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leosmith -



Quote:

Any given character only has one radical.

I guess I wasn't referring to the radical then, but the "components" of the characters (sorry, I
don't know the correct name for the components). I've heard that about 30% have readings that can
be determined by the components. Sound right?



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gato -

Actually, I think these books will be pretty useful to those of us who already read Chinese but
haven't memorized the characters well enough to write them by hand.










simonlaing -

Hi guys,

I feel bad coming into the conversation late but I felt obligated to put my two cents in.
Part 1/2
First this is not the first time this type of book has been done.
Two books spring to mind. One use the herzig style a bit of making up stories for the radical
parts, but is a collection of vocabularies around certain topics. It's call Urban Chinese. I
thought it's explanation of measure words and the connections of the measure words to parts of
words they measure can be quite good.

The second and in my view superior book is a Key to Chinese Speech and Writing
http://www.chinesetutor.net/2006_04_...ndWriting1.jpg

massive and unnecessary inline image removed. Roddy
and a link to another pic
http://www.chinesetutor.net/2006_04_06/AkeytoChineseSpeechandWriting1a.jpg
It is written by a French Guy Joel Bellassen, and is a translation of the french book that he
wrote.
The First part on speaking is not so long but as he introduced radicals and then the words that
use the radicals he still keep the pinyin there. What's more he tells of the background of the
characters so you see the eye yan radical was rounded first then square then veritical.
He also does a good job writing short paragraphs that progressively use the words and characters
that you have learned. Also unlike the herzig book it is soft on the amount of English written,
mostly at the beginning dicussing placement of the tongue, in the vocab section talking about the
history and what connection to make with each character. (There are also english cultural
paragraphs at the end of each Chapter. Some times these are the stories behind idioms.)










simonlaing -

Part 2 of 2

I think this latter book is superior for beginners for several readings:
1. There is pinyin included as you go along, so you can speak some sentences after the 3 lesson or
so.
2. It does break the characters into parts to make them easier to memorize, but it uses the
original Chinese way of thinking about them.
3. The way it is constructed with dialogues and paragraphs, gives you a feeling of accomplishment
while limitting the vocabulary to words easy to link with the other words you have learned.
4. The Herzig is unrealistic for people who want to learn Chinese to communicate. Most people drop
Chinese after the first semester, and you say you have to study for 7 months before you can speak.


The new practical reader also has some radicals in it's text , but these seem like an after
thought to help with learning to write the characters, when I think they are more important to
structure your way of learning the language.
http://www.chinesetutor.net/Books/BK...nyukeben1.html

I teach English to many Chinese students, some of whom have never opened their mouths in class to
speak English.They have to learn the words all over again pretty much. (At the time we just needed
it for the test) . And probably this method will be good for taking the test, but a book that
leaves you unable to communicate orally is doing a disservice.

I did the reverse and learned only pinyin without reading and writing and regret it tremendous as
I had to go back and learn almost all the words again connecting the pinyin meaning with the
writing the character in my brain.
It seems like the supporters are suggesting that you learn all these word's meanings and then
later go back and learn their pronunciation. I can't imagine the time consumed.

Good luck,
have fun,
SimoN










JimmySeal -

Simon,
Could you provide an image from later in that book? I'm curious to see how it presents characters
towards the middle of the book.










Mugi -



Quote:

Originally Posted by leosmith
I guess I wasn't referring to the radical then, but the "components" of the characters (sorry, I
don't know the correct name for the components). I've heard that about 30% have readings that can
be determined by the components. Sound right?

There's no absolute figure - it depends on the individual's knowledge of Chinese. How many
characters do you "know" in Putonghua? Do you have a knowledge of other dialects? Do you have a
knowledge of Middle Chinese phonology? Do you have a knowledge of other languages influenced by
Chinese? For me personally, the percentage is probably closer to 70%. For someone with extensive
knowledge of Middle Chinese, it's probably closer to 90%. For a non-Chinese university student
with one year under their belt, probably closer to 10%. But I really have no idea - these are just
guesses based on my personal experience and may not bear out in data from a scientific survey.

Moreover, these percentages I'm floating don't represent an exact pronunciation match - they
represent the narrowing down of an unknown character's pronunciation from hundreds of
possibilities to 3 or 4.










Mugi -

Jimmy, taken in isolation you are right, there is nothing that dictates how a particular character
should be pronounced. But Chinese characters are part of a system, and in that context there are
components in many (in fact the majority) of characters that do hint (to greater and lesser
degrees depending on the idividual reader's knowledge) at how to pronounce it. You may wish to
learn the pronunciation of every character independently, but I personally am not one to look a
gifthorse in the mouth (in fact I couldn't, even if I wanted to - if I didn't know the
pronunciation of 柏 already, I would automatically guess that it is "bai", failing that, I would
guess "bo". Why don't I make a guess at another pronunciation? Because I can see the phonetic
component 白 and it tells me that the character is most likely pronounced "bai" or "bo". The 白
portion of the character dictates that it should be verbalized in a certain way.)


Quote:

As you yourself have said, the Japanese have been doing it for centuries.

As I also implied, this is hardly a model that should be mimicked; I would be surprised if there
were a less efficient writing system in the world than Japanese!



