Comments on: Learning Kanji Using Imaginative Memory

By: John Fotheringham

John Fotheringham — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 03:36:10 +0000

For Japanese, Heisig created a second book called "Remembering the Kanji 2" that teaches you how to pronounce all standard use characters, with a major emphasis on phonetic components.

Unfortunately, he has yet to release such a version for simplified or traditional Chinese.

Online resources like Zhongwen.com are great, but in my experience, are best suited as a reference resource, not a method for actually learning characters. When I do want dig into a character's phonetic and ideographic components, I prefer YellowBridge.com, which I have just reviewed here:

http://l2mastery.com/featured-articles/review-of-...

]]>

By: Bryan Dunn

Bryan Dunn — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 02:11:22 +0000

Hi Everyone.

I suddenly became quite interested when you mentioned the phonetic compounds.

I was wondering if you have or know of any time saving method to study with the compounds?

I noticed http://www.zhongwen.com breaks characters down into phonetics sometimes, but so far I don't have a systematic methodology using phonetics.

Just curious

]]>

By: A Cast of a Thousand “Characters”: Learning to Read Chinese | Living, Learning & Teaching in Taipei

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:56:15 +0000

[...] Read my post Chinese Characters: How to Learn the Traditional & Simplified Forms Using Imaginative Memory. [...]

]]>

By: A Cast of a Thousand “Characters”: Learning to Read Chinese | Foreign Language Mastery

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 23:52:37 +0000

[...] Read my post Chinese Characters: How to Learn the Traditional & Simplified Forms Using Imaginative Memory. [...]

]]>

By: jf

jf — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 15:37:05 +0000

I agree. Learning to leverage phonetic patterns greatly improves one’s ability to guesstimate the reading of unfamiliar characters that contain familiar phonetic components. Can you share a link with us to your “Daily record” or was it done off-line?

]]>

By: glossika

glossika — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 12:27:05 +0000

I maintained a daily record of how I acquired about 4000 Chinese characters in my first year of study. I find that the elements are important, but Ash Henson and I are big proponents of 諧聲字 (phonetic compounds) because almost exactly 90% of the 50,000+ characters belong to this category enabling you to remember their pronunciation. This, along with the stories or histories of the characters, provides yet another anchor in my memory.

]]>