte6oSoF8/w-d-xo.html
the thing about the heisig method is that it takes a while to get to common characters because he presents them in an order that makes the more complicated looking ones easier to remember because of the components that make up them
You're missing the point of RTH. It isn't meant for reading comprehension as that is fairly easy to learn. It's purpose is to make writing them thousands times easier than traditional methods. By the traditional methods you can easily mix up and forget small radicals. Heisigs ingenius method introduces radicals in a such way that you will never mix them up.
I think the main thing to remember with Heisig is that, although he presents it as a sort of all or nothing approach, it really doesn't need to be that way. You can study frequency lists AND the Heisig order, and mix and match them as you want. It's the systemisation of it that's most important, not the order.
Bruce Jefferies very useful - thanks Bruce!
I think you missed the point of Heisig. It's not to learn to read as you go along. It's to get to the end and not only be able to recognize characters but to also be able to reproduce those characters. So maybe the characters you learn at first aren't the most common but they're probably an element of a more common character and it helps to have those modular pieces that will allow you to remember the big ones. But to each their own. Also I think it's important to remember that Heisig is focused at Japanese so you could come onto issues trying to use it for Chinese given that some characters have different usage in Chinese.
I am a chinese. i am glad to see so many people who are intrested in chinese character. i am learning now. maybe we can learn together
Mandarin Blueprint have adapted Heisig to integrate pinyin and tones into the mnemonic scenes.
They've done this by have people represent pinyin initials, locations represent pinyin finals, and rooms within locations to represent tones. It works brilliantly.
They also provide sentence cards in Anki with native audio to show characters in context from the beginning.
I've been going through their system for 6 months now and have learned 840+ characters. Like you say, a character-centric method (rather than, say, 'speak from day one') is all about building a solid foundation. I'm very happy with my progress so far.
I've really enjoyed your interviews with other language TH-camrs during lockdown, It'd be great to hear you interview these guys (Luke and Phil) about their method. I genuinely think it's a game-changer.
的 actually has 勺 as an outdated phonetic component..., so its really just there for next to no reason
The fact that you weren’t able to remember bullseye is an indication that you weren’t using Heisig correctly. That kanji combines white and ladle through a visual picture. The whole point of heisig is not just mnemonics but images in your head, the image of a white bird in a rusty ladle as being that of the white spot in a bullseye is difficult for me to forget in part because it is so peculiar. To anyone with a similar issue please focus on visualizing the components, not just trying to remember the words. The visualization and emotional reactions are what is supposed to help.
For those of you who got to the end of book 1 or 2 of the Integrated Chinese series and felt a brain collapse of remembering and understanding the hanzi- highly recommend Heisig. Heisig is an excellent supplemental learning tool for building a strong foundation of hanzi recognition and recollection. If you can read the hanzi dialog between Wang Peng and Li You and understand it... but are unable to write the characters without looking- Heisig will greatly help.
Thank you this is basically the exact situation I'm in. I think I'll check out the books.
@@Wondrousname Oh hi! I'm surprised someone found my comment, and I'm saddened that people continue to see this awful video by Richards.
I am now finishing Year 3 of Heisig.
1 year was doing books 1 & 2 to learn the core definition and composition of the 3k hanzi.
1 year of doing my own way similar of Heisig to learn the pinyin and tone of each of those 3k hanzi.
1 year of continuous review.
Wondrousname, I speak to you as someone who struggled with a traditionally Mandarin 101 course from a high school / college / once-a-week structured setting. It works. It truly does work. I'm able to now go back to the 101 course book and read and learn it. The foundation of understanding and distinguishing each character is now a part of me. Its a surreal experience.
Use anki with it. I promise you it works.
I've used this method before, i got to 1300 kanji, it's very useful bc u can recognize them later while reading, but u do have to start reading, flr them to stick in your memory
bull's eye = you get your ladle and try to hit the white part of the bull's eye. Easy enough no ? I remembered it like that and still in my memory.
hilton hacks yea, I started it and got to 500 characters in a month or so then quit because I thought it sucked. After a few months I realized that all the words that I’m understanding while reading are mostly from those 500. Now I’m back grinding away with vengeance lmao. It’s a phenomenal method to create out of context connection to westerners subconscious.
I haven't even bought his chinese books yet but I looked at it briefly on Amazon and I can still remember this. It sticks in my brain so well I never thought learning could be this easy.
的 has multiple readings (de0 di1 di2 di4) Heisig's bullseye meaning comes from the compound 目的 (mu4di4) which means "goal", although less used than the possessive form it's quite often used on everyday life.