Quote:

Anyone who would confuse these with actual etymologies shouldn't be trying to learn Chinese and
should probably get their head examined while they're at it

Quite right you are - but reality is often stranger than fiction. A couple of years ago an
(intelligent) friend of mine was learning to read and write Japanese in earnest (she grew up here,
so can speak fluently but went to a missionary school so never learnt to read and write) and was
using a mnemonic system - I can't remember how many times she came to me asking about this
character or that, clearly misconstruing the mnemonic for a genuine etymology.
While I concede the examples of obvious mnemonics you give, there are still a number where the
lines aren't so clear to a beginner: numbers 77 and 78, and "wealth" on pg54 in the simplified
character PDF seem quite plausible, but are inaccurate. I will confess, the more examples I read
the more clearly the mnemonics come across for what they are and not attempts at legitimate
etymological explanations, so I may have been a bit hasty in my criticism here ...










leosmith -



Quote:

I think this latter book is superior for beginners for several readings:
1. There is pinyin included as you go along, so you can speak some sentences after the 3 lesson or
so.
2. It does break the characters into parts to make them easier to memorize, but it uses the
original Chinese way of thinking about them.
3. The way it is constructed with dialogues and paragraphs, gives you a feeling of accomplishment
while limitting the vocabulary to words easy to link with the other words you have learned.

So you prefer to do everything at once, which is pretty much the opposite of Heisig's philosophy
of divide and conquer.



Quote:

4. The Herzig is unrealistic for people who want to learn Chinese to communicate.



Quote:

And probably this method will be good for taking the test, but a book that leaves you unable to
communicate orally is doing a disservice.



Quote:

It seems like the supporters are suggesting that you learn all these word's meanings and then
later go back and learn their pronunciation.

In case anyone missed this the first time, the Heisig method (or the Herzig) accomplishes the same
thing as traditional methods. It just does it in a different order:


Quote:

Normal road to literacy:
1)learn words & their characters
2)read simple literature
3)repeat steps 1 & 2 many times
4)read normal literature

Heisigs road to literacy:
1)learn characters (Heisig)
2)learn words
3)read simple literature
4)repeat steps 2 & 3 many times
5)read normal literature



Quote:

Most people drop Chinese after the first semester, and you say you have to study for 7 months
before you can speak.

For 2000 characters, I studied 10 hrs per week for 7 months. But think of it as 1 to 1.5hours per
10 characters, depending on the person and whether one uses an SRS. How many months it takes
depends on how many hours per month one works.



Quote:

I did the reverse and learned only pinyin without reading and writing and regret it tremendous as
I had to go back and learn almost all the words again connecting the pinyin meaning with the
writing the character in my brain.

That's interesting. I'm learning pinyin first too. But because of my knowledge of Kanji, I
recognize many characters already, and I often glance at chinese writing and know which chinese
word I'm looking at. Learning to read after going through Heisig will be quite easy for me. Good
luck with your traditional methods though.










Mark Yong -



Quote:

Originally Posted by gato:
I'm trying to think whether this method of learning the character but not the pronunciation will
help one navigate the streets or use a map.

JimmySeal wrote:
Absolutely. This method takes one's character recognition to astronomical levels. In fact, when I
went to Taiwan last month, I was able to read signs and menus that I couldn't pronounce and was
able to communicate what I needed by writing and pointing, something that fluent pinyin-only
learners can't do.

As a native speaker of Cantonese and a late-learner of Mandarin, I often have problems speaking
to, and understanding my fellow mainland Chinese counterparts when conversing with them. Often
times, I resort to writing e-mails and IM's using Chinese, and this effectively bridges the gap.
The funny thing is, there are many words that I write that I do not know the pronunciation for (in
these instances, I use the IME writing pad to generate the characters)! So, on that note, I fully
agree with JimmySeal above.

In a couple of my previous forum threads, I discussed this concept of the universality of 漢字
Chinese characters, as used in China, Japan and Korea, and how - once upon a time - there existed
a common written language, i.e. 文言 Literary Chinese, that bridged the gap of different spoken
tongues via a common written language.

A little closer to home, even once upon a time before the advent of the Mandarin vernacular
language, speakers of different dialects all across China could communicate via the written word,
with absolutely no recourse to a common spoken language.










Mark Yong -



Quote:

Originally Posted by gato:
I'm trying to think whether this method of learning the character but not the pronunciation will
help one navigate the streets or use a map.

JimmySeal wrote:
Absolutely. This method takes one's character recognition to astronomical levels. In fact, when I
went to Taiwan last month, I was able to read signs and menus that I couldn't pronounce and was
able to communicate what I needed by writing and pointing, something that fluent pinyin-only
learners can't do.

As a native speaker of Cantonese and a late-learner of Mandarin, I often have problems speaking
to, and understanding my fellow mainland Chinese counterparts when conversing with them. Often
times, I resort to writing e-mails and IM's using Chinese, and this effectively bridges the gap.
The funny thing is, there are many words that I write that I do not know the pronunciation for (in
these instances, I use the IME writing pad to generate the characters)! So, on that note, I fully
agree with JimmySeal above.

In a couple of my previous forum threads, I discussed this concept of the universality of 漢字
Chinese characters, as used in China, Japan and Korea, and how - once upon a time - there existed
a common written language, i.e. 文言 Literary Chinese, that bridged the gap of different spoken
tongues via a common written language.

A little closer to home, even once upon a time before the advent of the Mandarin vernacular
language, speakers of different dialects all across China could communicate via the written word,
with absolutely no recourse to a common spoken language.












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