How I learned 4,000+ characters or Tuttle/Matthews “Learning Chinese Characters – Part 2”

[realmayo 1,824]

http://web.archive.org/web/20001218022900/http://www.haoyao.com/systemmethod.htm#body

Now this is a memory palace for Chinese characters!!

The Matthews & Matthews approach on the other hand doesn't root the stories in any single location.

 

 

[brownnoser 3]

 

1. Would you find this kind of material useful for learning hanzi?

2. If you learned your first 800+ characters using Tuttle, would you want to continue learning the next 3,200+ characters this way (provided all the stories and data were neatly prepared for you)?

3. Would you rather see this material in the form of a book/e-book/website/any other "proper" format (other than just plain excel/csv/Anki)?

 

1. yes

2. yes

3. no... anki please

[mac n cheese 1]

On 1/8/2021 at 10:38 AM, HSK Pro said:

1. Would you find this kind of material useful for learning hanzi?

2. If you learned your first 800+ characters using Tuttle, would you want to continue learning the next 3,200+ characters this way (provided all the stories and data were neatly prepared for you)?

3. Would you rather see this material in the form of a book/e-book/website/any other "proper" format (other than just plain excel/csv/Anki)?

1. Yes, I don't get to spend enough time on Mandarin these days, so the more spoon-feeding I can get, I'll take. 

2. Yes, Matthews has been unbelievably helpful. I'm about ½ way through now and started looking for similar materials to move to next, which is how I found this!

3. TL;DR ebook + basic anki. If the stories were in a printable format, much like the Matthews book (big character with story next to it, nothing too fancy), that would be nice. Currently I use a very helpful Anki deck to do the reviews for Matthews. Really all that these Anki cards need is one side with the character & it's number, and the other with the meaning (and maybe the story too).

[HSK Pro 11]

@艾墨本 – I’ve actually never tried memory palace, the example of crazy mnemonic feats would just be to prove the point that our brain seems to find this kind of learning quite sticky =D
@realmayo – Wow, that sounds like quite a lot of visual detail. I suppose it could be taken to any level of complexity – one could write a whole chapter about two components meeting somewhere, falling in love and then having a baby which would be the character. However, I have found that two short sentences work just fine for writing + pronunciation (as long as they are interesting and stand out) 😉
@brownnoser – thanks!
@mac n cheese – spoon-feeding is what I hope this could offer – so that after completing Tuttle’s 800+ character book, nobody has to write 3,200+ stories by themselves. Given all the feedback so far, I’m also leaning towards dropping an e-book online and perhaps complimenting it with Anki for revision (split into HSK 4, 5, 6 and Plus).

[Flickserve 1,079]

On 1/10/2021 at 6:52 PM, realmayo said:

The latter.

 

On 1/10/2021 at 9:35 PM, HSK Pro said:

俞 in ancient Chinese means affirmation/permission. However, it does have boat-related origins (symbolising something along the lines of a single-person kayak), which are explained quite well here: https://baike.baidu.com/item/俞/54117 I don’t think they had catamarans in ancient China though, so this is probably just an exaggerated description by Tuttle to aid memory.

 

 

Thanks for clarifying

[roddy 5,429]

On 1/8/2021 at 4:38 PM, HSK Pro said:

3. Would you rather see this material in the form of a book/e-book/website/any other "proper" format (other than just plain excel/csv/Anki)?

 

This isn't an 'or'. There's nothing preventing an excel file being made available now, and then a follow-up later on for those who want it. 为什么不兼得, as Google says when you ask it to translate 'porque no los dos' into Chinese. Are you planning to release something commercially?

[HSK Pro 11]

@Flickserve – no worries!

@roddy – hey Roddy, apologies, I replied to the e-mail you sent me on 3rd Jan, but now I see that it bounced back with “delivery incomplete”.

There are at least two things I still want to do before releasing this in any format:
1)    Story edits – Having gone through the material a number of times, I have compiled a list of improvements and corrections I want to implement
2)    Copyright check – study methods, definitions and related concepts are not copyrightable, but unique content can be - depending on the amount, “fair use” and a bunch of other laws. Sequels are a particularly funky area (for example, parodies of Harry Potter are allowed under copyright law…). Anyway – I want to make sure that Tuttle and the Matthews are appropriately referenced/acknowledged, in case of any content overlap.

To answer your question – no commercial impulse. There’s no way that spending a few more hours on a website/book/e-book would be more profitable than spending a few more hours at work before bonus season in Hong Kong (that 1 month of the year for which we slave away for 11 months lol).

However – by now I’ve probably spent over 2,200h with these spreadsheets and I want turn them into something more tangible, proof-read and elegant. Whether they end up on a website or are properly published in e-book/book form, if I just upload them now in their medium-rare state – I can’t do much of that anymore (for example, a publisher who offers an expert proofreader would not touch them). I’ve never seen any website, book, app or deck that covers 4,000+ characters with mnemonic stories for both writing and pronunciation – so I want to make this proper and epic. Might just help with the mid-twenties crisis. My apologies if this answer does not satisfy your question.