Mandarin Segments

Friday, May 17, 2013

Heisig Method ("Remembering the Hanzi") - the full collection

The so-called "Heisig Method" for learning to read, write & remember the meaning of Chinese characters is a fantastic method, and one that I have blogged about extensively. I used it to learn the first 1500 characters in about 3 months, after many other methods have failed me.

Given how much I have written on the subject over an extended period of time, it made sense to create just one source which puts all the material in one place. And that place is here.

All links are placed in three sections:

What is the Heisig method?
My personal story of success
Instructions, Hints, Tips, Suggestions

What is the Heisig method?

Learning to read Chinese (here I give a brief introduction to the method)
Interview with James Heisig (external link, with interesting anecdotes - including how he came up with the method in the first place)
Homepage of Heisig's books (look at the bottom of the page, under the "works on the chinese hanzi" section)
Free (and legal :-) PDF chapters from his books to give you a flavour of how it works, including Simplified Characters (book 1) and Traditional Characters (book 1)
Amazon affiliated links to Simplified (book1), Simplified (book2), Traditional (book1), Traditional (book2)
With thanks to Timothy Richardson (Although Heisig developed this method many years ago, his co-author must have done a huge amount of work in getting this from Japanese to Chinese)

My personal story of using the Heisig Method

Book1

Learning to read Chinese (day zero of a personal experiment)
Learning to read Chinese (day 2) (already I'm looking at Chinese characters differently!)
Learning to read Chinese (day 6) (236 characters with 97% recall; and you see from my notes already I'm spotting ways of doing it more efficiently)
Learning to read Chinese (day 11) - great progress (336 characters, with the realisation how much you can do with just a few hundred)
Reading (day 18) - 500 characters! (less than 3 weeks - I even impressed myself! note the little things that were slowing me down)
500 - 'Little step' or 'Giant leap'? (I printed out two Chinese websites, and highlighted the characters I knew - wow, 500 is a lot)
Reading (day 32) - bad week & bad mistakes (things didn't always go well)
Learning to Read (day 46) - 1000 characters! (A major milestone in less than 1.5 months, with 90% retention)
(Not) learning to read Chinese - 'Black October' (you can still come right, even after losing an entire month)
Learning to Read Chinese (3 months!) [pant pant] (even with a month 'off', I'm approaching 1300 characters in three months)
Learn to Read & Write Chinese (done!) (106 days to finish the entire book, including basically a month off; in this post I give lots of statistics on the journey)
Heisig - wherefore art thou now? (I discuss my feelings and realisations about 3 months after finishing the book)
Heisig: my just desserts (I discovered in a small dessert shop in HK that there is still a huge gap between knowing characters and knowing words :-)

Book2

Heisig 2 ("Please sir, I want some more") (my initial impressions after holding Book 2 in my hands for the first time)
I have begun Heisig Book 2. Kinda. (4 months after buying the book, I begin; and I get off to a bad start because ...)
Total failure (A month later, I just give up on Book 2)
Under the blankets, with a torch (I begin the book again as part of a new year's resolution - but I do some clever things to make sure I don't give up this time)
Heisig 2 - past 2000 characters (So my little tricks worked, and 500 characters later I'm still going)

Instructions, Hints, Tips, Suggestions - for the Heisig Method

Tips & Tricks for Heisig Visualisations (This is my most important post on the topic - people are bad a visualising in general, but Heisig needs you to get good at. If you read this post and follow the advice, your Heisig journey will be more fun, quicker, and longer-lasting. Seriously.)
Early traps not to fall into (although the post was an update post, I made some important points that people starting out should be careful with)
Pinyin proves that Heisig is right (You don't need to learn pronunciation while you're learning the book, it can come quite naturally too)
Using Modern Art to Learn Chinese (Many characters that you're trying to create images for are very abstract (like peace, great, grand, deliberate) - and this post is filled with tricks to make abstract words easy to get concrete images)
Bad Heisig images & great Dali paintings (In order to revise after 2.5 years, I pick up book 1 again, and I look at Heisig stories/images on the Net; Here I give detailed examples on why so many of them are terrible, and will be impossible to remember for long)
Just stick to one image, OK? (Consistency in image-making is part of why I did book 1 so fast, and I highlight how book 2 is itself failing to teach this consistency)
How to revise, once you've finished the book (this is part of an update post, but I give some detail about how my revision process is shaped)

If you find this collection of articles helpful, please share them. And as always, your comments below are welcome and appreciated.