Funny is 我的目的 "my goal", here we see two different pronunciations really close of each other, reading it quickly proves difficult when beginning.
Anyway, any characters frequency list is good in itself but not sufficient, you have to couple it with reading words as Chinese characters aren't often used standalone as you already know.
I've noticed that reading a character's dictionary entry with several compounds helps understand its meaning as one can see how it changes based on other characters it is associated with.
Happy Chinese hacking!
adamaka interesting. I've just realised I already knew 目的 (もくてき) from Japanese and didn't even make the connection... just goes to show how debilitating a lack of context can be.
Word lists with single characters - true, but presumably there are frequency word lists out there containing compound words?
Here is how I feel about frequency lists vs Heisig's approach of building upon more and more radicals gradually, irrespective of frequency. The more characters you learn, the harder it is to keep on top of them all, and the harder it becomes to persevere through to the end. If you learn in order of most commonly used, you are learning very useful characters at the beginning, but as you begin to approach a couple of thousand, the usefulness starts to tail off, and it becomes harder and harder to wade through all these characters that you are not going to be seeing very often. With the Heisig order, yes there are a lot of characters that you don't really need at the start, but it is also the case that you will encounter new and useful characters in every chapter, all the way through to the end, which for me at least, really helps with motivation.
白勺 的 is bai, shao, so probably heisig is using the initial letters of character components for his b.s. fauxtymology. It is a bright white spoon and symbolizes to own。 Probably in ancient chine anyone had his or her very own white ceramic spoon.
I can appreciate Heisig's method (mostly via an Anki deck I had found, which I use whenever I have downtime), but you're right, it's not the all-encompassing method. I'm going to keep using Heisig's method off and on, while also using more context-based methods, and other flashcards that are more based around frequency of use.
Lmao I remember like a year ago seeing 的 in Heisig and using that stupid white ladle mnemonic but luckily that kanji is very commonly used in Japanese so I don't need the mnemonic now. Honestly, I got very frustrated with Heisig when I started out and I quit after about 400 when I realised I was learning loads of obscure kanji. So I switched to just learning through vocab but eventually I got to a point where I just couldn't tell the characters apart, and ended up deciding to dedicate a few months to finishing Heisig all the way through. I'm so glad I did it now, like sure it was frustrating knowing almost 2000 characters but having the last like, 300 holding a large proportion of the most commonly used in Japanese so until I finished them all, there was a lot of simple stuff I couldn't read. But looking back now, I can really tell apart similar kanji so easily now. I understand that with Chinese, you've got like 3000 minimum to read fluently and it can be frustrating if a lot of the most common are in the last 500 or so, but I'd still recommend it while keeping that in mind.
For reading, try thechairmansbao.com and Du Chinese app. They have texts of varying difficulties, where you can turn on and off pinyin, and can click on any word to see its meaning and to which HSK level it belongs. I hope you find it as useful as I have! Oh, and also, thechairmansbao has audio recordings for all their texts also, so it’s a great tool to practice your pronunciation also.
Olly hi! The thing that worked for me was to learn the radicals first, which are the compounds. It's like learning the ABC. Otherwise you will be learning each character on its own and it will be harder. Skritter has a radicals list. All articles about learning characters recommend doing that and it really gets easier. Wish you best!
I'm surprised by your rationale. Doesn't sound like the thinking of someone who's studied many languages. For maximum efficiency, Chinese reading and writing should be separate from learning to speak. If you slow down your vocabulary building process and speaking progress to the speed you'll be learning characters, you'll have a very long road ahead of you. Even Chinese learn to speak fairly quickly but literacy can take up to 12 years of education. Furthermore, Chinese characters are not like phonetic alphabets. They have meaning and can. Be used in many different languages. A primary meaning of 的 is target, aim or capture. For a foreigner it's much easier to remember this character with a tangible mnemonic, as opposed to a vague concept like "indication of possession" If you had been studying Chinese conversation separately from your character study you'd have learned this on day 1and it's a simple aha moment to tie this meaning to the character. Heisig method groups characters by radicals and introduces them in a way that makes bulk learning very easy. If you studied characters by frequency lists, you would be introduced to difficult characters early on and furthermore character 10 on a frequency list might have nothing in common with character 11. Learning unrelated.characters by rote would be extreme waste of time. As a Westerner who is fairly fluent in Japanese and conversant in Cantonese and Mandarin and who had a good grasp of a few thousand characters and their multiple readings, I can tell you that your new plan would be inefficient. I don't believe there is a fast track to Chinese literacy. To conversation and vocabulary building, yes, but not too literacy. Heisig method is as good as any to rapidly learning to recognize, remember AND write Chinese characters. And keep your character study separate from vocabulary and conversation study. Progress will be much faster AND gains more lasting than by trying to pretend Chinese is like Spanish. Fluency and literacy in Chinese take many years of exposure and hard work. There is no fast track. But there are some slow tracks, like the one you've suggested, which provide a beguiling temptation to the impatient. Hang in there.
