Learning Chinese characters and other different writing systems.

I am often asked about learning to write Chinese characters. When I learned them there were no computers and no word processors.

I got a hold of 1,000 flash cards, the most common 1,000. I started with 10 a day and worked up to 30. I wrote or studied characters every, I mean every, day, until I had learned these 1,000 characters.

The flash cards showed the stroke order. I wrote them out on squared paper, down the first column 10 or so times. Then I put the English or pronunciation (Wade Giles in those days) over three columns to the right and picked up the next card, and kept going. Soon I would hit the English of the first card three columns over etc. and have to write it before I forgot it. I kept doing this with the 10, or eventually 30 characters that I was working on. These included new cards and cards that I had already learned and forgotten. I think my retention was less than 50%. After doing this for a while I would review my stack of cards.

After doing this for the first 1000 characters I stopped. From  that point on, when I encountered new characters in my reading I would write them out a few times and carry on. I learned 4,000 characters in 8 months, wrote the exam, where we had to translate newspaper editorials in both directions, write a diplomatic note, and take dictation. My hand writing was not pretty, but I passed.

When I was studying Chinese, and it was a full time occupation, I mostly read and listened a lot. I did write some, but not as much as I listened and read. I have now forgotten how to write by hand. I can write on a computer.

What would I do today?  I do not know. I am not sure I would bother to learn to write by hand. I can read and type on a computer in Russian, Japanese and Chinese, and even a little Korean, but cannot write any of them by hand. It is not a skill I use, and it is definitely a skill you lose if you do not use it, IMHO.

I am interested in the views of others.

Comments

[Jeff Lindqvist]

Now and then I write characters by hand, from isolated characters/words (several times) to example sentences where the words are used. I find that the words I can write stick better than the ones I don't have a clue about...

[chris sarda]

I wonder if you've really lost it, or if you practiced a little whether at least some of the more common ones would come back easily... Who knows, I guess it's typing which is actually important nowadays anyway.

[John Fotheringham]

I am a strong supporter of the Heisig system.

I have many fellow fans of "Remembering the Kanji" (and the Chinese version, "Remembering the Hanzi"), but there are also many critics. However, I find that most of the latter group either don't understand the rationale behind the system or don't do it correctly (i.e. they skip the introduction and just start going through the book using the old-fashioned way (i.e. rote memory).

The book relies on "imaginative memory," the ability to create (and and recreate on demand) vivid, unforgettable stories that form anchors in our memory. When trying to rememerb a characters meaning or writing, you recall a story (easy) instead of individual strokes (difficult).

The advantages of this system are many:
1) The ability to learn characters rapidly and efficiently (especially if you use an SRS)
2) The ability to distinguish similar characters with ease
3) Easily remembering proper stroke order (this is very important for looking up words in modern electronic dictionaries that have writing input)
4) NEVER forgetting the meaning or writing or characters even after many years
5) Being able to apply the same technique to new characters you encounter
6) It's fun (especially for people who enjoy writing or telling stories, painting, etc.)

I discuss imaginative memory and Chinese characters more on my site for those who are interested:
http://l2mastery.com/language-specific-tips/using-imaginative-memory-for-chinese-characters

[Nick_dm]

I'm also a big fan of the Heisig approach. I'm currently approaching the end of "Remembering Traditional Hanzi" which I'm using for my Cantonese studies.

Prior to using this I had tried: (1) not learning characters individually and hoping to pick them up as I went along, (2) learning them in order of frequency (using a Space Repetition System) but only doing reading/recognition. Neither of these approaches worked very well for me and I frequently forgot characters or got confused between them.

I believe that breaking the characters into "primatives" is key and has benefits even without Heisig's "imaginative memory" approach. While learning simple but relatively uncommon characters might seem like wasted effort to some, most of these characters also exist as components within more complicated characters so learning them first and forming new components from them makes both writing and recognition much easier in the long term. There are some other books which deconstruct the characters in a similar way such as "Cracking the Chinese Puzzles" and "Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary".

I'm more concerned with learning to read than write, but I believe that with the Heisig approach I am learning both more efficiently than when I was only focusing on reading/recognition and constantly getting confused.

[Glen]

I agree with you! Learning to write Hanzi can take years and it's just not practical. I find that my Korean and Japanese classmates focus a lot on characters because it's more comfortable as a system. But I think the language goals of most foreigners who want to learn Chinese (or other Asian languages) is probably more focused on speaking and listening. I also find that even without writing the characters I'm slowly remembering them just by seeing them!

