Getting Sentenced in Mandarin

This is another article in the Life Sentences series.  In my opening post, I wrote the following:

"Copyright acknowledgement: Over time I have collected a variety of sentences, and loaded them into my flashcard system. By this stage, I no longer have any idea where they came from. Some are of my own construction, or from friends who have emailed or instant-messaged me. Others have been copied from websites along the way. To make sure I give credit where due, the following sites are the most likely external sources ... "

The purpose of this article is to say a few words about why I bother getting sentences, and where.


Why?
Originally I used to just read the sentences and convince myself that I 'got' the structure, but over time I realised I didn't - so I then started adding entire sentences into my Anki flashcards collection. There are two major benefits to this:

• Chinese sentence constructs can be really different to English (as mentioned in my previous post). You can't just memorise lists of words and do literal word-by-word translations, it doesn't work that way.
• You should make sure you're using the words in the right context. In English, for example, there is a difference between jealousy & envy,  disinterested and uninterested - and you'll want to use the right words in Chinese too.

Where?

Daily sentences

• Whether you're a beginner just learning words, or an intermediate learning sentences, it's worthwhile subscribing to mandarin.About.com's Word of the Day. Here you can see a sample for yǐngxiǎng (影響)(影响). Almost every day, I pick a word or sentence from the email, and enter it into my flashcard system. Highly recommended.
• There are several pre-made databases for the Anki flashcard system, one of which contains 20,000 thousand sentences. Whether you set it to one new sentence a day, or many, is up to you - but start that habit today.

Rolling your own sentences

• The jukuu.com website is basically designed to take words that you input (English, Mandarin, Japanese) and track down sentences which use that word. I find that lots of the resulting sentences are too long to interest me, and often of a technology theme, but you can still get some great sentences to copy into your flashcard system. Here's a sample using the word yǐngxiǎng again.
• The nciku dictionary is one of the better web-based Mandarin/English dictionaries, and it also has a sample sentence facility - take a look at the yǐngxiǎng examples.
• I only discovered Engkoo.com while in the final draft of this article, but so far I'm very impressed.  The sentences tend to be quite long, but the front-end is quite polished. You can see the yǐngxiǎng examples here.
• iChaCha offers yet another option, neat presentation and nicely short sentences. You can also see the example sentences for yǐngxiǎng.
• Of course, you always have the option of simply entering the Chinese characters into your favourite search engine (I'm now using Bing, but you may still be using Google). It certainly takes more effort than the above options because it requires a lot more reviewing of the results to find good sentences, but maybe that's your preference.
• I have a little paper dictionary  called Collins Chinese Dictionary (in colour), which often gives sample sentences for the words I look up. 
• Finally, I have installed the free Pleco dictionary on my iPad,  which usually gives example sentences for looked-up words. For yǐngxiǎng it provides about a dozen sentences.

Pre-loved sentences

• Sometimes when I'm listening to Chinese podcasts (usually ChinesePod or Popup Chinese) I hear a sentence that I really* like - whether because it contains useful words, or has an interesting structure, or simply because I think I will use it often. I then enter a version of that sentence (English, pinyin, hanzi) into my flashcard system, and wait for it to come into the queue.
• When emailing or instant-messaging (let's pretend that's a verb, OK?)  with a Chinese friend, they might use a sentence which strikes me as likely to be of common use, or it may have interesting vocab or sentence structure. So I sometimes paste sentences like that into my flashcard collection.

If you use other sites for finding sentences, or even completely difference methods, then please leave a comment below. I hope you find this useful ...


* JP, I know you're reading this. One of the sentences coming through my flashcards at the moment is from an old ChinesePod QingWen episode with you, Connie & Amber. From that, I took this sentence: "难怪你那么佩服JP" :-)
** Some links are affiliated. 

Life Sentences - a new series

This is the first part of a new series about sentences in Mandarin Chinese.

For a few months now, I have been on a new journey in my Mandarin learning. The previous one was working through Heisig & Richardson's first book (simplified or traditional, affiliated links) on learning how to read and write Chinese. I made it through 1500 characters in about 3-4 months, and I had great support from all of you as I did so.

But now being able to read & write characters, and having learned a whole bunch of compound words (through flashcards), I have extended this into understanding how Mandarin sentences are constructed. In my opinion, this is the least intuitive part of learning Chinese, and it's what keeps me from having coversations which flow as smoothly as I'd like.

Don't believe people who tell you that Mandarin is the same as English: subject-verb-object.  I mean, it is. Kinda.

The problem is that when you first get past "I drink beer" (我喝啤酒, wǒ​ hē​ pí​jiǔ) (subject-verb-object, in both cases), things get a bit fuzzy and non-intuitive. But once you've got a feel for Chinese sentences, it starts to come back into focus, and you realise that to a large degree (again!) it is S-V-O.

Just to show you what I mean about this being non-intuitive, take a look at the following sentences, which are arranged as follows:
   English
   Simplified Chinese
   Traditional Chinese
   Pinyin
   Literal translation

S1. What should I give him as a gift?
我该送什么礼物给他?
我該送什麼禮物給他?
wǒ gāi sòng shénme lǐwù gěi tā?
(I) (should) (give) (what gift) (give him)?

S2. She enjoys sharing her experience of learning the Chinese language.
她很喜歡跟別人分享她學習中文的經驗｡
她很喜欢跟别人分享她学习中文的经验｡
Tā hěn xǐhuan gēn biérén fēnxiǎng tā xuéxí Zhōngwén de jīngyàn.
(she) (very likes) (with others) (share) (her) (study Chinese)'s (experience).

S3. People who want a tattoo must go to a proper tatto parlour.
要文身的人, 必须去专业的文身店｡
要文身的人, 必須去專業的文身店｡
yào​ wén​shēn​ de rén​, bì​xū​ qù​ zhuān​yè​ de wén​shēn​ diàn​.
(want tattoo)'s (people), (must) (go to) (professional)'s (tattoo parlour)


Certainly not intuitive, but definitely learnable.


The purpose of this series is to get you as quickly from the "newbie S-V-O" to the "more advanced S-V-O" phase, without getting too stuck in the middle. And this is as much to document my learning for myself, as it is to share my learning for your benefit.