+Philip Butt thanks for the comment. I appreciate your rationale, although there are many who disagree with you (see other comments), and I found myself caught firmly between the opposing perspectives. Intellectually, I find myself on your side - I.e. Separate the tasks of speaking and reading, in order to make the task more manageable. However, that's contradicted by my previous experience of languages (which you reference) that says holistic learning is always preferred. Indeed, I learnt kanji in Japanese primarily by texting with friends (learning from context) not by learning discrete characters. However, I do see how that might be less speedy overall. I've never known a topic in language learning on which people disagree so vehemently. I'm trying to make up my own mind
Agreed. I came to pretty much all this same conclusion within about 10 megaseconds (3.5 months) of a grueling and for me less-than-helpful "study abroad" "accelerated" Chinese Mandarin program in China (taught at the Southwestern Ethnic University in Chengdu city, Sichuan province). Rather crap; storybook teaching, lots of rote drilling, and teaching the writing, reading, speaking, and listening together at once.
After that, and a TON of stress and blowout (due to not just the program but also the group I was with - did not fit in due to psych. differences, background differences, and more) I wanted to figure out a plan for how it could be done better. And what I came to as a conclusion was that first off, the spoken and written Chinese should, as you've said, be learned separately. After all, there is only one written character set, but _many_ spoken Chineses (Mandarin is the most common, Cantonese many have at least heard of, but there's also Sichuanese, Hunanese, and many more). Spoken Mandarin should be learned solely with Pinyin. The words are multisyllabic for a reason - from historical linguistics studies it evolved from a more heavily monosyllabic ancestor as the syllables/phonotactic structure simplified and became more rigid. If you can recognize words in spoken speech without thinking they are ambiguous, which is a common refrain given for why you need the characters, then you can do the same with Pinyin. Written Chinese is a separate class - should be a separate lecture. This even not just because there are many spoken Chinese but often what you write and what you speak are considerably different - even within Mandarin itself, e.g. you write 小时 for "hours" but speak 钟头 ("clock heads").
The learning of Written Chinese should be done with something like Heisig's method or another that exploits the internal logic of the characters, not simply pounding the information in by rote drilling the same character over and over from strokes. The human brain learns best by forming hierarchies and networks, i.e. association. This because it itself is physically built out of connections - neurons connect with other neurons and the information is stored in the ways they connect. And the way the Chinese characters are built is PERFECT for this. Literally PERFECT. It's a fractal hierarchy of simpler components building to larger and more meaningful components. You use the most efficient information input method for the hardware. Yes, you still have to repeat/drill it but you're drilling sensibly, not brute-force (the need to drill to learn things is due to another aspect of the brain, long-term potentiation, which is how it recognizes what connections to form and maintain, so is not avoidable, but you want to _maximize_ the efficiency, and failure to do that equals waste, something that further helped to contribute to the overall 糟糕 nature of the experience as I got more and more Really Insecure(TM) as it started rubbing on my personal problems along the way.).
Moreover, when it comes to the spoken Chinese, if this is being done in a study-abroad environment like the one I was subjected to, then you should not go for "storybook" fictive Chinese as was done in that course (complete with a soapish romance plot - tacky as hell! God DAMMIT, I don't want to learn how to get LUVVZ I want to learn how to get FOOD!), but rather I'd say straight for immediately-useful simple phrases that could get you around on the street. "Where is this?" How to recognize directions. "Help!" Things like that. Grades would be based on how you can do with a simulated situation in the classroom. "Homework" is _go out on the street and try to do something_ . After all, the purpose of going on a study-abroad program is to be able to be immersed with speakers of the language all around you and to maximize usage opportunities; with this, there was virtually no possibility of exploitation until several courses later (which I didn't even manage to make). Atrocious! Then you build on that to more complex conversational forms. Literally the course that was taught at the study-abroad program could have been taught _with identical content_ and with _identical_ success or failure _entirely in a United States classroom surrounded by nothing but monolingual English speakers for 100 km (60 mi) all around_ . It is a complete waste to spend $10,000 in scholarship and government aid money to shoot someone off to China to learn from a shitty ass course that is literally IDENTICAL to any you'd get in the US, just perhaps as they said "accelerated" meaning not "more efficient/optimized" but rather "we'll keep you in 3 hours [11 ks] of lecture every day so that it effectively lasts the same length in terms of total time accumulated as a standard course, just packing more into the day". Yes I'm mad as hell about this, and for what I think is good reason.
