Best way to learn to read/write Chinese?

[Mark Yong]

A friend of mine recently asked me how I managed to teach myself to read Chinese, and what I consider to be the best method of learning. Since the question of "best method" has never really crossed my mind, I decided to take some time to break it down.

In general, I would say that there are two main paths towards learning Chinese characters:

1. Learning words as they are spoken. This means that you learn to write the simple spoken words (e.g. 謝謝你, 對不起, 你好嗎?) , and then progress to more difficult ones (e.g. 子曰, 學而時習不亦説呼).

2. Learning words in increasing order of written difficulty. In a broad sense, this means starting with words like 人, 大, 小, etc. first, and eventually reaching the likes of 龍, 龜, etc.

Method 1 is the one employed by the school curriculum. Because I was not formally schooled in Chinese, I learnt my characters via Method 2 (with some training from my late grandaunt).

This question is not an easy one to answer, simply because difficulty/complexity in the meanings of the spoken words and phrases in Chinese are not congruent with the difficulty to write the words themselves. For instance, 謝 (thank you) has 18 strokes (13 in Simplified Chinese), while 正 (righteousness) has only 5.

[opper567]

I think the best way to learn how to write the characters is to have a bunch of flashcards, one side has english meaning and pinyin pronounciation and the other side has the hanzi. You go face the english text so you can see it and write the hanzi on a piece of paper. If you can successfully write it go to the next card. If you cant write it, put the card in another pile and go the next one. When you are done, go to the pile of characters you couldn't write and repeat the process. These cards are also good for vocabulary if you look at the characters and try to guess the meaning and pronounciation. I learned about 700+ characters and 1000+ words this way in one summer.