Cracking the chinese puzzles, which to buy?

[Janne]

When doing some searches on the forum concering the upcoming Heisig book for hanzi I ran into some threads concerning Cracking the chinese puzzles books by T.K. Ann. Seems they would be even better than Heisig, since I can do the stories if necessary myself and Anns book concerns pronounciation as well, plus they seem to be pretty deep and fun reading at the same time.

Now - what isn't really answered in these threads is how good the abridged version really is. I'm focusing on simplified only. What specifically do I miss out on, if I go with the abridged version? Feedback from anyone with experience from both is highly appreciated, and those who have any of the editions as well of course!

[Hedge]

I dont know about Cracking the Chinese Puzzles books, but you might want to take a look at Learning Chinese Characters by Alison and Laurence Matthews. The stories in that book also include pronunciations. Only covers HSK level A characters (800), but after that you should be able to make your own anyways.

[realmayo]

Agree with Hedge -- the Matthews & Matthews book is very good, I've used it to nail the first 800 characters or so. These are pretty much the most useful, and most used characters: now I know them, it opens up lots of grammar books, and example sentences, and basic readers, to me -- which means I can vary my diet of how I study Chinese.

If I'd started with the TK Ann books, this wouldn't be the case, because he doesn't prioritise the most-common characters so much.

But now that I've done the first 800, I'm finally starting with TK Ann.

Given that I''m only just starting on them, take what I say with a pinch of salt. But I actually have both the abridged and the full versions. The main difference is that full versions give lots of examples of "words", ie when new characters are taught, they are usually followed by a list of some of the two-syllable (or more) words which use that character. The abridged version doesn't do this.

Lots of people think that learning characters on their own is pointless, you need the vocab (which these characters form part of ) as well. I agree, and for that reason recommend the fuller versions of the books. However, I also have the Wenlin electronic dictionary, which can give me a list -- ordered by the most common first -- of words which use any given character ... so perhaps Wenlin + the abridged TK Ann is almost as good as the full versions of TK Ann? But then again, even if (when?) I have finished the TK Ann books and have learned the characters, I reckon I'll still browse through them occasionally, a relaxed way to refresh my memory. And in that case, the fuller versions would be much more attractive.

[Janne]

Thanks for the answers! Seems it would be a good bet to go on the full versions then, since I also would prefer being able to read through for repetition. I also have Wenlin, but as you say, it's more convenient to have it all in one place.

I already know approx 300 characters good, 300 pretty well and 200 in the workings. But I feel all but the most common tend to disappear from memory if I don't repeat them often. That's why I'm interested in a book based on a memory technique. I read the first pages of Matthew's book on Amazon and it looks really promising. It seem to have a good way of incorporating pronounciation as well, so I think I'll give it a try. I guess I will be able to go through it pretty quick, but at the same time I think it will do me good to have a system to "hang" my knowledge on for more longterm recall.

If only one did not have a (more than) full-time job, I reckon this monumental task I foolishly have embarked on would be easier to pull through. But giving up is simply not an option. Better to hunt for probably non-existing shortcuts then...

[Hedge]

You should also be using a Spaced Repetition System such as Anki, it will help your long term memory a lot!

[realmayo]

I've tried for the last few years to get over the hurdle of learning the first 500-1000 characters, and for me, it was the Matthews book + using a SRS (yes, Anki for me too, typing in the "stories" along side the characters) which has got me to do this successfully -- and very painlessly too, pretty easy going to learn this stuff this way over the past 3 or 4 months. Though it was my second attempt with the Matthews book, initially I'd discarded it as far too silly and light-weight.

I tweaked some of the Matthews stuff a bit though. For example:

They have four fairy-tale characters in their stories, one for each tone. I have actual people instead. This means I usually personalise each story (for example, first one is a particular tennis player, so sometimes those stories involve that sport, or take place on a tennis court.)

They have a slightly more complicated system for pronunciation "triggers", ie the same english word for "bao" and "biao" but with extra info for the latter, to indicate the "i" sound. I just have two different words for each instead.

Sometimes I give myself slightly more work to do, probably unnecessary but, for example, the "moon" component is also the "flesh" component -- they treat them all as moons, but I like to distinguish which is which.

I know too that I may have to unlearn some of this stuff when I really hit the TK Ann book. But actually, these stories are already fading into the background, for the longer-studied characters I rarely bring the story to mind any more, I just write the thing (or, at most, remember, aha, it's that part, with this radical, and so-and-so was involved somehow in there so it must be 3rd tone...).

The most time-consuming thing is making/tweaking the story for each character, and typing it up and putting it into Anki. This has wiped out whole Saturdays or Sundays. But remembering seems to be fairly effortless!

Now I'm trying to rush through the "basic" vocab (ie multi-syllable words) list for the HSK (given that it's a convenient list) before moving on the TKA. The Matthews book does actually give vocab at the same time as most of the new characters, I'd have done better to have learned these at the time, rather than in a big bunch now.

Edited August 26, 2008 at 12:13 PM by realmayo

[Scoobyqueen]

There is a guy on on this forum who raved about it. Cant recall his name. His aim was learning 5000 or 6000 characters and he made a good review of how Cracking the Chinese Puzzle was making this possible. Think his name was Fujigai or something like that. Nearly bought it myself because of his review.

[newyorkeric]

It was furyou_gaijin. It's one of the more entertaining threads:

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/13036-how-many-characters-is-enough&page=4