Education is seriously messed.
To me, it makes sense (and works very well for me) to learn characters of words I am learning to speak. You get a more in-depth review and exposure. Just my opinion. I've tried many different ways and have found the way I do it now very efficient and highly effective (for me).
Can you recommend me some books or apps I could use to train my vocabulary and speaking ability in Mandarin? I totally recognise my problems in learning Chinese in your post!
Agreed. I took Chinese classes when I was younger and was learning everything at once like learning English or even Spanish (my mother tongue is Spanish). After some years, I felt so discouraged because I felt it wasn’t working as I wished. Now I started with the Heisig method and everything became so clear and easy, of course it is a different approach method but for me it makes more sense, definitely studying the written and the spoken separately.
(1) for every Heisig character I learn, I shop around for common Cantonese expressions since I am learning Traditional characters to read and write Cantonese
(2) I don't care about some strange memnonics, since the huge number of characters - 3000 only covers the basics, but let's be honest, it's a huge amount, we are not even talking words here - means that you simply need a way to remember to write the character, and not confuse the location (top, bottom, left, right) of the primitives and similar characters
(3) from day one, I use dictation: when I don't know the character, I spell out the Jyutping (pinyin for Cantonese), when I know the character, I write it - most characters have so many meanings, it does not really matter too much which meaning you initially use (I had no problem with the ladle and the white bird, and its one of the characters you find yourself spelling out quickly when you write dications)
(4) as I learn more characters, I can write more parts of a sentence, which is encouraging; since the dictation comes as part of my Anki cards ( I have English Cantonese, Cantonese English, Cantonese with need to write Jyutping, Cantonese spoken with need to write the character), you get lots of practice through spaced repetition
(5) then you have some very common characters in Cantonese, that don't show up in Heisig - well, I have his technique, so any very common Cantonese character that is not in his books is on my separate list
(6) as you work along, after 500 or so characters, Heisig reduces his stories to primitives only, so anyone is free to make up their own stories - Heisig basically teaches a concept or a method, anyone is free to adapt it and the keybwords. The point is, making up everything entirely on your own is easier said than done.... I saw a site for Japanese jpdb.io that claims its working with "better" keywords - so everyone feel free to adjust the keywords
(7) Actually, I have started to use a mix of English and German, since some characters and their primitives have a good fit with German (German is my mother tongue); probably everyone who is not a native English speaker is better off mixing in some of his own language; Heisig was published in German as well, but my Anki cards are English; are wonder what the rest of the world does who don't speak English but what to apply the Heisig technique? Do they learn English first? Or stick with wrote learning....
(8) There is a funny and entertaining side effect - I learned some cultural references through Heisig's wild stories that build on cultural knowledge of the US / English speaking world, which adds a gist of fun...I had to look up quite a few of his keywords...
(9) Finally, Heisig / Richardson cover 3000 characters, and 3000 characters does not really cover you for reading texts you would really want to read....You want to aim for 5000 to 8000 characters, and that means, sooner rather than later, you will reach the end of Heisigs/ Richardsons footsteps and will need to trudge on on your own through the snow - better use a spaced repetition system, stories, dictation, ...hmm grumble
(10) Finally, for all those writers out there that lack inspiration, every time you lack any ideas for your script, take a break and learn a new Chinese character and make up an associated story - maybe your script won't progress, but at least your Chinese literacy will, and you have a long way to go before you run out of characters....
(11) One tool that helps for reading is SmartHanzi, google it, unfortunately does not really cover Cantonese, only Mandarin - that's due to the linked dictionaries
(12) Finally, you start wondering if there is a way to speed up your writing, even if you don't know that many characters. What I found was, "use Simplified" instead of Traditional to reduce the number of strokes (a) there you go, you now have a motive to learn Traditional (Cantonese web info available seems overwelmingly using Traditional) and Simplified (to speed up your writing) (b) use Handwriting - the more useful search term is cursive. There are different cursive styles, but I only know of an Anki deck to teach you, based on Simplified megamandarin.com/?product=practical-cursive-flashcard-deck (no affiliation, honestly). Obviously you select only some frequent characters you like, that happen to be the same in Traditional and Simplified, and then play a little bit with the cursive style. Variety is also the spice of learning, and it begins to feel cool if every now and then your hand-drawn characters look "somewhat cool". Not convinced? No need to try it out, it's just one more idea out there for you to copy....