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Heisig 2 - past 2000 characters

Hi all

The last you heard about my progress studying book two of the Heisig method [of learning to read & write Chinese] was in January, where I admitted that I had started studying the book again, after failing to get off the ground a few months before that.

Back in July 2012 I kinda started the book for the first time, but because I didn't get into a regular habit, the days between picking up the book kept increasing, and after a while I just shelved it. Literally.

So why was this year's attempt more successful? Mainly because I went with the flow more, put less pressure on myself, and took time to enjoy it more. And three months later, I'm still progressing nicely, according to plan.

So this is how it looks:

I had to accept that although I did Book 1 in three months - that was right for that book at that time. This book is different, and this time is different. So this year's goal suits this year's circumstances.
Thus I have set myself the goal of completing the book by the end of 2013, which amounts to just over 4 characters a day. That doesn't seem like much, but given that I'm also doing podcasts and other full-sentence flashcards, this is on top of that. It's enough.
I completed the first 500 characters of Book 2 (making it a total count of 2000) on 9 April, which is about 5 characters a day - not bad. I don't do it every day, I'm still not fully into the habit, but it's regular enough.
I'm much better about revision than I was with Book 1, which is part of the reason I'm taking longer to finish the book. I am OK with that :)
I use TWO METHODS to revise: (a) I keep going back in the book, sometimes the most recent chapter, sometimes even earlier chapters; (b) I also started using an Anki flashcard pack (downloaded off the site's free collection of packs) - which tests Chinese-to-English. I began that in late Feb, setting it to introduce five 'new' characters a day, so that it will also reach the end of the set by the end of the year. Of course, I will always be slightly further ahead with the book than with the flashcards, so actually it is a pure revision mechanism.
Although I complained in January that the characters in this book were much more complicated, actually it's not that bad. Of course, on average, they are more complex than Book 1, but they're really not that bad. So far.

So that's where I am. Is anyone else reading this post also doing Book 2? Or anyone who has already finished Book 2 that has comments or suggestions? Would love to hear from you.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Counting to THR三三

Following on from the recent post I did on The 'correct' (sic) way to count in Chinese, it reminded me of a sign I saw when visiting Singapore on business a couple of weeks ago. I think it was a restaurant, and the name of the place was: FIV五

I liked that :-) It was an interesting way of merging the English alphabet with Chinese characters, and I started wondering how much I could extend this ...

In terms of single digit numbers, this is what I came up with ...

ZER零
(ONE)
(TWO)
THR三三
F四UR
FIV五
SI六
SE七EN
EIG八T
九I九E
十EN

Sadly, 1 & 2 can't be done nicely, and even 0, 4 & 7 are pushing it a bit!

For bigger numbers ...

百UNDRED
千HOUSAND
万EN 万HOUSAND
HUNDRED M亿LION

(I'm quite proud of the last one, but the way. Be sure to leave comments below to tell me how much it impressed you too :-)

Will this make the quality of your life better? No.
Will it help you learn Chinese better? I doubt it.
Is it interesting? I think so.
Should you leave a comment below? Absolutely!

Sunday, March 17, 2013

The 'correct' (sic) way to count in Chinese

I'm sure you've all seen cartoons of people in prison or on dessert islands, counting the number of days that they have been there. Here is a Punch cartoon, showing the usual way this is done ... each of the first four counts gets a vertical line, and the fifth one is represented by crossing through those four.

I was told a couple of years ago about an equivalent method that Chinese people use, also counting to five, but instead it uses the Chinese character 正 (zhèng - which means 'correct' or 'proper').

You can see the stroke order for this character here:

Or if you prefer the animated version:

So yes, that's how (at least some of) the Chinese do it. You can use it to count the number of days in a row you practise flashcards, how many times you phoned your mom this month, or anything else You want to count ...

