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Memorizing Language / Spelling Techniques?
NotesSensei writes "My kids are learning Chinese in school. While the grammar is drop-dead simple, writing is a challenge since there is no relation between sound and shape of the characters. I would like to know any good techniques (using technology or not) to help memorize large amounts of information, especially Chinese characters. Most of the stuff I Googled only helps on learning speaking."
Everyone here seems to be missing the point. We have advanced powerful cheap technology that is infinitely better than a human brain at memorizing things like character symbols and vocabulary.
Don't memorize anything. Let the computer do the translating. That's what computers are good for. Humans are not good at this. That is why it is so hard. So do the obvious and let the computer do the translation.
Got a little camera like the one in cell phones? Plug that camera into your hand held PC/internet/MP3player/telephone iTurd whatever. Point the camera at the kanji that you want translated. Press the button on the iTurd. Glance briefly at the little iTurd screen. Trust the iTurd ap program to have done an optical kanji recognition on the characters that it just imaged and is giving you the correct English/Finnish/Thai//Wolof/Whatever translation.
Tech people seem to have this obsession with doing things that prove to themselves and other people that they are 'smart'. They believe that just because they have mastered technology, then they are under some obligation to themselves or their class that they must master all things that are difficult in order to recertify their 'smart person' credential. So they feel the need to memorize 5000 kanji, or play a difficult Bach invention on an aucostic piano, or run a marathon, or to get themselves killed attempting to 'win the hearts and minds' of people who have neither.
Don't waste your time, and abandon your hang-ups about your smartness. Let the $200 computer master 50000 kanji, let your $50 MIDI synth play Bach, let your car take 20 miles in comfort, and let the expendable fools go to the other side of the world and get killed.
Your 'smartness' is certified by your unwillingness to do these things yourself, the hard and dumb way.
I studied Japanese. It was about the time that personal computers were just beginning in 1979. The first time that I saw an optical-character wand read digits (in 1981) I knew that there was NO FUCKING WAY that I was going to spend 10000 hours committing 10000 kanji to memory. That's what computers do. I'm a better person because I didn't do it.
Please spare me the horseshit about how the discipline of memorizing and learning makes a better person and builds character. Look at those assholes who spend their life memorizing the Quran, and then go blow up a bus or day-care center.
Memorization lost its validity the day that computers started selling for $50. And that was a long time ago. So what that I can't pick up a Japanese newspaper and know what it says just by looking at it! I've got a $100 1GigaHertz 400MegaFlop microPC in my hand that does it just as well.
And I spent the 10000 hours smoking weed and fucking beautiful girls instead of memorizing kanji. Life is a series of difficult choices and hard trade-offs.