I did Heisig's first book in a month and your complaints seem silly. It's such a good way to get you started fast
I learnt the de character as "of" being the meaning . but it is more subtle than that but it is a good start , Zhong as in Zhong Guo (China) Is a picture of a target and the sound of the word is like a bow string when you loose the arrow , so you aim at the middle of the target hence Zhong means middle and Zhong Guo means Middle Kingdom .
I am learning from a series called The Elementary Chinese Reader , but I learn as a hobby and have no interest in learning quickly .
Sadly this series is no longer in print 😭😭
As you are learning full-form characters, your best option for frequency lists is to look at Taiwanese rather than Chinese frequency lists.
The original meaning of 的 is "sunlight so glaring to cause your eyes to open from sleep" In the Book of Explaining Grammar and Understanding Characters ( 說文解字), the meaning given is "bright". It is a many sounds character. Different pronunciation different meanings. One cannot try to use current written form to deduce the meaning. You really need to go back all the way to the oracle script. Changes are made during the centuries for either simplification (法 law, is actually a simplification used in ancient times because the full form has too many strokes and this is a common word... 灋. The top right part is a mythical animal that eats the guilty is always present in the Chinese Court as a psychological warning. The water part denotes "equality" since water is always level no matter how the container is tilted, and 去 = to dispense. So the entire meaning is "to dispense justice"; in the same vein as modern simplification of 風 (wind is caused by the flapping of insect wings according to Chinese philosophy) vs 风) or from aesthetic point of view in calligraphy. A most important aspect of being educated. You are judged on how beautifully you write the script. If your handwriting is terrible, don't even think of taking the imperial examinations. The "ladle"part if looking at the earlier forms is actually an "eye". For example, 又 is actually a hand as in 取, "to take". In ancient times, they cut off the ears as evidence of how many enemy soldiers were killed to get their reward. It is more efficient to carry the heads. Your method is excellent in most cases but you needed historical context, culture etc to gain fully the meaning. For example, try explaining "sin" 孽 which composes of 薛 and 子.
Word's Frequency list is the good idea if you want to encourage yourself into the spoken language
Hi Olly, what list did you finally end up using?
I think everyone has to find his method fitting best. I learned all radicals first and now remembering new characters is really easy by making up short story (the funnier or the more stupid it is, makes it easier) Like „a tree with eyes 👀 MISSES/ WANTS a heart“ Xiǎng 想 consists of a tree 木mù，eye 目mù and heart 心 xīn and means to miss, to want.
I enjoy creating my own lists, I have a Anki account and every time I find a word I want to learn I just add it to a flashcard deck. Some time ago I spent some time looking for frequency lists and I wasn't able to find many resources. HSk lists are pretty useful, even though they don't provide any context (which it's a pity). Chineasy is a good book too, you may like it :D Good luck!
So in the Heisig method you don't learn the pronunciation of the characters and you memorise them by coming up with stories for each character? I think this works for some type of characters such as 山水日上休 etc which are invented to look like what they mean. However, the majority of Chinese characters are not of this type. Contrary to popular belief, the Chinese writing system is actually semi-phonetic (I'm no linguist so I'm probably not using the correct technical term) with the majority of characters being composed of one component which indicates the meaning of the character and the other component gives a hint of the pronunciation of the character.
For example the character 謝 means "to thank". It is made up of 言 which means "to speak" and 射 which means "shoot". So why would you shoot someone you are thanking? The reason the character is written this way is because 謝 sounds like 射 and the meaningful component of 謝 is the radical 言.
In the Heisig method you don't learn how to pronounce the characters. I think this makes sense if you are learning Japanese (in fact in your earlier videos you mentioned that the Heisig method was originally for learning Kanji) because in Japanese the same Kanji can have multiple different pronunciations. However, in Cantonese, with a few exceptions, all characters have only one pronunciation and as a mentioned above most characters are "semi-phonetic" so by not learning their pronunciation you are missing out on an, in my opinion, a very useful way of remembering the characters.
+RedArcher1000 Great point. The rationale for not learning the pronunciation in this method is actually not because there are multiple ways of pronounces the characters. The rationale is that by excluding the pronunciation at the beginning you reduce the amount that needs to be learnt, therefore making it possible to learn Chinese characters much faster - at least at the beginning
It's actually not entirely based on pictograph but rather mnemonic devices that have nothing to do with the true origins of the kanji themselves. I'm sure 壇 has nothing to do with people in top hats coming to a mound of dirt to talk about things several times until nightbreak, but never the less it helps me not only remember to recognize it but to be able to write it out by hand.