To make sure you don't miss out, ensure you subscribe to Mandarin Segments. I look forward to your active participation.

Copyright acknowledgement: Over time I have collected a variety of sentences, and loaded them into my flashcard system. By this stage, I no longer have any idea where they came from. Some are of my own construction, or from friends who have emailed or instant-messaged me. Others have been copied from websites along the way. To make sure I give credit where due, the following sites are the most likely external sources:
   About Mandarin
   JuKuu
   iChaCha
   Engkoo
   Bing Search
   20,000 Mandarin Sentences
   Nciku Dictionary
   ChinesePod
   Popup Chinese
   Collins (paper) dictionary


Articles in the Life Sentences series so far:

• Getting Sentenced in Mandarin: where to get sample sentences

To see all posts in the "Life Sentences" series, click here. 

My long romance with flashcards

In my previous post on the topic, I recommended very strongly that you should be using flashcards as part of your Chinese-learning efforts.

In this post I'd like to write a bit about how my relationship with flashcards has gone, and why I find it one of the most useful tools available to progress one's learning.

SRS

When I started with flashcards, I used a program that was not SRS-based, which was a terrible mistake. A random-card system was fine in school when you were trying to revise the capital cities of the world, but not when you're using it as a tool to learn Chinese words. I would learn a word, and then it wouldn't appear again for weeks, by which time I'd have to learn it again. Or words that I already knew well would keep coming up - wasting my time. So I gave up on flashcards.

But it wasn't long after that I found Anki, which felt so natural that I haven't stopped using it since then.

Setting it up 

Some people load up pre-made decks when they begin - for example there are beginner's Chinese packs available that you can you download directly into Anki. However in my case, there were just a few dozen words that I wanted to learn (or so I thought!), so I chose to set up my own deck and start with only words that I cared about.

I built three fields for each 'fact':  English, pinyin, simplified Chinese. And for each 'fact', I built two 'cards' - one where the English was the question, and pinyin & Chinese were the answer; and one where pinyin was the question and English & Chinese were the answer.

To be honest, I didn't even look at the Chinese writing, I was a beginner and I stuck with English & pinyin.

Phrases & Sentences

Over time, knowing individual words wasn't enough. I needed to use sentences, and frankly my grammar was rubbish. Some of the words I was adding were coming from the About.com daily words email, and ever-practical I realised it would take just as long to copy a word into my deck as to copy a sentence - and thus it began.

Again, although my deck is made up of words & sentences that I have added myself, you can choose to take the route of downloading a pre-made deck directly into Anki, one of which is called "20,000 Chinese Sentences". Whatever works for you.

I slowly got into Chengyu (I've written about that guilty pleasure before) and have also added a few into my deck over time.

(Here are two screenshots [1] [2] of cards from my deck, if that helps give you context.)

Relevance

To make sure that I was learning words that I would be likely to use in future, whenever I looked up a word in my dictionary, and I felt that I really wanted to remember it, it became automatic to copy that word into my deck too. Took just a few seconds to make another card.

(See "Why a meal is worth more to me than my grandmother" for more thoughts on sticking to relevant learning.)

Earlier on I was just copying the word (including English, pinyin & Chinese), but over time I made sure that I found a sentence that used the word. This gave the word a context, made it easier to remember than just a lonesome word, improved my grammar, and sometimes included other useful words to learn too.

This use of sentences was so valuable to my learning that I wrote an article called Getting Sentenced in Mandarin, about how to track down good sentences.

I don't know if building up a deck from scratch sounds like a lot of effort, but if you're only doing a few a day, and since you're just copying & pasting, then it's really quick.

Do not let flashcards be your excuse. Do not spend so much time building up a deck that you never get around to using it to learn.

Chinese characters

Although I learned to recognise a few characters simply by virtue of the fact that my cards included the Chinese writing, this was incidental. It was only a couple of years ago, when I started to formally learn to read Chinese (here is Day 0 of that adventure) that I changed my flashcard practice. Instead of only using English or pinyin as the questions in Anki, I also set it to show me the Chinese version of the words & sentences I had already entered. In Anki, this change took about a minute to make - it's a great program.

And of course, having moved to Hong Kong late last year, I am now surrounded by traditional Chinese characters - but my deck was populated with simplified characters! Making some easy edits to my deck format, I added an extra field, and then any sentences that I added after that time would also get the traditional characters added too. I don't test myself based on the traditional characters, but I am still able to compare the two systems when looking at the card. And for now, that's enough.

Getting technical

More recently, rather than focusing on words from general conversation, I'm taking the time to build up vocab that I am likely to hear in meetings, or read in documents. Since I'm in the financial sector, these words include things like: assets, credit rating agency, cost of capital, assess, reserves, medical insurance, etc.

The process is the same as I've been doing - I find a word I want to learn, look it up, explore sentences of the various results to make sure I've got the right word in the right context, and then copy it into my deck. Usually it takes a few days or a few weeks before that new entry makes it into the queue for me to start learning.


So that's it for me and deck. I would love to hear about you and yours ...

A clever butcher uses a cleaver

If you were learning English, then the above sentence might be a good one to stick in your flashcards. Picturing a butcher who wears professorial glasses, holding a cleaver, might make it easier  - both visually and audio-wise - to remember the new word 'cleaver'. It's certainly more memorable then the sentence: "Use a cleaver to cut meat."

And this is the logic I've tried to use when finding new sentences to enter into my flashcard deck.

As you would have seen from my post a few months back about finding sentences, I use a variety of sources for my deck. But it was only when I was reviewing this sentence below, that I realised that there was a clever/cleaver trick that I was unconsciously using.

     Lennie stopped chewing and swallowed it whole
     Lúnní tíngzhǐ jǔjué, húlún yàn​le xiàqu​
     伦尼停止咀嚼，囫囵咽了下去
     倫尼停止咀嚼，囫圇咽了下去

While saying the sentence during my daily flashcard revision, I realised that this sentence had a clever/cleaver style of repetition in the words 'Lúnní​' and 'húlún'.  It's not a big thing, but I realised it was a bit of a mental crutch that I had indeed being relying on when learning the cards - and on a few occasions when I was trying to recall a word in conversation.

