How to learn thousands of Chinese characters
Вставка
- Опубліковано 8 чер 2024
- Do you ever wonder how it is possible to memorize many thousands of Chinese characters? Does this require some great talent? Should I even bother trying? This video addresses five myths about Chinese characters to show that it is entirely possible to learn them, as all Chinese people manage to do this. And this type of writing is perfectly functional, it can handle any and all the needs of the modern world.
Many foreigners think that Chinese people need to learn tens of thousands of different letters, which is too hard.But in fact, Chinese characters are not the most basic unit of Chinese characters. Chinese characters are not equivalent to letters. In electronic characters, Kangxi radical is the most basic unit of Chinese characters. There are only 214. Chinese characters are composed of these "letters".
Yes, good point! It is incredibly useful to learn the radicals, they make learning characters much easier.
@@TheChineseAlphabet Even if you don't learn them all right away, learning say, the most common 50, can really boost your recognition rate and speed up interpretation.
That's not exactly right, but close enough. The 214 radicals were chosen to index characters for ordering in a dictionary, rather than to identify a set of components which are used across all characters. If someone were to start from scratch to create a set of the most used character components, that list would be somewhat different from the set of 214 radicals.
@@allendracabal0819 I certainly know it, because I am a Chinese, and these radical parts were designed for dictionaries during the Kangxi period. In fact, these radicals can be further divided into smaller parts, such as the Wubi input method and the Cangjie input method
how does this have less than 1000 views and its a year ago. this is a helpful video!
Glad you find it helpful!
Understanding the internal structure of chinese characters is why I personally think that traditional characters are easier to learn than simplyfied once. When we have 義 (traditional), I just have to remember, that is made up of 2 characters which I already did learn, which is 羊 and 我. In simplyfied version I have to learn a totally new character. In this case there are only 3 strokes, but not all simplyfied characters are that easy. furthermore when we have 議, the right side is not the same as the previous character in simplyfied, which means you have to learn 2 new characters. I think traditional characters are also much more beautiful. My recommendation is to be able to read both and be able to write one
I could not agree more! 😀
Disagree. Natives totally don't see it that way. I am a Chinese who is totally familiar (read and write by habd) with both traditional and simplified forms. The reason is that you are treating and using the language very different from natives.
@@NoohCee Oh yeah of course we foreigners have to use it like natives. Do I become native when I have HSK6 (or 9 now?)? When you already know the language and learn how to write, than it is a completely different task. Especially when you have 10 years of school education time to learn that. And second is, I saw that the most main land chinese are not even able to read traditional characters. They were so challenged that they gave up entirely. Why it is still not that much of a problem is, because (what natives told me) they guess which character it might be based on the context. It is totally okay when you have a different point of view. But you cannot expect that non natives are able to use and treat the language the same as natives. To get to that point needs a lot of time. My professor is learning now chinese since 50 years (!) and he admitted that he still sometimes makes mistakes, although he immediatly recognises the mistake. On the other hand, no matter which language, natives also do mistakes the whole time. When it is a native nobody is complaining but when it is a language learner people accuse they shall learn properly. Conclusion: dealing with the language is for natives and non-natives completely different. Language is a tool of communication and therefore, when people can understand each other, it doesn't matter if the sentence or expression was 100% correct according to the national language institute, which just by their personal thoughts decide what is right and what is wrong. Best regards
totally agree
if we are only going to read and understand (for translation etc), not have to write, then traditional characters having more number of strokes is not an issue. They are more elaborate, so easily to recognize and remember
Chinese characters have been written for thousands of years. This could a part of the proofs that Chinese characters make sense to their users.
Excellent point! I could not agree more!
Thank you for short coverage. I'm at the beginning of my way to learn chinese and this video motivated me a lot.
Perfect! You will not regret learning Chinese, that’s for sure!
Write radical form just need 200 word. Just recognize Just like recognize flower,road,people face. Radical 囗 ，related to mouth so 吃，喝，哭，口渴，many not related are 器官，嚣，吗，咖啡
Awesome video! Totally agree with all your points, but couldn’t have said it as well as you did haha. Thanks for the encouragement!
Thanks for the kind words!
Thank you for such a informational video and busting the myths. I was interested in leaning Chinese but it appeared so daunting before 😮
It is not easy, but there are ways that make it a bit easier. 😀
Thank you for demystifying what at first seems like an impossible task for a novice and for making the process more approachable. I am now more confident and excited about getting started.
Glad to see the video helps. At the end of the day, learning Chinese characters is about putting in the time.
5:20 ''Myth 4'' and then show 3 fingers. LOL Apart from that comic moment, great video! Helped me face the process of learning in a more optimistic manner.
😎
Precise, Perfect, to the point. Thanks.
Thank you!
Very informative! Thanks!
You’re most welcome!
Really good video! I would be curious to have your thoughts on Anki/flashcards to support the memorisation of characters. I have a book called "Reading and Writing Chinese" by William McNaughton, and writing is certainly one way to aid memorisation, but not the only way. Thanks!