TH-cam decided to show me this old video so here’s my comment. I used and loved Heisig at the start of my Japanese studies. I don’t know if it’s as effective for Chinese. Anyway, for me I learned and forgot all the characters in in his book. Well I remembered some and forgot most. Because I didn’t keep up the SRS. But the primitives all repeated in all the kanji so I remembered the primitives without having to devote time to SRS. Then when I learned new vocabulary I would review the RTK for that character as I reviewed the vocabulary. For years I found it useful to know the RTK meaning of a kanji but eventually that went away. I guess I’m just used to kanji now. I seem to be learning simplified hanzi really quickly and without any mnemonics having read so much Japanese over the years. Look at how long it takes natives to learn Chinese characters and don’t expect it to go faster for you because you’re using mnemonics. Sure they’re helpful and you can cram stuff but you need to see all the parts of a kanji or hanzi and think probably. After years of looking at it just the generally shape of the kanji will be enough. Thank god. There’s light at the end of the tunnel but it’s years away. I don’t write hanzi by hand unless it’s for homework mind you. I just read them.
The character, a noun, you call "Bullseye" (dì, a noun meaning target or bullseye) is just that. It is also "de" for the possessive. All you had to do was look it up in a dictionary and you would have known that.
Yeah when I figured that out I felt a bit dumb. But this is a commentary on the Heisig method, and unless you’re gonna look up everything in the dictionary you’re stuck with what you’ve got in the book ... ie not very much.
The character (bullseye) has a sense of target/direction originally but more so Heisig's way of getting the character in your head...
The best frequency list is one you make on your own.
Hanping Dictionary has an awsome Anki support. Just "star" the word and an anki card is created.
Try not to make your deck too big. It should contain 1000 - 1500 words that cover every aspect of our life. Avoid adding a new word if you have already added a synonym. Try to avoid adding very frequent vocab: you'll memorise it anyway by constantly seeing the same words in different context.
Flashcards are only supplementary tools, you should read something in chinese nearly every day. Don't forget about grammar. Study it separately.
From Russia with love.
Антон Анищенков I think this is good advice, but my problem with it relates to overwhelm. I think as a beginner you need something more structured.
On your blog page "New Project: Learn To Write Traditional Chinese Characters," someone named Pablo Pankun Roman recommended Heisig to you. I've never used it--but if I do someday, I'd do it his way. He said, "I did it for Japanese and now I can read and understand most novels. I didn't use the books for the readings of the characters though, and just learned them when I learned the words that use those characters." If I understand correctly, he read interesting materials in the language, and when confronted with a new character, then he looked it up in the Heisig book. So one option you could do is to start using Heisig as a reference rather than a textbook. Furthermore, other authors have created similar series, such as "Fun with Chinese Characters." So if sometimes Heisig's mnemonics don't work for you, you can look up the character in similar sources.
Hi Olly, Routledge publishes a Frequency Dictionary of Mandarin Chinese. You can find it on Amazon. I don't know anything about it since I don't speak Chinese and haven't studied it. Tom
While at the beginning, I can see how it might frustrate someone that you don't learn the most commonly used characters first, the point of the book is to learn all the characters you need for minimal literacy (2000-3000 of them) in one fell swoop in a space of, ideally, no longer than 2 months. If you're aiming for actual literacy, not to be able to order from a menu, it's going to take some effort in the case of chinese characters. As you seem to realize at the end of the video, the problem isn't really the characters that you run into all the time, it's the ones that you really don't, yet are necessary for functional literacy.
Having learned Chinese only after I had learned Japanese, I can't speak for how Remembering the Kanji works for first time learners of Chinese and I imagine some of the keywords might not match as well. But shouldn't you be using the Remembering the Hanzi books that are designed for Chinese characters used in Chinese?
My advice is to give the book all your intellectual attention apart from the daily routines (work, school etc.). Make studying 50 characters a day fit into your routine along with SRS (Spaced Repetition System) reviewing of the already learned ones (using Kanji koohii or ANKI or w/e). You probably also want to start with more than 50 characters at the beginning, even past 100 and slow down the further you go as your SRS piles are going to keep you busier and busier the more flashcards you attain.
After you've studied the first book you can go for the second or just immerse yourself in whatever reading material of that language you would like to read. It's surprising how fast you can attach readings to characters you already know. I certainly had that experience when studying Chinese as most of the characters were already familiar to me. As a side note, it's also refreshing how the different languages tend to use different characters more frequently so some of those less frequently encountered characters end up being reviewed quite often in the other language.
Late to the party, but it takes 3 months to finish Heisig if you are doing 25 a day, just chill, there is no need for that hurry.
Kanji learners!