I went back through some of my flashcards, and found that so many sentences I'd chosen had inadvertently used this trick, and I've actually tried to be more intentional in this regard.


OK, so now that you know this trick, there really is nothing else to say. If you choose not to take advantage of this, that's your choice. But if you choose to use this, here are some sentences that I've found in my deck which someone was clever/cleaver in constructing.

If you'd like to copy these into your deck, feel free ...

     Bees store honey to get through winter

     mìfēng wèi guòdōng zhùcún fēngmì

     蜜蜂为过冬贮存蜂蜜

     蜜蜂為過冬貯存蜂蜜

     trick:  mìfēng vs fēngmì

     I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow
     wǒ tóu yi pèngdào zhěntou jiù shuìzháo le
     我头一碰到枕头就睡着了
     我頭一碰到枕頭就睡著了
     trick: tóu / zhěntou (although, you really should have noticed this without clever/cleaver sentences!)

     She sat there motionless, nothing can motivate her
     tā yidòng​budòng de zuò zài​nar, méiyǒu​shénme néng cùdòng tā
     她一动不动地坐在那儿，没有什么能促动她
     她一動不動地坐在那兒，沒有甚麼能促動她
     trick: yidòng​budòng / cùdòng

     If you lose a credit card you should report it to the police
     diūshī xìnyòngkǎ yào xiàng jǐngchá bàoshī
     丢失信用卡要向警察报失
     丟失信用卡要向警察報失
     trick: diūshī  / bàoshī

     Don't disappoint your parents
     bùyào gūfù fùmǔ duì nǐde qīdài
     不要辜负父母对你的期待
     不要辜負父母對你的期待
     trick: gūfù / fùmǔ

     Mr Li the shopkeeper has two assistants
     Lǐ lǎobǎn yǒu liǎng gè zhùlǐ
     李老板有两个助理
     李老闆有兩個助理
     trick: Lǐ / zhùlǐ


And here are a number of other sentences that appear in my flashcards, but I'll leave you to do the translations yourself if you want to use them. The trick might be around using the same sound, the same character, or anything else that makes it easier to recall one word using another part of the sentence:

这是违法的行为
我花了一些时间决定花钱买哪种花
我们可以推断会议推迟了
我们铸蜡成烛
纤维 / 维生素
租约下个月到期
耳朵, 耳环, 耳机, 耳语, 耳子
个人开户账户申请表
每个透支的支票
对于妇女来说就业就会有牺牲
薪水会直接汇入你的帐户
这个座位很小坐得很不舒服
非工作人员禁止进入
他们企图蒙骗公众耳目 (cheat! sounds like 'qitu')


Just to be clear ... this is not a miracle. This will not take you from a beginner to intermediate in record time. But it will make it a little easier to remember words, and since you're already investing time in learning Chinese, you may as well take advantages of clever/cleaver tricks like this.

Don't butcher it!

The sentence with (the girl with (the dragon tattoo) )

One thing that made Chinese slow for me to pick up was the sentence structure - it is far less linear than English, or indeed than the couple of other languages I learned at school.

The subject of this article is stated somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but it gives an idea of how I had to start perceiving Chinese sentences before I could work out what was going on. I've had this article in my mind for sometime now, but every time I've tried to write it I've ended up getting frustrated at my (in)ability to put into words what had become more natural to me after studying hundreds off sentences through flashcards, and reading even more through casual (low-level!) reading.

Learn by Example

So I've decided rather to just give a few example sentences, in the hope that by highlighting this for you - especially if Chinese is not yet natural-feeling for you - it might add value. If you have alternative explanations, or other examples, or better linear translations, please leave your comments below.

tl;dr: Try to think in terms of bracketing phrases to more easily understand Chinese.

(Note that if my explanations confuse you, just ignore them - put the sentences in your flashcard pack and learn them. What? You don't use flashcards yet??? Well now is a great time to begin ...)


A. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
龙纹身的女孩 龍紋身的女孩"
lóng wénshēn de nǚhái

The literal translation of the above sentence is "dragon tattoo'd girl". If we tried to stick with English, we might do something like 女孩和龙纹身 or 女孩跟龙纹身, but according to a native-speaker I was chatting with, this sounds more like there is a girl, and there is a dragon tattoo. Separate things.


B. People who want tattoos should go to a professional tattoo shop
要文身的人，必须去专业的文身店
yào​ wénshēn​ de rén​, bìxū​ qù​ zhuānyè​ de wénshēndiàn​

Since we're chatting about tattoos, here's another sentence from my flashcard pack. What I remember clearly about this sentence when I first learned it (2 years ago, according to Anki :-) was that the opening phrase was translated as "(want tattoo)'d people", rather than what I instinctively tried to say, which was roughly "那些人要文身，他们必须...". Clearly mine was clumsier.

We see the same format in the second part: "(professional)'d (tattoo shop)", but that is more obvious to us English-speakers because we mentally identify 'professional' as an adjective. What I'm saying here is we could see the part of 'wanting a tattoo' as an adjective to 'people', and things would make more sense.


C. From the moment that I met her, I hated her
自从我认识她的时候，我就恨她
zìcóng wǒ rènshi tā de shíhou, wǒ jiù hèn tā

Again, showing brackets into the sentence to show what is happening, we get:
     From (I met her)'s time, I hated her
This is so much nicer than literally trying to say "From. the. time. that ...".  Once you're more comfortable with Chinese, there won't be anything amazing about this sentence - it will feel very natural - but it clearly is a bit of a leap from a linear translation of the sentence.


D. What's a pretty girl like you doing here all alone?
像你这样的美女怎么会落单？
xiàng nǐ zhèyàng de měinǚ zěnme huì luòdān?

I've used this sentence in a previous post, but this time focusing on the sentence structure. Using brackets, it looks like this:
     like you (this kind of girl) how come alone?
I'm frustrating myself again trying to describe what is happening, rather than just leaving you to read the sentence, and see for yourself. So I'll now leave you simply to read the sentence and see for yourself ...