I think Anki is great, our students are using it all the time. I think it is important to add some of the context for each character or group of characters, and Anki allows you to do that. You can easily cut and paste in images and even sound. Other flashcards I have not really used but I assume they work in a similar manner. Basically, anything that forces or pushes you to practice in a focused way is good.
Thanks a lot!!
Glad it was useful!
thanks , i will focus on the most used characters so i can atleast dicepher any phrase in mandarin
I think that is a good strategy!
character dictionaries do a wonderful job. they allow you to decompose any character down to its simplest radicals. You can search for all characters containing a given characters as a component....still, beyond a point it is difficult to understand why they are thrown together to create a new character with a more abstract meaning. I just found out yesterday that the 'old' 古and 'tree' radical are put together to create a character that means 'withered', 'dried'. Makes sense. An old tree is a withered tree. But how does 胡 become 'wild' or 'reckless' is a stretch. So, at this point, we need to conclude that more abstract (noun or verb) meanings are simply positied, loaded, onto new symbols created using existing ones as components - just so they can have a familiar looking new character for the more intangible noun or verb....That is how other languages work too, but they work with simple words (sounds) from a meta language - like latin, greek etc
胡 is still a mystery for all the linguists who try to find out the origins of the chinese characters. It is unclear if the right part is meat or moon, which look nowadays the same as a component but originally separated by the angle of the inner strokes. Therefore, it is not clear if the original meaning of this character was related to the body or related to time(sequence). Even in old chinese many characters had a shift in meaning. Almost all characters had concrete physical meanings. Sometimes they took a character which has the same pronunciation to write down the expression. Exemple is most likely Zi for son/child, which is in classical texts also in use for "you (formal)"/master. So although we can trace back many characters some are still to be discovered
It’s true that not everything can be easily explained, some things are definitely not intuitive. We also have to take into account the pronunciation of the characters and their components, and at times even their graphic shape. Thanks for the comment!
I’ve made a video about the comparison between Chinese and English and many videos teaching Chinese characters in graphic and funny ways.
If you think my videos are valuable. I hope you can recommend my videos to those who want to learn Chinese.
Wow thus is very pedagogical, i have been struggling with learning chinese. Thanks to this video.
We have all been struggling… 😀
Thank you for this video
👍
Thank you very much sir! greetings from Chile.
Wow, from Chile? Welcome to the channel!
Very sensible approach, this is. Basically what is true of Chinese writing and reading is true of other forms of writing and reading. After those first basic characters, more or less like "sight words" in English, Chinese learners are building their vocabulary based on practice and experience, and most of them are still building vocabulary at the end of high school - just like English teens. Even a native English speaker is unlikely to be able to learn more than a couple dozen new words overnight.
Very good point! There are a lot more similarities between learning different languages than we normally realize.
I picked up learning Mandarin 2 weeks back. Never knew a single chinese character before that not even any Greetings!! Now I am close to 150 characters and also giving my HSK - 1 in 2 weeks time. I am really happy learning mandarin. I can easily read(R) them but S, L, W is still difficult.
Wonderful to hear your enthusiasm! Keep at it!
Do you remember only pinyin or both pinyin and characters? Im learning chinese and I just passed hsk1 with 150 pinyin but I dont know any characters. can you give some tips
@@user-tw6qe3es4y I remember both. I cleared hsk2 recently. Planning for hsk3 3 months. I am enjoying the journey.
@@abhins242 how can you remember and memorize characters :/ I cant do that. I try to learn hanzi but 1 day later I forgot all. how do you study for characters. I can remember only pinyin
@@user-tw6qe3es4y actually remembering pinyin is good but it’s limiting. I suggest you make a flash card with a “character” that you come across and at the back of it write its meaning, some related words where it is readily used and if possible your own story/identification. There are many words with which I have associated some personal meaning just to remember it. I also frequently use Google translate, Pleco. I know it’s overwhelming and I am also a beginner but the more we see and practice the more we will become familiar with them. I sometimes just walk into the Chinese aisle in the library and try to read/guess the book titles and use Google translate (lens) to see the answer. I feel thrilled when I could read even just one symbol. For someone who never thought would be learning Chinese to one who can see familiarity with those characters, it’s a different feeling all together.
Nice video
Thanks for watching!
謝謝
😉
Coincidence the Chinese character for cat is _animal + miāo?_ 😂
Definitely not a coincidence. The word for cat is clearly connected with the sound the cat makes.
我觉得非常好👏汉子非常有意思😊和最好的爱好
我同意！✌️
Sir, where i can get those most used common 3000 chinese characters. can you give me the link or something? Please
Just pick up some textbooks for elementary schools (grade 1 to grade 3, 6 text books in total will give you about 2500 words). There are some textbooks in English, which shall only contain common words.
Alright where do we go from here? Where do we find the 500 common characters? Thank you.
Just pick up some textbooks for elementary schools (grade 1 to grade 3, 6 text books in total will give you about 2500 words).