" I can't tell how its going to end but i can tell you how it's going to begin"
Glance at the order some kanji of the first 2 lessons of RTK vol.1:
十 口 .. 田
十 口 .. 古
日 月 .. 明
五 口 .. 吾
月 月 .. 朋
日 月 .. 明
日 十 .. 早
日 目 .. 冒
日 日 .. 昌
昌 口 .. 唱
...etc...
Sure you got it!
After 800 kanjis or some, without even thinking, you gain at least 2 "Crazy Super-Powers":
1 --> "x-ray.ing" any kanji you see from its "parts" to its whole;
2 --> create your own associations to memorize it.
Inteligently designed order plus some ancient mnemonic techinics (imagination, associoation, etc) = Heisig RTK.
Add RTK to SRS (anki) and hacking into more than 2 thousand kanji becomes a piece of cake.
and this is (just) the beggining... it's a foundation.
Yeah, you need to learn the *words* that use the characters. *Words* and their meanings and usages are how you "triangulate" the essential meaning*s* of the characters. And using frequency word lists will help you to focus on the subset of the meanings that are *relevant* in the modern language.
You already have many recommendations for word lists. Probably any will do. I will just point out that Pleco contains a wealth of information. From a character you can get a frequency-ranked list of words *containing* and/or *beginning with* that character. From a word entry in Pleco, you can get a list of *sentences* in which that sequence of characters appears (although sometimes it's just the chance juxtaposition of those characters, not actually that word!).
You don't make much sense. The point is that it takes a native speaker half their lives to commit all the characters to memory by brute force - but that is time you don't have - you are already an adult, and as you said, you want to get going quickly. It does not matter whether you learn a few character that are not very common, if you can learn 2.000 characters in 40 days in a structured approach, now does it? Why am I saying this? You already know this, because it says that in the introduction of your Heisig... and so the problem here is the same as with anybody who goes out to make a video or blog entry on the subject - you likely didn't really take the time to pay attention to the method, i.e the instructions in the introduction, and just generally, I don't think you are doing it properly. Now, I bought my Heisig 20 years ago, but I know for a fact that there is a very good memorable story for Bull's Eye, so the fact that you decided to make a point out of this in your video gives away that whatever you are doing, you are doing it wrong. I kept bumping in to the same guy for like a decade at a Japanese forum, and every few years, when the Heisig subject came up, he would diss it. So I finally told him that my suspicion is that he never bothered to look in to it properly, because he had kanji knowledge already and thought that it is probably beneath him to start from scratch, and so it was. If you learn such random complex characters as Weekday, which look like a lump of spaghetti to the uninitiated, the only way to remember them is through constant usage, that is brute force. A few month later, you will inevitably forget them, but with Heisig, you can still remember them even after years without looking at them. There are many accounts of that, and I have experienced that myself. Heck, Japanese people forget half their kanji after living abroad for a while!
Why would you want to learn the most used characters only/or first, if you can learn them all in the same time?! Obviously you are doing something wrong... I have learned almost 5.000 kanji with Heisig, vol. 1 + 3, and then I simply picked all the others out from the large Hadamitzky/Spahn dictionary, starting from page 1... there is no problem to learn them all, except for it is kinda pointless, which is why I stopped, but I could add the rest to 6.000 if I badly wanted to some day. It saddens me every time I see someone like you who makes a half-assed attempt and then bails out impatiently and then goes on to lecture on the subject...
Also, whether it is Japanese or Chinese, you will eventually find that what is being sold as the basic set of characters, is not really enough. So Heisig has added another 1.000 kanji based on frequency where it matters for literacy - something where your "500 most used characters"-books have long left you to your own devices... and it is all indexed and cross referenced with the first two volumes; and it seems to me there is a 2nd volumes for Chinese as well. You cannot read when you learned the most frequent characters - you can read the few things your text book has selected for you on that basis.
I can only speak for the kanji here, but the reason you wanna learn them all by meaning first is because there is a lot of structure in them regarding their readings, so you save a lot of time there as well (vol 2 + 2nd half of vol 3).
Also, Heisig is great for students interested in both, Chinese and Japanese, because it is basically the same thing to an extent. I had a look at the first few hundred Chinese characters in Heisig recently and only took a few notes where a meaning or the odd stroke is different from the Japanese Heisig book. It would be a complete waste of time to make two sets of flash cards, as you would be doing the same thing over twice... (I am not learning Chinese, only looked in to it for a friend who does).