E. He is a man full of adventure
他是一个充满冒险精神的人
ta shi yige chōng​mǎn mào​xiǎn jīng​shén de ren

This is another really simple sentence, which is simply:
     he is a (...)'d person
I think that trying to linearly translate this would produce something like the following, which is terrible:
     he is a man, his characteristics are to be full of adventure


F. I met my wife on a blind date
我和我的妻子是通过相亲认识的
wǒ hé wǒ de qīzǐ shì tōngguò xiāngqīn rènshi de

Literally this is:
     me and my wife are (through blind-date)'d met
Sorry for the grammatically incorrect use of " 'd " but I hope it's helpful to identify the adjectival phrase which is happening. (And yes, I'm also aware it should be "My wife and I ...")

It's worth noting that I'm not saying this is the only way to translate this sentence, and in this case you might be able to come up with a relatively good linear translation. However, the key is that when you're listening to someone, or reading Chinese, your brain needs to act relatively quickly to put these notional brackets into place to allow the concepts to be sorted and understood.


G. People should have the ability to think for themselves
人要有独立思考的能力
rén yàoyǒu dúlì sīkǎo de nénglì

People should have (independent thinking)'d ability


H. There are many things which can cause heart disease
造成心脏病的原因有很多
zàochéng xīnzàngbìng de yuányīn yǒu hěnduō

(causing heart attack)'s causes are many


I. Avoid being subjective and one-sided when looking at problems
看问题的时候要避免主观片面
kàn wèn​tí de shíhou yào bì​miǎn zhǔ​guān piàn​miàn

(look at problems)'s time, you should ...


J. The houses are sold out within this price range
在这个价位范围之内的房子已售完
在這個價位範圍之內的房子已售完
zai zhege jiàwèi fànwéi zhīnèi de fángzi yǐ shòuwán

Note how the whole phrase about a being within a certain price range, is turned into an adjectival phrase which applies to the houses:
     (within this price range)'d houses are already sold


K. Insurance companies do not cover any accident which is caused by an act of God
保险公司不会理赔任何由天灾所引起的意外事故
bǎoxiǎn​gōngsī bùhuì lǐpéi rènhé yóu tiā​zāi suǒ yǐn​qǐ de yìwài​shìgù

insurers do not pay any (caused by an act of God)'d accidents


L. When we decide which sickness rates we need, I will ask you to help provide it.
当确定需要哪几项疾病的发生率时,我再请您們帮忙提供
dāng quèdìng xūyào nǎ jǐ xiàng jí​bìng de fā​shēng​lǜ shí, wǒ zài qǐng nínmen bāng​máng tí​gōng

This is an extract from an email from a client of mine, where the clarifying phrase applies to time again.      (when we decide which sickness rates we need)'d time, I will ask you ...


M. Don't disappoint your parents
不要辜负父母(对你)的期待 不要辜負父母對你的期待
bùyào gūfù fùmǔ duì nǐ de qīdài

I'll leave you to think about this one, but depending where you put the brackets it might look like your own expectations, or those of your parents. What should it be?



Use your Mental Brackets

If (you enjoy (the thoughts that I wrote down here)'d article)'s time, please (at (below-situated)'d area) leave comments.

Flashcards - the full collection of articles

It was back in 2011 that I wrote my first post dedicated to the use of flashcards for learning Chinese, entitled "Flashcards: Just do it". And this remains my strong recommendation for anyone who isn't yet an "advanced" student of Chinese (or any language you might be learning).

Since then, I have written a number of posts dedicated to the use of flashcards, and this article brings all such posts together into a full compilation - to make it easier for you to find them all ...

• Flashcards: Just do it (I don't think I could be more explicit about how important flashcards are if you really want to accelerate your language learning)
• My long romance with flashcards (This post is about how I got into flashcards - after first trying and failing and giving up - to finally doing it properly)
• The 'redneck' guide to flashcards (A humorous look at "You know you should be using flashcards if ...")
• How many flashcards does it take to change a lightbulb? (Here I give you an early insight into my actual flashcard deck, with lots of stats about its content and my usage, with some early and some recent examples of cards added)
• Getting sentenced in Chinese (In this article I talk about why I had moved to learning sentences and not just words, and how to 'roll your own' sentences)
• A clever butcher uses a cleaver (As you can see from the heading, you can actually create really clever sentences which link words, making them much easier to memorise)
• "Write on!!" - reviewing Skritter for iOS (Here I reviewed the Skritter iOS app, coming to the conclusion it's a great flashcard-style system for reading & writing Chinese)
• The one flashcard I review more than any other (A little tongue-in-cheek article about vocabulary :)

The above articles are specifically about flashcards, and the number of articles will grow over time. I make many other references to flashcards in articles, especially those in the Heisig series, as well as in terms of 'dragon tattoo' posts and 'Charlie Brown' posts and 'flexible' posts and 'snake' posts and 'boat' posts and 'horse' posts (and many others) where I include sentences that can easily be copied-and-pasted into your own home-grown flashcard pack.

And for those who are wondering, I have been using the Anki flashcard software (originally on Windows, then Mac, now mainly on iOS) - it's fantastic software, for many many reasons.

And, just to make my point clear, there is one post you really should read: Flashcards: just do it!

Charlie Brown teaches Chinese sentence structures

I recently wrote an article entitled "The sentence with (the girl with (the dragon tattoo) )" where I spoke about how Chinese sentences are sometimes put together.  I presented a set of 13 examples where I showed how the ability to (mentally) apply brackets to a sentence makes it much easier - indeed makes it possible! - to understand what is being written.

What I didn't want to give is the impression that these structures are not common - in fact it was because they are so common that I decided to write about them in the first place.

So, to make my point (and to make it in a fun way) I paged through a Chinese version of the Peanuts cartoon strip, starring our little hero Charlie Brown.  Here are some frames which give more examples of  "(require brackets)'d sentences"   :-)

By the way, if you're not at the level of reading as many Chinese characters as this, don't worry about it. Focus on the English versions of the sentences, to start to get a feel for how they are constructed in Chinese.

(click on the images for clearer shots)

Frame 1:

This first frame is a great example of just how long the 'middle' phrases can be, and if you don't spot the opportunity to put in some brackets, then the sentence is going to seem like garbage (like it did with me, when I first saw this frame):

我要告诉你一些我以前从来没对任何人讲过的事情

我要告诉你一些(我以前从来没对任何人讲过)的事情

I want to tell you some (...) things

I want to tell you some (I have never told anyone before) things

I guess the clue is that after the words 一些 ('some') it seems to immediately begin a new sentence (我以前 ...) without any preposition or conjunction. That should get you thinking about brackets!