[Mark]

I spent 3 months learning chinese last year but, from the beginning, decided that I would just focus on speaking/listening rather than reading/writing (and using pinyin to support that).

However, now I realise that I completely underestimated the usefulness of being able to read chinese characters. Not so much on the street in China (where you can always ask people what a bus stop says or the menu etc) but because of the millions of chinese internet sites out there. So there is all this valuable content that I have little chance of getting into.

Writing is not something I'm interested in by itself but maybe its the best way to remember the Hanzi?

I'd love to know if anyone has had good success in learning the Hanzi without learning how to write them.

[Igor]

I don't have any idea how is it feels to learn Hanzi, Kanji or Hanja but I have had an experience with a friend of mine who was unsuccessfully trying to learn the English spelling. He is proficient speaker of English but has learned the language almost completely by listening and watching TV, so he tried to learn the spelling by rewriting English sentences from a book. After many pages written he came to me disappointed and I talked him into reading, consequently his writing improved dramatically. So I think maybe it's better to spend the time on learning the characters instead of writing them. English is not written in characters but still it's pronunciation is so different from the spelling that for a foreigner it looks kind of Chinese, many times you see a word and you are not sure how exactly it should be pronounced.

[Colin]

I also have been using the Heisig system for Japanese kanji (more or less). Here is how I did it/have been using it:

(1) Every weekday I sat down for about 1 or 2 hours and wrote mnemonics for about 50 characters, per day. I did this every weekday (took the weekends off). In about 2 months I finished the book. I was also reviewing while doing this but if you don't really have the time then I would not bother.

(2) I then imported the first 500 kanji into an SRS and started reviewing those. Did that for about a month and then imported the next 500. I review every weekeday (still taking the weekends off).

(3) I drill by this method: Keyword and mnemonic on the front of the card and kanji - and any example words I wanted to include - on the back. I don't really worry about memorizing the mnemonic. If I can read the story and write the kanji with little trouble then I consider that good.

(4) Of course, I am also doing reading practice aside from kanji drilling. Mainly Japanese online forums, news articles (those are tough) and lighter fare such as kid's newspapers (much better) and young adult reading materials.

(5) My retention rate of the meaning of the kanji is probably in the neighborhood of 30-50%. There are many I am OK with for a while but then forget down the road and I fail them and start over, but I don't care at all. The SRS helps me focus on the ones I am having trouble with. I get a few off the plate at a time and then move onto the next troublesome batch. I am not trying to memorize anything, just expose myself to the characters and get a sense of the meaning. Since the Japanese readings are not highly consistent (in a manner of speaking) I don't bother with reviewing readings. I let my actual reading take care of that. I think writing is helpful as it gives you another avenue to remember kanji: by "feel".

I am pretty satisfied with how things are working for me. When I get the number of difficult ones in my current group of 1000 down to a small amount I will import the next 1000 and do those. After that I will also likely do the kanji-only portion of Heisig's book 3 to get 1000 additional kanji.

[Lisa]

I've given up on handwriting after a year in China where I never needed it once. In fact, the only time I really needed to be able to write by hand was when sitting exams. After graduation, I stopped to learn the writing part, and I would have done so a lot sooner if I'd been able to.

That said, I'm careful to practice reading and I could probably get a character approximately right if I had to write it (remembering the meaning of components and a bit of logic helps). But handwriting is a skill that, for me, ranks far behind listening, speaking and reading.

[Tony]

I think young people in China have the same experience, since everything is so computerized, they don't write (by hand) as well as elder generations.

I remember when I was a kid, we spent a lot of time learning strokes (31 total) before started writing characters, not sure if it would be the same for CSLers. My experience of learning characters may not be relevant, since Chinese is my native language.

[ChineseTeachers.com]

The best tool we have found for learning and, importantly, remembering Chinese characters is www.Skritter.com. Worth a look!

Nicolas

[Chris]

Part of my interest in learning other writing systems is definitely to write them by hand. I try to write Chinese characters every day, if I can with a fountain pen. I find it also helps to a certain extent with recognition.

I'll also voice my support for Heisig, who truly makes learning characters so much easier and more efficient. That and a spaced repetition system and you'll never forget how to write them.

[Shanna]

It's true that knowing how to type the script is much more useful and practical these days. But for me, part of the fun of learning a language lies in learning how to write the script.

In Singapore, we learn chinese using the simplified chinese script. I can read the traditional script but when it comes to writing, I realised that I can't remember all the strokes. At first I didn't think it was a problem, but when i was learning japanese, I realised I couldn't write the kanji. But with my background in chinese, learning wasn't much of a problem.