You are wasting your time... and this video has 35 likes, as if 35 people had picked up Heisig, formed an opinion on the subject and agreed with you... you are also wasting your time :)
+Baerchenization unfortunately you've just made the embarrassing mistake of criticising without doing your research. There are multiple videos before this when I talk about my thoughts on Heisig in some depth, and why I used it for months before making this particular video. As you can see from the discussion on these threads, there are plenty of people who like to argue about this topic. This series of videos was an attempt to try to make sense of all the conflicting advice in my own specific situation - thinking out loud, if you like. I'm not giving advice to others. You don't have to agree with me, but you don't help anybody by being so condescending.
what I would do if I was in your situation would be to create a list of words that own so to say and look for the equivalent in chinese (not the translation word by word + grammar but the expression that preserves the same sense)
foreigners always seem scared to find a language partner. find a Chinese person who is good at English (there are many) and they will probably be more than happy to help you. that's how I learned English, just by speaking to Americans and using it.
when I was only learning from the textbook, my English really sucked because they don't teach you the natural language (like the word "sucked" to mean bad).
I started Chinese a few years ago , my first book was the "" The practical Chinese reader"" it was a bit of a shock as it is all in Chinese with pinyin subtitles, I eventually read all the books form vole1 to vol 6. In some linguistic circles it is laughed at for being a little staid and boring. I have gone through the vol 1 to vol 6, if you have the moral fortitude to go through these books you will read and write Chinese at the end. In the later volumes the pin yin is dropped and you have to consult a vocab list. I think Heisigs method is a wasted effort to learn Chinese without any real world context.
Kevin Westwood I'll look it up, thanks.
Hi Olly. Do you have an Android phone or device? My recommendation is not available on iOS
serak1977 What is it?
Giggles Brin Hanping Cantonese dictionary for Android. It is a perfect dictionary with audio, lists for common spoken, common characters, idioms, and common written characters. You can select Yale or jyutping romanization, and you can also search by writing the characters. Best Cantonese dictionary I've ever seen!
serak1977 Thanks for the recommendation. I shall check it out.
I have all the heisig books on chinese and japanese on my shelf and have come to the sad conclusion that it is just useless for me. Reading in context is very painful but the only thing that works. Wasn't some guy in Taiwan that vaguely had something to do with glossika doing a dictionary?
As to your point about component meanings, the Heisig meanings are not the historical chinese radical meanings in particular. There are books on chinese(e.g Kahlgren) that proceed that way. As you get deeper into chinese, you will discover a mountain of allusion, reference and metaphor derived from actual historical meanings. What then?
+waljsl we have discussed this in previous videos. My feeling is that as a beginner a method such as Heisig is simply a bridge. Means to an end. Or even means to a means to an end. It's been pretty effective so far, and a system that is simple to follow.
Ok, I don't just wanna make fun of you. I started to learn mandarin a few month ago and I think the HSK Levels are a great orientation. Hsk1 and 2 has a good vokabulary to communicate basic needs and actions. ther is no need for beginers to invent the wheel again. Plus there is a ton of material online and with pleco you couldn't have it easier to learn mandarin. Maybe you didn't have it a few years ago, but learning mandarin in 2020 is ridiculously easy. So there you have it. In conclusion, you started learning mandarin too early 😂
No, I'm just joking, I hope you still have fun learning it.
This one is also good. It teaches you the characters as you read a story about Sherlock Holmes: www.amazon.com/Chinese-Characters-Everyone-Marie-Laure-deShazer-ebook/dp/B00SQGW6TS
languagecrawler how useful is the vocabulary?
Poor video title
I was struggling to find reading materials too, mainly because "approachable" when you're starting out means "really, really boring." My approach was to get a text file of the Chinese translation of Harry Potter, and use frequency analysis to sort the sentences easiest first. So I got to practice on simple stuff using common characters first, when I get stuck I can go back to the source and figure stuff out from context, and I get to be entertained by Harry Potter quotes while I'm studying! Win-win-win!
passing weeb.
的中(てきちゅう) :) 1:24
Heisig sucks, its fauxtymology and does not scale. Learn the kangxi radicals, then the solitary characters, then the combined concept characters (huiyizi) and leave the phono semantic characters for LAST. Learn characters with fewest strokes first...
Stopped at the 1 minute mark. No sense whatsoever. You either don't read enough or are limiting yourself to elementary school level material.
Don't take this as an insult but your video suggests that you don't understand the Heisig method fully and you're confusing a feature of the system for a bug. Before giving up on Heisig please consider this fellow's opinion on the matter. th-cam.com/video/TgRte6oSoF8/w-d-xo.html
Perfectly possible! These videos were supposed to be thinking aloud, rather than prescriptions.
So you think using real language to learn the real language?! yeaaa, that's a tough one, lol