Frame 2:

你能不能把它放在一个我能想起来的地方？

你能不能把它放在一个(我能想起来)的地方？

Can you put them in a (...) place?

Can you put them in a (I am able to remember) place?

Frame 3:

我看见一个坐在南瓜地里的傻孩子

我看见一个((坐在南瓜地)里)的傻孩子

I can see a (...) dumb child

I can see a (sitting inside a pumpkin patch) dumb child

I used a double-brackets in the Chinese sentence to emphasise how prepositions (like 里=inside) are applied in Chinese, if that's not quite obvious to you yet.

Happy reading (subjects that you find interesting)'d texts.

Quickies don't work for me

I recently got back from two weeks in China (having visited Yangshuo, Guilin and Beijing), and I wanted to share a quick observation about my ability to interact with people in Mandarin.

Am I the only one who experiences this? I'd love to hear from you - either way - so please leave a quick comment below.

Basically, when I have a conversation which lasts more than a few minutes, I have a relatively high success rate: I can understand them, they can understand me, and we can cover a decent range of topics. But when the conversation is just a quick one - one of us asking a question and the other required to answer - the success rate is definitely not as good.

For example:

• I might ask someone for directions - and they reply back to me with a series of rapid sentences which I just don't get. Sure, I hear words like "qián​miàn" (forwards), "yòu​bian" (on your right) and "rán​hòu" (thereafter) ... but it's too much too quickly, and I invariably have to ask them to repeat themselves more slowly.
• Interestingly, when I first engage them in a short-ish conversation first, and so give them the opportunity to gauge my vocab and listening-skills, then I have a much greater success rate in understanding the directions which I then ask for - because they will have calibrated to my level.
• Similarly, when I enter a shop, and the assistant comes up to me and speaks a few sentences - I often have no idea what they're saying. Again, too much, too fast. It might be something as simply as "Thanks for popping in. We've got some great special offers, but I'll leave you to look around yourself for a while, and then when you're ready please come speak to me again." Or maybe they're just asking me not to touch anything because I might break it.
• Also, when getting into a taxi (especially in Beijing) and telling the driver where I want to go, I guess his assumption is that I can speak Chinese well - because they then launch into a one minute speech, which usually goes right over my head. (When I tell them that I didn't understand, usually the younger drivers will try again more slowly, probably using simpler language, while the older drivers either tend to say it again just as fast, or they simply shrug and remain silent.)

Is there a moral to this story? Probably - I can think of a few. But why don't you take a moment, think about what this means to you in relation to your own Mandarin studies, and then leave a comment for other readers.

As (confusing) as possible

I was revising flashcards recently, and in a relatively short space of time there were sentences that included 尽可能 (jǐnkěnéng - as much as possible) and 尽力 (jìnlì - trying one's hardest).

Aside: 尽 (jin) means something like 'to the furthest extent', so since 力 means 'strength' and 可能 means 'possible', you can see how (尽X) words would work. 

Anyway, so my mind noticed - because the two sentences appeared just minutes apart - that in one I found myself saying jǐn (third tone - which is correct) and the other I said jìn (fourth tone - correct too). Chinese is always confusing - I've written about this plenty before - but I got to wondering when each would be correct.

The other word which then popped into my mind was 尽快 so I looked that up too ... damn!  The dictionary showed that it could be both jǐnkuài OR jìnkuài. So strange.

I was speaking to Judy about this oddity the other day, and she - as a HK'er who uses the traditional character system rather than the simplified system - pointed out the following ...

• This is a known oddity in Chinese, and even HK people note this when studying Mandarin
• If you use traditional characters, the words are written 儘可能 and 盡力, which shows us that actually they are not the same character in the traditional set (the 亻 component exists) - which partly explains why the one is third tone and the other is fourth tone
• 尽量 gets this right, because the one traditional variation is 盡量 which consistently uses the fourth tone (jìnliàng) while 儘量 consistently uses the third tone (jǐnliàng)
• However, when you look up 尽快 in the dictionary, you strangely find that not only can it be written using both forms of the traditional character (盡快 and 儘快), but even the matching tones that we observed above don't work here!

I guess this is a point of theoretical interest. It's nice to know, but if you're learning by listening & talking (and not just reading) then you'll get these points right anyway. Like in my case, I was actually correctly using the respective first & third tones without realising it - because that's how I learned each - and it was more coincidence than anything that I noticed it.

TL;DR:  Probably the right advice in this case is (a) listen to Chinese more (obviously!) and (b) if you're a flashcards kinda person (and you ought to be, if you're not yet advanced) then make a point of sometimes reading them out aloud - making sure the tones you're saying match the tones you're reading in the pinyin.

I've written before about words which - although the pronunciation remains the same - the meanings can be really flexible. But in this case it's about having the same meaning, but different pronunciations. Do you have any particular words which are as confusing as possible to you? Please leave a comment below ...

So how many words do I know?

I've been wondering for some time now how many Mandarin words I know. It's funny though, because I have no idea what my wordcount is in English (and frankly I don't care) but somehow this number for Mandarin is a measure of progress, and I do care.

So here are two estimates of my Mandarin wordcount - which unfortunately do not tie up together at all :-)


Method 1 - flashcards
My self-estimate was around 5000 words, based on almost no science whatsoever.

I noted that with the Anki flashcard desk I have created over the last couple of years, that about 1500 'facts' are mature which I know well, and another 500 are in progress. In the early days the facts were just one word per card, but as I've progressed I've mainly been adding sentences - which itself probably contains somewhere between 1-6 new words. So if I assume on average a 'fact' contains two words, that's 4000 I probably know. Then add another 1000 for words which I know but aren't in my Anki set, and that's 5000.

No science, but I believed to it be true.


Method 2 - statistical sampling
I came across another method on Hugh Grigg's excellent East Asia Student blog, which uses the Known Chinese Words Test of zhtoolkit.com. Naturally, I quickly cleared some time this afternoon, and ran through the test.

Basically it splits "the entire" Chinese vocabulary (36,000 words) into into a number of groups, from very common words to very uncommon words. It then samples 165 words (15 per group) and notes how many you get right each time.