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Mandarin is just a series of maths formulae

I have successfully found a series of formulae that works out a word's meaning by looking at the characters which make up that word!!!!

An earlier post of mine entitled Permit Access (permit+permit+exist+take) got me thinking (and it's always scary when I think) ...

In taking the phrase "permit access" and dissecting the Chinese word 允许存取 into its component parts, I found that while on one hand (permit+permit=permit, because both 允 and 许 mean permit, as does the compound word 允许); and on the other hand you also get (exist+take=access), which is a completely different make-up.

As an actuary, I have a background in maths & stats, and I started wondering whether I could create a series of mathematical equations to help you work out how to derive the meaning of any two characters which have been combined to create a compound word.

And by golly I think I've done it! It's time to take out your high school maths textbooks in order to understand Chinese better :-)

When 1+2=3
As we saw in the above-mentioned article, the word 存取 (cúnqǔ) can be calculated as follows: access=exist+take. Think of it like "take something that exists" - it makes up a logical build-up, like 1+2=3. Simple. This logic can be seen in many other two-character words, including:
你好 (nǐhǎo): hello = you are good
满意 (mǎnyì): satisfied = full thinking
意外 (yìwài): accident = outside your thoughts
过奖 (guòjiǎng): flatter = pass the reward
怕痒 (pàyǎng): fear the itch = ticklish

When 1+1=1
This one is mathematically slightly less intuitive, but in Chinese it makes total sense. We also have from the previous article that 允许 (yǔnxǔ) is 'permit', and in simple terms: 'permit'=permit+permit (允+许=允许). Good, for once Chinese seems simple. Mathematically, this can be written as 1+1=1 :-) This is a common enough construct, and you can also see it in words like:
讨论 (tǎolùn): discuss = discuss+discuss
练习 (liànxí): practise = practise+practise
自己 (zìjǐ): self = self+self
选择 (xuǎnzé): choose = choose+choose
依赖 (yīlài): reply = rely+rely
应该 (yīnggāi): should = should+should
休息 (xiūxi): rest = rest+rest
帮助 (bāngzhù): help = help+help
号码 (hàomǎ): number = number+number
(And so many others: 犯罪, 错误, 继续, ...)

But going beyond the equations from the earlier article, we can also observe some others in use ...

When -1+1=0
This is well-known way of creating words in Mandarin, and there are plenty of blog posts where people have written about this. Some of the better known examples include:
多少 (duōshao): lots+little = how much
左右 (zuǒyòu): left+right = approximately
上下 (shàngxià): up+down = about
大小 (dàxiǎo): big+small = size
东西 (dōngxi): east+west = things
买卖 (mǎimài): buy+sell = business

When 1+2=12
楼下 (lóuxià): building+down = downstairs
水平 (shuǐpíng): water+level = horizontal
领带 (lǐngdài): neck+strap = necktie
声频 (shēngpín): sound+frequency = audio frequency
(And I'm sure you can derive many more instances of this type yourself!)

When 1-1=1
Yes, this exists too - where even introducing a completely contradictory word doesn't change the meaning of the first ...
忘记 (wàngjì): forget+remember = forget
全部 (quánbù): whole+part = whole
但是 (dànshì): but+indeed = but
毒药 (dúyào): poison+medicine = poison

When 376+1=1
白痴 (báichī): white(!)+dumb = dumb
干净 (gānjìng): dry(!)+clean = clean
原谅 (yuánliàng): source(!)+forgive = forgive
愉快 (yúkuài): pleasant+fast(!) = pleasant

When 1+2=634
How about this ...
漂亮 (piàoliang): pretty = tossed light
面包 (miànbāo): surface+package = bread
马上 (mǎshàng): horse+on = immediately
有机 (yǒujī): have+machine = organic
厉害 (lìhai): severe+injury = awesome
消息 (xiāoxi): extinguish+rest = news

Conclusion

OK, so I lied. I really have not succeeded in breaking Mandarin down into a number of mathematical formulae. I think most of you figured that out when I announced that 1+1=1 :-)

In fact, I've warned you before about the problems of trying to be too logical with Chinese, in a post called Mandarin is not "antidisestablishmentarian".

