Remembering Traditional Hanzi: How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Chinese Characters Bk. 1 [Paperback]

This review comes in two parts. The first clarifies what this book is (and is not). The second chronicles what it did for my Chinese.

Part One:

The book consists of 1500 'frames'. Each frame teaches you how to write a character. A frame contains the character, and a 'keyword', such as "you (literary)" "peculiar" "crimson" "say" "speak" etc. These keywords correspond roughly to what the character means. What these keywords are is as close to the meaning as possible, given that it's out of context and in English. If you pick up, say, a newspaper, chances are you will recognise the characters and be able to turn them into keywords. You will likely get a stream of gibberish, but be able to catch the gist. What these keywords are is enough for you to know the right character to choose in a given situation, and be able to write it (I'll clarify this in part 2).

The ordering of the frames is cunning. In case you are not aware, most complex characters are composed of components put together. Usually, these are characters themselves. So the book gives you the simple ones first. Once you know these, it shows you how to put them together to make still more. Then it adds another simple one. And shows you the new combinations. Etc. This makes the whole process easier than if, say, you learn a complex character, only to meet its components later, which is likely to happen if you tackle the characters in some other order (such as frequency of use).

You are encouraged to use mnemonics. A common approach in the wider world is to use the etymology of a character as a mnemonic. Heisig explains why he's chosen not to do so in the intro. This seems legit (I'll say why in part 2). You are encouraged to make paper flashcards to review what you've learned (there's a better way - see part 2).

This book doesn't teach the writing and sound of a character simultaneously. Rather, it focuses on the writing, so you can learn the sound later.

The index is awesome and easy to use.

Part Two:

Doing this book was the very first thing I did in Chinese (before so much as even learning nihao), and I'm glad it's where I started.

I learned characters from the book, and reviewed them using an online flashcard program called Anki, which is free online, and even comes with a set of flashcards for this book that have already been made and shared by a generous benefactor! For more details you can check out ankisrs.net. Don't worry - it's virus-free and all that, and easy to use and has a good forum to help you out if you get stuck.

Learning to write the 1500 characters took 41 days, while working a job and having a life. Some days I did only 1, and once 84 (yes, they all stayed in memory). The more you practice, the faster and easier they begin to flow. Before you know it, you see a keyword, and out comes the character instantaneously.

Learning to pronounce them took a few days more. There is an index with the characters laid out with pinyin underneath them, and you can cover the pinyin and test your knowledge. (A word of warning - buy "pronounce" I mean be able to see the character and know instantly the pinyin. Being good at pronouncing Chinese sounds from pinyin will take a lot of listening and speaking practice!) It is during the reading phase that learning etymology (pictophonetic characters, X suggests the meaning, Y provides the sound and all that jazz) is helpful and interesting, and you can get that from online dictionaries. I can't be sure, but I think doing the etymology during learning to write would have muddied the waters more than it would have clarified them.

So after finishing the book, this is where you will be at. You'll be able to write the characters well from a keyword. Clearly this is a bit artifical - so how much use is it? Well, it's only a foundation. It's not very much on it's own. But it is a rock solid foundation. You can proceed with confidence in learning the language knowing that you have the ability to write the characters at your disposal. You know you aren't going to all of a sudden forget a character, and you know when you write a character that it's correct. And best of all, when learning words and sentences and phrases, you can have fun, without having to stop and learn new characters. (Obviously after 1500 you will occasionally, but after finishing 3000 this will become a rarity.)

My final vindication that doing this book was worth it came 8 weeks into learning Chinese, when I'd done this book (writing and reading) but nothing else.

I listened to the Pimsleur language tapes. These give you the phrase in English, followed by the Chinese for that phrase. I won't go into the pros and cons of Pimsleur here. But here was the amazing thing - from the English translation, knowing the keyword and knowing the pinyin, I could see Chinese subtitles in my head! Ish. They weren't perfect. For example, the Chinese call America "beautiful country". I couldn't guess that, so had to look up "America" in a dictionary. But once I'd done that, writing meiguo in characters was a doddle, because the foundation laid by the book is so reliable.