To foreigners, learning the chinese script can be really daunting. (:

[bas]

I started learning Chinese 4.5 years ago. I have studied it by the internet through websites such as chinesepod.com and several chatrooms.

In the beginning I primarily used pinyin to chat. Later on I replaced my pinyin ability by chinese characters.

I basically bought a rather simple book and each day I used to type a couple of pages of that book. I looked up each character I encountered that I didn't know.

Now I am able to speak and write Chinese (by the computer very well). However, I am hardly able to write chinese by hand. Due to extensive reading I am able to write short notes in case foreign fellows need to take the taxi.

The lack of ability to write it by hand, does not border me. It only borders me that exams still require to be able to write it by hand, while in practise it is for a foreigner residing in another country than china, of no use.

The fact that I'll forget my writing ability prevents me from taking exams. I do not have any official qualifications for Chinese. However, this sometimes is burdensome in real life, coz ppl do think that you are lying. Anyhow, by calling in business matters and Chinese immigrants here you can create a kind of status so that you do not need to have the diploma anyway.

[Mitch]

Speaking of different writing systems: Does anyone have experience learning to read a language like Arabic or Hebrew, which do not indicate most of the vowels? Hebrew, for example, adds "vowel points" for learning materials, printed religious works, poetry, and younger children's works. But most material is not written with vowel points. Even trying to read something like Harry Potter is frustrating. If you don't already know the word--in the particular grammatical form--you're guessing at best. And using a dictionary is hard, because you need to know the root, which is not always obvious.
Does anyone have any experience or success learning to read languages like these?

[chris(mandarin_student)]

I am not finding enough time to comment on some of your recents interesting posts Steve. I am going to make some time to do so in a series of blog posts. This topic in particular is huge. I think technology and modern media have completly changed the learning of hanzi.

Just two observations, firstly I have been using Lingq a little recently for Chinese (pretty impressive) one significant difference about the lingqs that I don't think I would have if learning a phonetic language is that sometimes I am saving words that I know very very well to listen or speak, but am saving them because I can't read them.

For those that think they have an infallible way to learn to handwrite characters and they will never forget: I have observed that many younger Chinese who have come to England to work or study and have been here for sometime just using computers when they write Chinese, start to forget how to handwrite the less common ones. I have seen arguesments about a particular character and seen them struggle or fail when trying to show me how to write a particular character properly. A couple of friends admitted this problem. Also a Japanese colleague told me that mnay younger Japanese are loosing the knack of handwriing Kanji (anybody have opinions on this).

[chris(mandarin_student)]

BTW I didn't make it clear above, I strongly feel that I shouldn't be learning to read Chinese that I don't already know in the spoken form.
That is until of course I start reading more educated and/or historic texts that contain words that are not commonly spoken (the same happened with my mother tongue English). I am not really there yet but have come across a few like 拙著 (my unworthy writing, or humbly write) I guess you don't hear that spoken so often.

[Tony]

That's right, chris, if you say 拙著 to a Chinese native speaker, he probably needs 6 sec to figure that out.

[Marc H.]

Someone previously made the comment:

"Now I realise that I completely underestimated the usefulness of being able to read Chinese characters. Not so much on the street in China (where you can always ask people what a bus stop says or the menu, etc.) but because of the millions of Chinese internet sites out there. So there is all this valuable content that I have little chance of getting into."

I haven't studied Chinese, but I can say with my Korean study I find writing an extremely useful and valuable skill. As a foreign English teacher living in Seoul, I often carry a notebook as part of my Korean study. Whenever I'm having a conversation in Korean with friends or looking at a subway advertisement or reading a caption on TV, I'm constantly writing down new expressions. When
I make new friends and we exchange contact information, I often write that person's name in Korean. I also sometimes write my name in Korean so people will pronounce it correctly. In my situation, writing by hand is just common sense.

Writing Korean by hand can sometimes be slow and tedious for me, but I find it well worth the effort. I can also type in Korean on a computer and cell phone, and these are extremely useful skills as well, but I think ignoring the former skill robs one of the enjoyment of experiencing the language in all its forms.

I consider writing and reading just as important as speaking and listening. Again, written Korean looks much simpler than Chinese so I may be speaking a little ignorantly here.

A side note: Later this summer I'm planning to begin a study of Chinese hanja characters in order to improve my Korean vocabulary. (Much of the Korean language has its roots in Chinese.) Personally I'm looking forward to learning and writing those Chinese characters as well.