NPCR) Help with Textbooks and Chinese in General

[牛juice]

大家好！我叫牛juice。我會說日本語，但是我想學習中文。請你邦我嗎？

Hello everyone, I'm 牛juice, long story, anyways I am a student of Japanese and I have been fighting the urge to study Chinese.

I think it's a beautiful langauge, but I needed to keep my Japanese studies for the test to get into a good uni. Now that the test is over I am going to start Chinese starting on the first day of the year. I can allready read 2000 漢字, but Japanese is a mix between simplified and traditional. I have a huge interest in Taiwan so naturally I am going to learn 繁體字 but the professors I talked to in charge of Chinese in the uni I am going to go to is a symplified 漢字 enthusiast. (I don't think he would approve of my interest in Taiwanese pop. :L) So I will have to learn to write that for school. (By the way, how do you write "symplified hanzi" in English? 謝謝您！)

I used Heisig's method with Anki so I bought the symplified hanzi book and I will work through that the first month and finish he other 1500 hanzi when the other book comes out. (Which he says is soon.) After 6 months and 3000 hanzi I think I will learn the 繁體字 forms of the 3000 漢字. While I haven't really started Chinese I do know the basics and I learned a lot from both Japanese and Korean. My goal is to get 8000 words done before September -- A goal I think I can do considering my vocab intake of Japanese but this is a different language so I may have to adjust my expectations.

Anyways, I decided on NPCR as my textbook but it's so confusing. There are multiple editions. (1st/2nd) There are multiple language options. (English/Chinese/etc) There are even DVD's for the series. I don't plan on using a workbook and I don't think I would ever need the teacher's guide or DVD series. I use Lang-8 for help or ask my firends, so I just looking for the text. So, what version of the text should I get? I had a hard time searching on Amazon for the new editions. (Are they the bright red ones?) Where did you get your books?

Thank you so much for reading this and (an early) 聖誕快樂！

[OneEye]

By the way, how do you write "symplified hanzi" in English?

Simplified hanzi. With an i. Which language do you speak that uses a y?

finish he other 1500 hanzi when the other book comes out. (Which he says is soon.)

He has been saying "soon" for a few years now. At one point I said I'd be surprised if it were released any time in 2009. At this point I'll be surprised if it's even released in 2011.

As for your question about which NPCRs to get, the ISBNs for mine are:

Book 1: 7561910401

Book 2: 7561911297

Book 3: 756191251X

I don't have the other books because I've begun using a different series. If you want the workbooks, it looks like they are paired with the textbooks on Amazon under "Frequently Bought Together."

I didn't know about the 2nd edition until you mentioned it and I Googled it. There aren't even reviews for it on Amazon yet, though they are listed. I think you'll find that nearly all the helpful resources that exist for NPCR are for the 1st edition.

[牛juice]

Thanks -- sorry for the English stupidity. XD Spelling is obviously not my strong point.

Heisig just had his first child so I think I will give him a few more months before I give up on him. But, if not I can always just fill in the blanks with a frequency list.

I think I might just try the 2nd edition anyways. I'll look into it more.

Those ISBNs are helpful. Thanks

Your probbaly right but I heard the content is the same between the versions but the organization like word lists and art is different. So I think it would be compatible but I'm not sure.

[renzhe]

I don't think that there will be any huge, crippling differences between different editions of NPCR. Whichever you get should be fine. The DVD footage can be found on youtube. NPCR itself is a good textbook, but make sure to read all the threads on here discussing self-teaching. A textbook itself is likely not enough.

Japanese Kanji are simplified, but they are closer to the traditional hanzi than to simplified hanzi (the Japanese simplifications were more conservative). If you learn simplified, you'll be mostly set.

[牛juice]

Renzhe, Thanks for the advice and the welcome.