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."

Comments

Flashcards

[Fjandr]

Flashcards are great for learning Chinese or Japanese characters. There are also many characters, or parts thereof, that have a mnemonic relationship to the idea that they are used to impart. I can't think of any decent books offhand, but they're out there.

Still, flashcards are awesome in this regard.

Re:Flashcards

[schnipschnap]

Yes, use flash cards, but not the dead tree type. Use anki. I use it to study Japanese, and I'm sure it's almost as good for Chinese.
http://ichi2.net/anki/

A proven technique

[chrysalis]

Date a native speaker.

Try flashcard software

[i-like-burritos]

I've been studying Japanese for years, and flashcard software has really helped me with the Chinese characters. iFlash for OSX is an excellent tool.

As others have said, there's no way around the need for repetition and a lot of practice.

Also, diligence is extremely important. If you're not using them, then you forget the characters very quickly. If you're not careful you might actually find that you're forgetting characters as quickly as you're learning new ones.

Incorrect assumption!

[ShanghaiBill]

there is no relation between sound and shape of the characters.

This is wrong. Many, if not most, Chinese characters give an indication to both meaning and pronunciation. For instance the Mandarin word for "same" is pronounced "tong". The Mandarin word for copper is also "tong", and the ideogram for copper contains two radicals: the "metal" radical, which indicates meaning, and the "same" radical, which indicates pronunciation.

Once you learn the basic radicals, learning Chinese characters is not that hard. I can read Chinese much better than I can speak it.

Flash cards work well. Some computer programs work well too. "Rosetta Stone" works really well, but it is expensive.

Re:Incorrect assumption!

[snowgirl]

The precise problem with how East-Asian languages are taught is rote memorization. They present you with a character and simply say "this means language", and it's pronounced "go".

Likewise, Japanese tends to teach by patterns. Example: "*owner* wa *object* ga arimasu" means "owner has an/the object". Then later, they say "in order to say that someone has done something, use the pattern: *doer* wa *action in informal case* no ga arimasu."

The problem with this, is that people don't realize that the "no" particle above is being used to turn a sentence into a noun phrase, and you're simply saying literally, "the person has that action", the same as if you were saying that they have an object.

We present these languages, and scripts as if the only way to learn them is through rote memorization...

Heisig's technique

[vorpal22]

James W. Heisig, a researcher at the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture in Nagoya, Japan, has released an excellent set of books for memorizing Japanese Kanji, traditional Chinese Hanzi, and simplified Chinese Hanzi:

Remembering the Kanji:
http://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Kanji-Vol-Complete-Characters/dp/0824831659/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269118367&sr=8-1

Remembering the Traditional Hanzi:
http://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Traditional-Hanzi-Meaning-Characters/dp/0824833244/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_5

Remembering the Simplified Hanzi:
http://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Simplified-Hanzi-Meaning-Characters/dp/0824833236/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b

While this technique focuses on memorizing the meaning of the characters (and how to write them yourself) and not so much on the readings of them, I've found it an absolutely invaluable technique for doing the former. I have an abysmal memory to the point that it's shocking, and yet using his techniques, I was able to easily memorize the meaning of about 400 characters and how to write them in a couple of weeks with only a couple of hours of dedication a day, which I was very impressed with. His technique is based on building up from simple radicals and employing visual memory to make everything stick in place, which basically means concocting an elaborate and often ridiculous story for each character to tie the correct radicals into their correct places. The story is usually so silly that it cannot be forgotten, which is, IMO, in where the trick lies. As your skill in recall develops, you can let go of the stories and move to natural recall.

Also, the use of timed memorization software is essential when we're talking about this amount of information. Here are two great free software packages for this that were largely based specifically at learning Japanese (and thus are quite suitable for other languages, especially Chinese):

Anki:
http://ichi2.net/anki

Mnemosyne:
http://www.mnemosyne-proj.org/

(Personally, I prefer Mnemosyne a bit more, even though Anki has many more features, but this is because I'm making a set of cards to memorize all of Heisig's Kanji, traditional Hanzi, and simplified Hanzi, and I'm using HTML tables to store all the information. Mnemosyne preserves my HTML exactly, whereas Anki futzes with it and ruins the formatting.)

Use Colors + components + Anki

[Murmel84]

I started studying Chinese in September too and I'm trying a lot of techniques to memorize it quickly and efficiently.

As others have already mentioned, Anki (http://ichi2.net/anki/) is the way to go for memorizing vocabulary, as it uses a psychological algorithm that helps you repeating things as often as you need to. If you then install the pinyin toolkit plugin for learning chinese it's the best thing to learn chinese vocabulary as it imports all your translations, pinyin and even sounds automatically when you just enter the Hanzi.

This pinyin toolkit also uses a nice colour system for the tones. Basically, every character is displayed in a color depending on its tone: red = first tone orange = second tone green = third tone blue = fourth tone black = no tone

You can go even further and WRITE the characters in those colors when practicing. The tones of each character will stay in your memory WAY better!

Another tip when trying to memorize chinese characters: try to grasp the meaning of their components and learning to read and write them will be way more easy. You can use sites like nciku.com or archchinese.com where characters are split up in their components. However, you won't find everything there. There's also an extremely good book called "Learning Chinese Characters" (http://www.amazon.com/Tuttle-Learning-Chinese-Characters-Revolutionary/dp/080483816X/) - it teaches you the 800 most common chinese characters by telling you everything about their components and even giving you stories to remember the components of each character. It's by far the best book I've found for learning how to write chinese.

sounds familiar

[Punto]

since there is no relation between sound and shape of the characters

so it's sort of like in English then?

Hmmm - Re:A proven technique

[beh]

My girlfriends first comment: Yeah right, that helped...

Almost 5 years together, and she still hardly speaks a word of German because I almost automatically switch over to English when talking to her... ...which may be good for my English, but certainly isn't for her German... :-/

Re:Hmmm - Re:A proven technique

[jabithew]

Entertainingly, I used to date a Chinese girl. We spoke German to each other in England (as well as English) because it was a common language that most other people around us didn't understand.

Slashdot doesn't support Unicode ?

[Taco Cowboy]

I tried to post something illustrating a trick to learn the Chinese language (I learn the language that way) but when I post Chinese characters (double-byte Unicode) here everything messed up.

Slashdot doesn't support Unicode??