26 letter or 3,000 characters 😅
👍
Long time ago, in a different century...
That's right! 😀
There are indeed tens of thousands of separate characters! It's just that you only need to learn four to six thousand as you said. Perhaps it would better to state that the myth as "you must learn tens of thousands of characters" to get your point across clearer.
👍
3500 common words are enough. The first version of the Chinese Character Encoding in electronic form published in 1980 only contains a little more than 7000 characters, which can cover 98% of all texts in almost every kind of article. The articles in newspapers often contain 3500 different Chinese Characters.
❤❤❤
✌️
I found mandarin to be surprisingly easy, probably the easiest I've studied.
That’s interesting, as most people would argue that it is pretty hard to learn Chinese. Why do you think it was easy for you?
That’s because you don’t know what you don’t know. Once you realize it you’ll know better. It’s one of the hardest language with the tones, characters, and the writing
@@TheChineseAlphabet Firstly there's no real grammar involved. You've got that whole aspect that can be ignored while studying. Secondly japanese is my first language so hanzi was very easy for me to learn. I was surprised that mandarin most of the time only had one reading for each hanzi. Japanese kanji for example has several different readings and it becomes frustrating even for native speakers. 生 in japanese has 13 different readings. Chinese hanzi is a lot more straight forward and logical. Kanji on the other hand was forced into the japanese language and doesn't fit.
I was also raised multilingual so the pronunciation wasn't difficult for me as it is with many japanese. I found that the tones and melody of mandarin made the words easier to remember. For a tonal language, mandarin is quite easy since there are few tones and it can get much more difficult such as with Cantonese or Vietnamese. Tonal languages such as mandarin also tend to be spoken slower than non tonal languages, so it was easier for me to grasp what native speakers were saying in mandarin.
I think it's a very logical language and that more people should study mandarin. I think many people are intimidated by mandarin since it looks exotic. Also, some people who have studied mandarin get upset at my opinion, I think maybe they feel that it belittles their accomplishment by me saying it's easy. This is only my own personal opinion and experience though.
@yasashii89 Makes a lot of sense! I think you had some “unfair” advantages there, which made a difference. The lack of declension and conjugation does in fact make the grammar much easier for foreigners. 👍
@@yasashii89at least japanese has furigana. Mandarin has no alternative script like hiragana to help foreigners read it. I think Mandarin has something like romaji.
Thank you professor. Very useful.
Just talk talk talk
Just learn 100 Chinese character pattern.using part. Eg 人。using丿 ，\to create word。人，八儿。人+一☞大，。天(人 =)，头 ( ⺀大),卖，火(人 丷), 灭灾，肉内。。。。
I agree, except perhaps with the word “just” because it does in fact take a lot of time and effort. Just like for Chinese speakers to learn English or other European languages. But breaking down complex structures into their components is a vital process in learning. Thanks for the comment! ✌️
Welll where are the tips to learn Chinese characters faster
Huh ?????
Huh???
@@TheChineseAlphabet look sir you said there are not 30000 but rather 3000 characters and it’s not everyone thinks etc etc now I was expecting practical strategies for betterment like hey look this character is a man a mouth a swan I don’t know some method to learn
Maybe I misread the title
Have a wonderful day sir
@amsumalivallaart2805 sorry to disappoint. I guess I could make a separate video on that.
@@TheChineseAlphabet thanks sir simple everyday conversations and strategies to remember and recognize characters and building vocabulary these would interest me and I suspect many other mandarin learners for I know you are brilliant
I thought the same as you.
So if I understand correctly, it is better to focus on the characters you see in Chinese words (and memorize them that way) instead of learning a lot of Chinese characters?
I have started learning Mandarin Chinese (as a hobby) and I would like to learn to speak and read Chinese. I know there are about 60,000 Chinese characters and if you know about 300 of them you can read quite a bit. I know that there can indeed be a big difference in the knowledge of characters of Chinese people depending on their level of education. I once read somewhere that a highly educated Chinese could know about 7,000 characters and if you know between 300 and 400, you will be able to read a Chinese newspaper.
So the best learning method is to focus more on the Chinese characters (and try to memorize them) and learn a new list of Chinese words each time until you know more and more characters. Instead of trying to memorize a lot of characters that you see, for example, on lists with countless characters?
(Please correct me if I misunderstood. English is not my native language, so I don't always understand everything in an English video.) I would like to learn to read and speak Chinese in an easy way. Do you have more tips for me?
In general, I think learning things in context is always the preferable way. So yes, learn words in phrase and sentences. Also, you need 3000 characters to read a newspaper, 300 is not enough for much. But it is still much better than 30. 😁
Thanks for your help.@@TheChineseAlphabet
What are talking endlessly about.
Read and read, who doesnt read cant read ever
So stop chitchat talking without result.😢☺️👋
You are right, at the end of the day it all comes down to actually learning those characters.
Strategies for which is the part you have omitted.