The conclusion of the test is that I know just over 11,000 words. Wow - that's more than double what I thought. So either I thought wrongly, or Chad's method produces very large over-estimates.

Obviously the more words he tests you against, the better the estimate would be. I think users should be given the option of taking a quick test (current 165 questions) or a slow test (say, 500 questions), which would improve the estimate dramatically. Let me show you what I mean ...

• The first group is made up of the most common 125 words, where I got 100% (of the 15 questions) right. This starts my total words known at 125. Good.
• The same applies to the second group of 125 words - taking me to a total of 250. Still good.
• In the third group I only got 80% of the 15 questions, and since this group has 250 words, it adds just 200 (80% of 250) to my total. Still OK, taking me to 450 words so far.
• This continues through more groups, each getting bigger, although still only getting 15 questions to sample. Naturally, since the  words are being decreasingly less common, you would expect your hit rate to fall - and mine did.
• In the last group (words 24,001-36,000) I got 5/15 right, so this is extrapolated to these 12,000 words to deduce that I know 4000 words in this class. I'm flattered.  

In the last group, that 4000 makes a massive contribution to my total of 11,050 - but is just based on my knowing 5 words out of 15 tested. Of course his test shows a huge standard deviation in that group (1460!) but given how important this contribution is to the total (because it's such a large group) there really ought to be many more questions to get the deviation to a reasonable number.

Looking at it in a different way, if you split all words into just two groups: the most common 10,000, and the least common 26,000, I find it odd that I appear to known 4000 in the first group, and 7000 in the least common group. Instinctively that doesn't make sense, and yet you can't argue with his method (other than the small sample size).


Anyway ... 
I don't want to get carried away with detail (and part of me wants to believe my total really is 11,000 :-) . Maybe the real answer lies somewhere between 5000 and 11,000 - I don't know. But I would be interested to redo this test every now and then, and see how I progress.

Just to clarify in closing, I'm really supportive of the zhtoolkit wordcount tool,  and although I think it can still be improved, it was a really interesting exercise and well worth doing.

So if you're feeling brave, do the test (it really doesn't take long) and let us know your score.

Be counted.

"Write on!!" - reviewing Skritter for iOS

Before the official release of the app for iOS, I was approached by the Skritter team to test it, and perhaps write a review. I wasn't offered any freebies, and was given total freedom to write my own review, so I'm comfortable that this is a neutral perspective.

Also, while it was tempting to publish my review around the time of the official release when all those other reviews were being published, I was worried that I would write it more in light of my excitement of having a new novelty toy to play with. I was more keen to actually get a sense of the 'longevity' of Skritter for iOS ... how long before the excitement died down?? (Hint: It still hasn't)

For no particular reason, I'm going to write this review in the style of a FAQ. (By the way, if you are rushed for time, just read Q1, 4, 6, 7, 13. Oh heck, just read it all - this isn't a particularly long post :-)

1. Would you recommend Skritter iOS to others?
Yes

2. Will everyone benefit from using it?
In theory, yes.  But I think there are plenty of Chinese learners who should be focusing more on pinyin, vocab acquisition, tones, and listening skills - and Skritter should perhaps wait a little longer.

3. What about the iOS experience?
From an iOS point of view, the implementation of Skritter is fantastic. It's sleek, artistic, fast, powerful, flexible. It's a great example of using iOS to the full.

4. Did you use Skritter before testing the iOS app?
No. In fact, I had a completely wrong idea about Skritter, so I never bothered before!
I'm glad I took the time to play with it. For example, I had assumed it was just about learning to write characters, but actually it's much more than that. Yes it can be used for that, but it has an amazing selection of vocab, so that it goes way beyond individual characters, into compound-words, phrases and sentences.

5. Does Skritter iOS cater nicely to people who haven't used the website before?
In some ways, Skritter is intuitive to use. But I think the team could do a little more to help people who are totally new to Skritter. For example, there are many settings in the preferences pane that I'm not sure what they actually do - a clarification sentence would be nice for each. It talks about numbers of items added, number of items synchronised, etc. - but it wasn't obvious to me what the difference is. I remember having to add characters one at a time, up to a hundred at a time, although I really wasn't sure why I was having to do that when I had already selected a list - shouldn't it just add the whole list?

6. For actually learning characters, would you recommend Heisig or Skritter?
I still believe that the Heisig method is a better way to learn characters (either reading or writing) than practising writing (on paper, in the air, or with Skritter). I strongly recommend that Heisig should come first, and then Skritter should follow. And yes, definitely use Skritter once you can read & write characters.

7. If you already can read/write through Heisig, why bother with Skritter?
Ah, well this is where I'm finding Skritter to be particularly amazing.
I believe Heisig is the best way to learn to read & write - certainly the fastest with least effort. But it doesn't teach you the pronunciation (pinyin), nor does it show you the characters being used in compound words. I'm finding Skritter to be an excellent bridge between the Heisig world, and the practical world of reading and writing more significant texts. Highly recommended.

8. What's your biggest concern about Skritter iOS?
I think I'll say it's the cost. I don't doubt that a huge amount has been invested in developing this great app, but at just under $10 per month, that's a huge investment, even over a year. I think a lot of people will be excluded from signing up at this price (even the discounted prices), and I'm curious to know whether I'll still be happy to be paying this before a year is up. In a world where apps cost a few dollars, this is on the other end of the scale.
I will say that the Skritter team are not trying to trick you to paying them money, though! As my trial period was ending, they sent me quite a few emails warning me that I was going to start getting charged. No one could claim they were charged because they forgot to cancel, by mistake. Well done Skritter.

9. Any technical thoughts about the app?
There are some strokes that Skritter keeps saying I'm wrong, even though I find myself writing perfectly over the hint-line, mostly commonly 阝 and many near-vertical lines. Odd. I'm inclined to believe it's my handwriting and not Skritter, but when my lines appear to overlap perfectly with the underlying hints, it makes me wonder.