Obviously I'm still a hopeless beginner. I know almost no vocabulary that isn't obvious from the book. I have no grasp of grammar. I can't pronounce to save but life. BUT - being primed with a phrase in English, I can hear a phrase spoken once in Chinese, and immediately write the sentence down, quickly, stroke-for-perfect-stroke, checking a dictionary occasionally. (Crucially, checking dictionary not to see how to write the characters, but knowing which characters to use.) After 8 weeks!

After reading all the horror stories online about how impossible it is to learn to write, I am glad to discover that there is a way to do it that is actually effective.

In conclusion - this book teaches you how to write Chinese characters (and incidentally to read them). It doesn't teach you how to use them. That's up to you - it's called learning a language. A page of Chinese used to look like a page of hieroglyphics - an intimidating mystery. But now a page of Chinese looks like a page of French - something I don't yet understand, and can learn.

There is a dark side to this review, however:

A word of warning - half the battle is in your own head! A monumental task, which you know full well is gonna take weeks, will seem daunting. Impatience to be able to "do some real Chinese", and a general sense of tedium all combine to make the book psychologically terrifying if you approach it with a "bad" attitude, to which we are all predisposed in some way or another. I spent 4 months learning a few one day, only to learn none for days and weeks at a time. The sense of "I'd be done by now if only I done more before" made me sad. I kept up with the reviews on Anki, but only by wasting hours at a desk, listening to music, proceeding very slowly. Eventually I gave up reviews too, and forgot the 200 or so characters I'd learned. This isn't meant to read like a LiveJournal entry, I'm sharing this here to let you know how to cope. There are 3 things I did, one general, one for reviews, one for learning new ones.

General - Check out the blog alljapaneseallthetime.com. Some of his posts are "motivational" articles, and they'll help you see things in a good perspective. I promise it's not as naff as it sounds!

Reviews - I got this one from ajatt.com. Use the "timebox" feature on Anki and only do one minute's worth of reviews. Then do something else, then do another minute. It all seemed more approachable, and then I actually got "addicted" to reviews (like you can I got "addicted" to Facebook and running).

Learning - I invented this one. Take a craft knife and cut all the pages out of the book, except the intro and index. Stick a few pages in your pocket. Learn a character here, a character there. I learned mine on the tube, on the loo, waiting in a queue, in bed. This is good because you can get more done, because you don't need the book with you to learn. It's also better for your memory doing a few here and there than doing a long session at a desk. If you are naturally averse to cutting up a book, don't forget that this isn't a reference book, or something you might want to go back and read for pleasure. Your goal is to finish it and never need to touch it again.

To clarify, the 8 weeks mentioned above only happened after dealing with my own study skills over 6 months, while getting no Chinese done at all. Hopefully you can get yours sorted out quicker!

This book introduces you to over 1000 Hanzi characters and teaches you interesting ways to remember the symbols. Hanzi is made easier if you already have knowledge of Japanese Kanji.

So far, after reading the thorough explanation in the authors' Introduction and learning characters from a few lessons, I'm convinced that this is the right (i.e. effective) way for English speakers to learn to read full-form characters. (Writing takes a bit more effort, and some practice with it may help before revising what is learned here.) This is a great aid to learning a vital part of Chinese languages - literacy skills.

The sheer burden of memorising characters is enough to put off many learners of Chinese languages from doing any more than dabbling at the fringes of literacy, but this book systematises learning so that an adult speaker of (a) European language(s) can apply already existing skills to the task. This can give the learner the potent understanding of the written language to the same extent as, say, a Japanese learner of Mandarin has - a sound basis for progress in combining literacy with oral and aural skills.

Is there an effective alternative? Not so far as I have seen: either the involved storytelling disappears up its own posterior, complete with the burden of pronunciation and meaning in Mandarin (as in the Tuttle attempt), or the learner has to face years of mindless drilling as if s/he were a Mandarin-speaking child with 15 or so years of full-time effort to spare to gain competence in literacy (as in most attempts to teach Chinese languages). Of course, you could opt for illiteracy, or the absurd approach of courses which show you Chinese menus in pinyin and assure you you're making progress. (As we say in Scotland, "Aye, right!")

Oh, and the alternatives generally offer simplified characters, which immediately remove many of the links with Chinese literature and culture. (^�, love, without �S, heart, anyone? Truly dystopian.)

This book is highly recommended. (By the way, there are useful Android apps to back up learning.)