What is Reddit's opinion of Remembering Simplified Hanzi 1: How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Chinese Characters?

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I can't tell you any more, I'm afraid - it was my best guess as someone who has taught Deaf students and also has a linguistics degree.

Something like Remembering the Hanzi takes an approach that doesn't focus too much on sound with more focus on meaning. I've only used the Japanese equivalent, though, so I don't know how similar it is.

Remembering Simplified Hanzi 1: How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Chinese Characters https://www.amazon.com/dp/0824833236/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_fab_kBGHFb2H2H3CN

I’m sure there is a free pdf of it somewhere too. I highly recommend following the authors method to a T until you complete book one. Doing this along side your study you will be a legend among your class.

I am very passionate about you doing this and NOT the methods the others say. As I strongly believe this will give you the greatest results the fastest

In this context, I would strongly suggest you work through all the books of Heisig's Remembering the Hanzi. You will learn how to write characters and how to combine them to form words. Use flashcards to systematically review the material.

After that year, you still won't be able to write a single sentence in Chinese and barely read anything. But you will then be able to work really fast through a beginner's course because you will have familiarity with characters and vocabulary and you will retain that speed boost will into your intermediate studies.

And it has the advantage that you won't learn grammar or pronunciation incorrectly, leading to 'fossilized errors' (things learned wrongly that can't easily be unlearned).

There actually is a trick, it's just that the Chinese do not use it. James W. Heisig developed an incredibly effective memorisation technique for Hanzi. While it does not make learning characters easy, it succeeds at making it easier and less boring.

https://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Simplified-Hanzi-Meaning-Characters/dp/0824833236#

Seeing no better advice yet, I would try italki (what I use, though in my case for Japanese). Particularly in the case of Mandarin you should be able to find native speakers via italki willing to help you 1-on-1 over Skype for less than the cost of any kind of instruction from people living here in North America. If italki is too expensive, I would look for other online options with as small of class sizes as possible to maximize your practice time. If learning Mandarin is anything like learning Japanese (my experience), you will also want to avoid hearing other non-native speakers (ie. students) speaking your target language so you don't pick up their bad pronunciation.

Assuming you go the italki route, check around for vbloggers on YouTube giving away italki promotions before you sign up (or wherever you can find a promo). Usually you can score an extra $10 for your lessons.

If you want to learn Chinese writing, I'd recommend a system like the one used in this book: https://www.amazon.ca/Remembering-Simplified-Hanzi-Book-Characters/dp/0824833236. I used the equivalent by the same guy for Japanese ("RTK"), the idea being that Chinese characters can be broken down into simple parts you can recognize easier. An fast example is that forest (森) uses 3 trees (木), so if you learn 木 first that's easier to remember than the 12 individual strokes... Another quick one, "difficult" (難) can be reduced to 2 components most people call "Sino-" and "turkey", etc... Heisig then uses mnemonics (little stories) to tie them together and help you memorize them.

Anyways best of luck. I've heard getting used to speaking a tonal language is tricky, but that Mandarin grammar is relatively straightforward (compared to Japanese).

Is it against conlang rules for me to say, just start learning Mandarin? Man, I wish someone had told me to start studying a foreign language during all my wasted videogame hours. You can learn a language now and do a conlang if you want later, and the conlang will be better of for it.

I don't know if you're taking a course in Mandarin or are trying to be a linguist, but even without those goals learning another language is a vastly better use of your free time.

You said "began learning Mandarin a few weeks ago and I love it". If you love it, actually continue doing it. Make it your hobby, which you do in your free time. Not an just a little side project hour a day thing (unless you only have an hour a day). That is if you actually want to ever learn it.

And if you're actually serious about learning Mandarin, you can't keep doing it in Pinyin. You need Hanzi. http://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Simplified-Hanzi-Meaning-Characters/dp/0824833236

Try the Heisig method: https://www.amazon.de/Remembering-Simplified-Hanzi-Meaning-Characters/dp/0824833236

After 5 years of failing to remember Hanzi, I did this and after 6 months I learnt all 3000 Hanzi (reading and writing) with 1 hour study time each day.

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Heisig originally developed this method for Japanese Kanji learning and it's quite popular there. Here, a video explains it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sspUdoV9Il0 (it's the same thing for Chinese)

Remembering Simplified Hanzi takes this to the extreme. It’s a bit controversial, but I like to look up characters that just won’t stick in my mind.

Only solution

https://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Simplified-Hanzi-Meaning-Characters/dp/0824833236/ref=nodl_

As a heads up, please note reading and pronunciation are effectively the most difficult parts of learning Chinese as a native English speaker. Not impossible. Just a long journey.

My recommendation on the quickest path for what it’s worth. Month 1: Learn pinyin and tones. There are a lot of good free resources for this. I’d suggest a pronunciation app like Super Chinese.

Months 2-4: study Heisig’s Remembering the Hanzi vol. 1 * it is critical to note this is NOT a means of expanding your vocabulary, but instead facilities your ability to recognize and learn Hanzi. For more information as to why see Matt v Japan’s breakdown of the same method applied to learning Kanji > here.