But it's still instructive when trying to remember words - and in learning another language you really do need to learn a lot of words - to consider how compounds are put together, and to be conscious about what you're taking in, rather than relying only on brute force to absorb it all.

Thursday, January 31, 2013

Mando-lish-nese: the trilingual bookstore name

In the heart of Hong Kong's Causeway Bay (the shopping district with the highest rent in the world, higher even than New York's Fifth Avenue, and double that of Tokyo's Ginza district), I saw this book store:

... and the name of the place really intrigued me. You can see it better here:

If I were to tell you that the English name is derived from the Chinese name, would you believe me? Possibly not, so let me take you through my logic ...

樂文 = Luck-Win (In Simplified characters it's 乐文, but ignore that for now - this is HK)
You probably know 樂 from 快樂 (kuàilè = happy, S=快乐) - and 樂 by itself means 'happy', not 'lucky'
Similarly 文 is from 文化 (wénhuà = culture), and 文 by itself means 'culture' not 'win'

So what's going on?

The first clue is that 文 is pronounced wén in Mandarin, and that sounds exactly like 'win'
But that hasn't solved the problem, because 樂 is pronounced 'le' and not 'luck'
So now we leap across to Cantonese, where 樂 is actually pronounced 'lok', and yes - that does sound a little like 'luck'

So I thought that was cute - like many Chinese brands, the name of the book store is so positive (Luck-Win), and actually the English name can be derived from Chinese ... but not from the meaning of the characters, only from the pronunciation. And even better than that, one comes from Cantonese pronunciation, and one comes from Mandarin pronunciation.

I think my next project will be an online Mando-lish-nese dictionary. Clearly there is need for something like that :-)

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Parseltongue! (the Year of the Snake is coming)

calligraphy by Jasmin

On the 10th of February it will be here - the Year of the Snake.

There is plenty of information about this coming year in the Chinese Zodiac, and for your convenience, here's a quick link to summarise some of the key points.

But since this is a language-learning blog, I thought now would be a good time to provide you with some words & idioms associated with snakes in general, in a WordPack kinda way. You're obviously using flashcards (right?) so copy some or all of these into your pack, and learn them when they make it to the front of that pack.

(And in case you don't get the heading of this post, in the Harry Potter series, 'Parseltongue' is the language of snakes. Now you too can be a 'Parselmouth'.)

The character
The character for snake or serpent in Chinese is 蛇 - pronounced shé (and if you haven't heard this word before, make sure you don't make this common mistake when saying it).

It's component parts are 虫 and 它, meaning insect+it ... just in case that's either interesting or useful to you in memorising it. (I use Stephen King's IT character ('it') to help with the visualisation.)

Both Simplified & Traditional character sets use the same character, although I have found an alternative Traditional character of 虵 which seems to be the same thing.

Some relevant words
Using my favourite MDBG online dictionary, I found some words that might be useful for you.

蛇皮 (shépí): snake skin
蛇毒 (shédú): snake venom
蝮蛇 (fùshé): venomous snake
蛇年 (shénián): Year of the Snake
蛇形 (shéxíng): S-shaped / coiled like a snake

Snake (and Snake-like) characters
In the Chinese Zodiac, the character of the snake does have implications of malevolence, sorcery, mystery, divination. So it's interesting to note the following too:

虺蜥 (huǐxī): figuratively a vicious person, but literally a poisonous snake
蛇头 (shétóu): figuratively a human smuggler, but literally the head of a snake
法海 (Fǎhǎi): Fahai the evil Buddhist monk in Tale of the White Snake
白蛇传 (BáiShéZhuàn): Tale of the White Snake / Madame White Snake

And also ...