10. Do you like the font that underlies Skritter?
Actually yes, it's a beautiful font - lovely. I do wish however that we were given the option of a second font - something that was a little more computer-perfect. Most of the characters I see are of course on a computer, and Skritter's font is slightly more stylistic. This means I find myself positioning/angling some of my strokes in ways I would expect based on what I see most of the time. From memory, characters like 火, 垂, 民 all are slightly different as a computer font than the Skritter font. This means either Skritter thinks I'm wrong at times, or it ends up moving my stroke far away from where I placed it. I can learn to live with just one Skritter font, but a less stylised one might be a nice option. One day.

11. What about Skritter as a flashcard app?
Well, it is sold as an SRS (spaced repetition system), but so far it doesn't feel like that. Maybe there is a setting I haven't used yet, but very few characters have come up a second time, I still seem to be working my way through the list, one phrase at a time. And although it tests my pinyin & tones & definitions, it feels like only 1 in 25 cards is non-handwriting. I'm still waiting for the 'repetition' to begin, let alone the 'spaced repetition'.

12. What extras would you like to see?
Firstly, I've simply added words from two lists: "Integrated Chinese 2" and "Business". And Skritter seems to have thrown these into a pot, deciding for itself which characters to feed to me when. Sometimes (particularly on a plane, flying somewhere for a business meeting) I feel like I'm in "business mode", and I'd like to learn words only from the Business list, but I can't do that.
Secondly, it would be nice to have a search facility. As I mentioned above, the character 垂 was different, if I remember correctly, to how it appears on the computer. But I can't search for a single character within Skritter in order to show you how it looks. Also, sometimes I remember struggling with certain characters, and it would be nice to find them again to practise, but I don't seem to be able to do that on the iOS app.
Thirdly, when trying to decide which lists to use, it would have been nice for the list description to include the number of characters that I'd be getting by selecting that list.
Fourthly, the app is really feature-packed, and it would not surprise me to find out that all the things I think need to change are already a part of the app - maybe I just don't know how to do it! :-) (For example, at one stage I thought a nice option would be to retain my stokes, rather than replacing them with the right strokes - but then I discovered there's a setting for that!)

13. In the opening paragraph you spoke about concern about the excitement of using Skritter iOS dying down ...
Yes, that was a real possibility. I've used many tools and websites to improve my Chinese; I've started listening to many podcasts - but over time I find I get bored of them, and just realise one day that I don't use them anymore. But so far Skritter has been really good, and I continue to enjoy using it. It's a nice distraction when I have a couple of minutes to spare, it's a nice break from podcasts, or Heisig Book 2. And I have definitely got value from using it.

So I am still using Skritter iOS. And I am still benefitting from Skritter iOS. And I am still happy to continue to pay for the Skritter iOS app.


tl;dr: If you can afford it, then I think you probably should use it too.

Write on!!

All cars are red cars (when learning Chinese)

As you know from my previous post, I'm working through Heisig's 'Book 1'  from cover to cover before embarking on 'Book 2'. It has been really good - I'm glad I did it this way.

Parallel Streams
Along the way, I've had rather interesting "discoveries", making the process even more satisfying for me. You see, my learning Chinese has gone along three distinct streams:
  1. Podcasts (mainly ChinesePod, but also Popup Chinese) - where I learned how words & sentences sounded (based around pinyin);
  2. Flashcards (using Anki) - where I would learn vocab and sentence structure. Initially it was built around pinyin, but over time I learned some characters this way too;
  3. Heisig (here are the articles I have written on the subject) - which was all about learning characters, but focusing on the meaning and not the pronunciation.

Podcasts, for example, aren't great for learning to read; and Heisig wasn't intended for learning how to pronounce the characters. But over time, although I have focused on these streams separately, these various methods have overlapped, and things clicked into place.

So Clever
For example, the first such discovery I remember from years ago was the word for 'clever' - cōngming (聪明). By that stage I had only learned the word through audio podcasts, and actually thought it was cóngming (从明) - I guess because 'clever' and 'from brightness' made sense. Even though it turns out I was very wrong!

Red cars
When you buy a red car, afterwards it seems that every car you see is a red car. And similarly when you learn new characters, it seems that every character you see is that new one.

On my recent re-do of 'Book 1', I learned 落 (luò), which has the Heisig-keyword 'fall'. I vaguely remember learning it the first time, but I was sure that I had NOT seen it in the last couple of years since learning it.

And then another red car came past. Just a few days later, the following sentence popped up on my flashcard revision ...
     We are studying the decline of ancient Rome
     wǒmen​zài​ yánjiū​gǔ​Luómǎ​de shuāiluò​
     我们在研究古罗马的衰落

I actually remembered having done this sentence a few times before, and there it was ... 落.  I had learned this character and I had used this character. But I most certainly did not remember that character!

And a couple of weeks later, another old sentence arrived in the queue for learning ...
     What’s a pretty girl like you doing here all alone?
     xiàng nǐ zhèyàng de měinǚ zěnme huì luòdān?
     像你这样的美女怎么会落单？

That sneaky character again! It's everywhere.

Bringing it all together
I have always used different methods for whatever they each do best. And I have not forced myself to integrate these methods. Somehow with zero additional effort, things just connect themselves - something I've learned one way seems to fill a hole in what I have learned anther way. I don't force anything, which allows me to enjoy every moment of learning - nothing is contrived, nothing is done based purely on obligation. 

And along the way, I just stare at all these nice red cars as they go past ...

How many flashcards does it take to change a lightbulb?

Some people do it daily (some people wish they did it daily!), and others only do it infrequently, or even never.


For me, spending time on flashcards has become an (almost) daily routine. I have recently already written that you should just do it, about how effective it has been for me, and to tell you how to test whether you should be using flashcards - so take a look if you haven't seen those articles.

In this next in the series, I wanted to go personal (yes, even more personal than writing about my love affair - In fact, I'm going to let you look into my actual set of flashcards, through sample sentences, numbers & dates.