Months 3-24: use DU Chinese app to read while listening(RWL). RWL is a proven way to increase vocabulary, comprehension, and pronunciation. Study Remembering the Hanzi vol 2!

Hope this helps.

Last thought: you may ask- “hey! Why don’t I just learn with DU from the beginning!” The answer is- watch the YT video. You may find it difficult to learn characters from simple exposure. It helps tremendously to be able to break down the components of characters and hook these components to “key words” already in your knowledge bank vs brute force memorization. However, ultimately the journey is yours to decided. ✌🏾

 

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I wholeheartedly agree!

Here is my plan, I have been working through graded readers and such and am around the ~500 character and ~1000 word level, and can have basic conversations with tutors. I have some extra time now so I picked up https://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Simplified-Hanzi-Meaning-Characters/dp/0824833236 Remembering the Simplified Hanzi which teaches 3000 characters with mnemonics as a fun way to complement my other learning and level up my chinese character skills. I also find chinese characters themselves fascinating, and love looking and dictionary entries like https://www.dong-chinese.com/dictionary/search/%E8%B4%AE Dong Chinese which show etymology and pictures of how the character developed!

As part of my journey from these ~500 characters to ~3000, I thought it could be fun to have something where I can mark which characters I have seen before to have a visual representation of my learning, hence why I created this PDF!

I think this trend comes from our friends on the japanese side, who seem to have a set pathway of learning 2200 kanji, then a core 2k/6k/10k sentence deck, and then jumping into native media.

This one

https://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Simplified-Hanzi-Meaning-Characters/dp/0824833236

Also, I really recommend this one. It may seem not very useful for a beginner, but you will understand the importance of the knowledge around HSK 3 level and up.

https://www.amazon.com/Most-Common-Chinese-Radicals-English/dp/7800525767/ref=pd_bxgy_2/145-8458271-6890721?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=7800525767&pd_rd_r=03def897-a83a-470f-8043-4347bad04851&pd_rd_w=FICSH&pd_rd_wg=FMKIm&pf_rd_p=f325d01c-4658-4593-be83-3e12ca663f0e&pf_rd_r=M8E4Q3W1PF8XYYTQRD0B&psc=1&refRID=M8E4Q3W1PF8XYYTQRD0B

I highly recommend getting Remembering the Hanzi by James W. Heisig. It teaches you how to use the components of each character to build up stories making it not only easy to remember how to read and write each character, but actually makes it pretty hard to forget them. It also avoids having to write the same character hundreds of times which is really not that great for remembering them. I used this method for learning Japanese about 10 years ago and it made learning characters in both Japanese and Chinese fairly easy.

That being said, handwriting characters isn't that useful unless you are planning to go to school in China where you'll be expected to write your tests by hand. Most writing these days is done on computers, smartphones, etc., even the HSK has a computer-based version. I still think learning to write characters by hand is fun and interesting, but you might want to consider whether or not it is worth taking the extra time to learn.

I'd also recommend listening to the You Can Learn Chinese Podcast discussing the topic.

Remembering the Hanzi?

http://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Simplified-Hanzi-Meaning-Characters/dp/0824833236 and http://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Traditional-Hanzi-Meaning-Characters/dp/0824833244 maybe.

You need <em>Remembering the Hanzi</em> by Heisig.

Before the class starts, buy and use Heisig. If your serious about learning the written language, it's by far the best way to begin. Then you can tackle spoken much more easily when you arrive.

I second all the other advice about flashcards, language partners, etc.

You might want to have a look at Anki on the iPhone/pc and Heisig's books - I smashed through 2000+ kanji in a few months without it being too much of a chore and have remembered them for 7 years.

This problem was solved a few years ago: buy and use Heisig

I would use this or this to start learning your first couple thousand characters while supplementing that with a coursebook for beginners (like Assimil or Teach Yourself) and graded readers.

Learn the radicals and how the characters are put together, don't just try to memorize each character as a set of random squiggles.

If you're serious, you should start by getting Heisig and learning a lot of characters. If you were learning English, you'd learn the alphabet first, right? Heisig's book takes the same approach. #

Once you've done that (and you're looking at months, not days) then you need to get your tones right. This is really, really crucial. Hire a tutor, go to classes, whatever it takes. No book can help you avoid this.

You'll then do best by carrying on with classes and using whatever textbook the teacher recommends. The point of learning a language is to communicate! But if you want to really engage full-on with how the language works, the have a try at Chinese Language Skills for Britain. It's material from a research project at Oxford University students. It's brutal. None of this "Hello David, ni hao Xiao Wang" stuff; you read a Chinese newspaper article in the first lesson. If you put the work in, you'll learn a lot. It helps if you'd consider yourself Oxbridge material.

For the rest of us, you could try Teach Yourself Chinese. I used an earlier edition and found it one of the better books.

# This is a novel approach in Mandarin because Heisig only published his Chinese book a few years ago. The Japanese equivalent came out in the 70s and is now one of the standard ways to learn that language.