摩喉罗伽 (móhóuluójiā): Mahoraga, the snake protector deity of Buddhist law

Idioms / Chengyu
Chengyu is a massive body of Chinese idioms (usually four characters) which you can read about here. Below are the ones I have found which have something to do with snakes:

虎头蛇尾 (hǔtóushéwěi): a strong start but a weak finish (literally tiger's head snake's tail) T:虎頭蛇尾
画蛇添足 (huàshétiānzú): to go too far with something (literally to draw the legs on a snake) T:畫蛇添足
打草惊蛇 (dǎcǎojīngshé): to inadvertently alert an enemy, or to punish someone as a warning to others (literally beat the grass to scare the snake) T: 打草驚蛇
引蛇出洞 (yǐnshéchūdòng): to expose something bad (literally to pull a snake from its hole)
杯弓蛇影 (bēigōngshéyǐng): unnecessarily suspicious (literally to see a bow reflected in a cup as a snake)
佛口蛇心 (fókǒushéxīn): two-faced (literally words of a Buddha, heart of a snake)
打蛇不死 (dǎshébùsǐ): nip the problem in the bud (literally beat the snake to prevent death)
强龙不压地头蛇 (qiánglóngbùyādìtóushé): a gangster who is above the law (literally strong dragon cannot repress the snake) T: 強龍不壓地頭蛇
一年被蛇咬十年怕井绳 (yīniánbèishéyǎoshíniánpàjǐngshéng): once bitten twice shy (literally bitten by a snake in one year, fears the well-rope for ten years) T: 一年被蛇咬十年怕井繩
虚与委蛇 (xūyǔwēishé): pretence of complying (literally false gift by sending a snake) T: 虛與委蛇
龙蛇混杂 (lóng shé hùnzá): a mingling of good & evil within a person (literally mixing dragon & snake) T: 龍蛇混雜
牛鬼蛇神 (niú guǐ shé shén): evil people of all types (literally cow ghost snake spirit)
人心不足蛇吞象 (rénxīnbùzúshétūnxiàng): a man who is never content is like a snake trying to swallow an elephant

So yes, Year of the Snake. At least now you'll be ready - and armed to the teeth with words and idioms to impress anyone that you might slither into. Good luck!

Edit: I can't believe I didn't think of it while I was writing the article, but you might now also be wondering how they say "Parseltongue" in the Chinese translation of the Harry Potter books. With the help of a couple of friends at a language exchange meeting yesterday (thanks Fiona & Wavy) we found two versions: 蛇老腔 (shélǎoqiāng) which is perhaps best translated "ancient snake speech"; and 爬说语 (páshuōyǔ) which is more of a loanword that sounds similar, albeit with clever choice of characters.

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Under the blankets, with a torch

It's a secret, so I'm not telling anyone, but I have started Heisig Book 2 again. Shhhh ...

As you might remember from last July, I wrote a post called I have begun Heisig Book 2. Kinda. At that stage - just 3 weeks after beginning - I was already behind 'schedule', and that was really disappointing for me because I managed to do the entire Book 1 in about 3 months. By August, just a month later, I was writing a post called Total failure - I simply did not have enough time to study Heisig, and decided that the little spare time I had should rather be spent doing flashcards rather than additional characters.

(To give you a sense of my time shortages, last year I did over 50 flights, which is approximately one business trip every second week. Ouch.)

Well, at the start of January this year, I picked up the book again, and began with character 1501.

What I'm doing differently - lessons from last time

1. No goals
I didn't set myself any goals - last time I actually found that disheartening. Instead I decided I would first get some momentum going, and get a sense of what time I would have available - and only then decide what goals to set myself. I still don't have a solid rhythm going, and I'm still not working through the book each day, but I'm enjoying the pressure-free attitude to Book 2, which means at least I'm enjoying it.

2. More revision
As I had remarked in the July article, Book 2 is more difficult - obviously. This means I really need more time with the revision because these more complex images can fade quite quickly in the beginning. I'm less panicked about finishing within a certain time frame, so revision actually feels like it's contributing to my goal of learning to read, rather than delaying my goal of getting through the book.

3. Character-to-English
When I did Book 1, my focus was on being able to see the character and know it's meaning. This is, after all, my challenge when I'm trying to read. Learning to write was less important to me, so the need for English-to-Character is less. After focusing on C2E when studying the book, I loaded up an Anki flashcard deck, and my revision of the book was based on E2C. I found this an extremely enjoyable and efficient approach, and I'm doing the same ... learning C2E mainly while studying the book. Later on I will load up a flashcard pack for Book 2.

4. Enjoy
I was not enjoying learning Book 2 when I picked it up last year. Don't get me wrong ... I wanted to learn the book, and I remember how excited I was when the book was first delivered to me, but it was the wrong time, and the wrong attitude - and it failed. Now I'm enjoying it - and although I can't guarantee that I won't fail again, I at least feel like I'm on the right track.

5. Don't give up (in the long run)
I gave up in August, it was the wrong time for so many reasons. But I didn't give-up totally. I knew I would pick it up again, at the right time. And I did pick it up again. And this might be the right time :-)

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Serves me right?!

Let's start at the very beginning, right?
The other day I was speaking to a native Mandarin speaker from the Mainland, who asked me who I practise with, given that I live in Hong Kong where the native language is Cantonese, and where spoken Mandarin is "non-standard".

He was shocked to hear that most of my time spent speaking Chinese is actually with Hong Kong people. In fact, he went as far as to say it would probably be better not to practise at all, than to practise with someone who doesn't speak "standard" Mandarin.

This makes no sense to me. If I want to learn Chinese then I need to practise, and in fact imperfect practice is better than none at all. This reminds me of a great ironic post by Khatzumoto (founder of the AJATT "All Japanese All The Time" system) - definitely worth reading after you have finished reading this post!

F*** me, right?
There is a great meme which comes from the movie Superbad, that features Jonah Hill (in the picture above). You can read more about the origins of this particular meme, and see many variations at KnowYourMeme and QuickMeme, but let me summarise as follows: The meme, in its various forms, implies that they were trying to do a good thing (written at the top of the page) but in fact people are being negative about that. Examples include:

I'm just trying to give you a better education. F*** me, right?
I did what I was asked. F*** me, right?
I'm doing 60kmph in a 60kmph zone. F *** me, right?
I want to make a living doing something I love. F*** me, right?

I'm sure you get it now. Right?

So f*** ME, right??
And that was basically how I felt when I was being told that I shouldn't be practising my Chinese with people who don't speak perfect standard Mandarin. Right?

There's a lesson in here, right?
Well, when I mentally linked my conversation to this meme, I started wondering how I might say that in Mandarin. Frankly, despite speaking to several native speakers, I didn't get a (literal) suggestion that I liked. But Yi (thanks Yi!) suggested something that did feel right, although disappointingly it doesn't contain any swear words. F*** me, right?

She suggested the phrase 活该 (huógāi), which could mean "deservedly so" or "serves [you] right". I like this, and so my own variation of this meme - seen above - contains that phrase. I've added in the 吧 (ba) character to emphasis it's more of a leading suggestion than an actual question.

Naturally, when I want to make sure I remember a word, it invariably finds its way into my flashcard pack, and for your interest, this is the sentence I used:

She ate too much and feels sick, serves her right
她吃太多了感到难受，活该
她吃太多了感到難受，活該
ta chī tài duō le, gǎndào nánshòu, huógāi

Notes you might find useful, right?

If you don't know what a meme is, look here
"Standard Chinese" is how people commonly refer to the variation of Mandarin which is the official version - because there really are so many versions & dialects. In Mandarin you would use the word 标准 (biāozhǔn).
Some readers might notice that I use both the words 'practice' and 'practise'. This is not an error, in English one is a noun and one is a verb :-)
If you have suggestions for alternative translations, especially ones that contain swear words :-) then please leave comments below.

I just thought you might be interested to note the above points. F*** me, right?

Thursday, November 22, 2012

The first Chinese song I ever wrote

I always thought that once I got good enough in Chinese, I would write a song. I'm glad to say that, after all these years, I have reached a very satisfying level, and I wanted to share it with you.

I'm a terrible singer, so I probably won't add a recording, but here are the lyrics. Try to sing along yourself.

Vocab
Here are some quick-reference words for you:
a song / 一首歌 / yī shǒu gē

very irritating / 很烦的 / hěn fán

I know / 我知道 / wǒ zhīdao

The Chorus: please sing along

我知道一首很烦的歌

很烦的歌