Deck Statistics
Anki has a feature which gives you a whole bunch of facts about your specific deck. Here are some of mine, covering the deck itself, as well as how I've used it.

total numbers

• deck created 2.1 years ago
• total number of 'facts' is 1530 (a fact contains english, pinyin, simplified hanzi and (sometimes) traditional hanzi too)
• total number of cards is 3680 (in the early days, a fact only generated two cards: english-to-pinyin & pinyin-to-english; but after a while I extended it to three: english-to-pinyin/simplified/traditional, simplified-to-english/pinyin/traditional, pinyin-to-english/simplified/traditional)
• according to Anki, 76% of my cards are 'mature' (I've basically seen these often enough that they're 'known', 6% are 'young' (I'm currently actively working through them), and 18% are unseen.

activity

• In the last week I did 500 cards, averaging about 70 a day. According to Anki, I missed one day in the last week.
• My average over the last 3 months is 45 cards a day, and over the last year is 52 cards a day. 
• Since the deck was created, I have averaged 53 cards a day, and used Anki just under 5 days a week.
• Since the beginning, I have added less than 5 cards a day, but this has only been around 2 a day in the last year. (Remember that by entering a single 'fact' Anki automatically generates a number of 'cards' - so I would say this averages about 2 new physical entries a day, that's all.)

sample entries

From humble beginnings ...

• The first six entries in my deck are:  (know / zhīdào / 知道), (formal / zhèngshì / 正式), (about / guānyú / 关于), (accept,approve / tóngyì / 同意), (after / zhīhòu / 之后), (agree / shuōhǎo / 说好).

To a long way down the line ...

• The six latest entries are:

1. profit commission adjustment request / 盈佣调整询问函
2. There were a lot of groupies at the Michael Jackson concert in Japan / 迈克尔·杰克逊在日本的演唱会招来了许多追星族
3. to accumulate over a long period of time / 日积月累
4. Unless you say it so that your word becomes another, then it's no problem / 除非你说的词变成另外一个词，否则没问题
5. tomorrow;daybreak / 明天;天明
6. You have to tighten up the handle, it has become loose / 柄松动了，你得把螺丝拧紧

I think you'll agree that I've improved my skill level over the last two years!  And don't let this mislead you ... I don't know all the latest ones. For example, I recently needed to know the word 'loose' while talking to someone and realised I didn't know how to say that. So I looked it up in the dictionary, found a good sentence, and entered it into my deck. A few weeks will pass before this sentence comes up to the top of the pack, and then I will 'learn' it through spaced-repetition.

So that's me

If you'd like to share some of your desk statistics, I'd love to see them - whether you're a beginner or really advanced.

Most interestingly, I would love it if you could leave a comment below to say what your first few words were, what your most recent entries are, and what the time period is in between.

And if you've just started a deck of your own, perhaps since reading this series on flashcards, let us know what your first few entries have been.

Reading (day 18) - 500 characters!

OK, its time to celebrate!  I have just crossed 500 hanzi in my "Learning to Read Chinese" experiment - in less than 3 weeks. 

This is an update on my experiment to learn to read Chinese. You can also read my original post on this topic, or check out all other posts on my experiment. After a bit of research I settled on Heisig's "Remembering the Simplified Hanzi" method - which is progressing really well.

Here are some of my thoughts on the Heisig method of learning to read & write Chinese:

• If you'd ask me when I began, I didn't think I would get through 500 with 90%+ recall in just 3 weeks. But I have.
• I'm not delusional - I'm pretty sure the next 500 will take longer. Especially because of the fact that as you learn more, you need more time to revise.
• I'm enjoying this a helluva lot more than I thought I would. Although I was looking forward to this experiment, I thought it would feel a bit like school - but I am actually eager to get some quiet time to learn more.
  
• The more you do this, the better you get at creating and remembering images.
• I know there is nothing magical about 500. But I'm goal-orientated, and since Book 1 has 1500 characters, 500, 1000 and 1500 were always going to be important milestones.

And you know, at only 500 hundred, I'm neverthless seeing so much more meaning in Chinese texts. I can read sentences using words I've learned. And often, even when I don't know the word, I know enough characters that I can work out the general meaning.

And here's a really important point ... Heisig's goal is not to teach the pinyin pronunciation of words. But that's OK - I've got podcasts & flashcards to do that. All I'm trying to do here is to read words and know what they mean.

On a more technical level, here are some observations based on the characters I've learned since the last update:

• In Lesson 17 I was getting confused between footprint, footprints, and footstep. I didn't realise at first that the images were going to be slightly different, so I used them inter-changeably. Fortunately, only a few stories down, I realised I had to be more clear, and was able to go back and clarify the images. 
• I'm learning English words too! I never knew the word "ford" was a verb wrt crossing rivers, but found that out with 涉 (#381).
• Again I found myself getting a little confused between the word's meaning, and what its image is when used as a primitive. (Heisig does this because some words are difficult to use when creating images.) 
• For example, although 竟 (#487) means "unexpectedly", but this is difficult to use in images - so at such times you should use the visual of a "mirror". (This isn't as silly as it sounds - just look at the actual word for mirror:  镜).
• I had a really sad moment ... 乞 means "beg", and I used a clear image of a prostrate begger with a hook instead of a hand (look at the image and see why). But the very next character is 吃 (to eat) - and the image naturally took the "beg" scenario and extended it to this crippled starving guy wanting to put food in his mouth. Such a depressing image!  (I hope I don't create an eating-disorder for myself as a result :-)
• Characters #479-81 are 资, 姿 & 咨 - which are made up of 次 ('next') at the top and another primitive at the bottom. Heisig's suggested stories were not consistent in the sense that sometimes the top part came first in the story, sometimes second. I simplified this as "next shell", "next woman", "next mouth" - and had images which generated the words 'assets', 'looks' & 'consult'. (If you're not actually creating Heisig images yourself, this last point might not make a lot of sense.)

Revision is becoming increasingly important, so here are some thoughts:

• I find it makes a big difference if I review my most recent lesson after about 12 hours (i.e. the next morning or the next evening).
• The first time I revise a lesson, I work through the hanzi and - by recalling the story - remember the meaning. The second time I revise (a day later) I make a point of looking at the English word and - by turning the image into a story - create the hanzi. Both are important.
• As I progress, I make a point of mentally re-creating the stories for primitives that are being used now, although they were taught much earlier.  This keeps up my recall.
  
• I am aware that sometimes, especially when a character is built on the previous character, I know what word is coming next even before I see it. So I've been trying to revise in later sessions by bouncing around from chapter to chapter, page to page - to avoid this familiarity. But it's reached the point where I've got to start using flashcards. Anki ... here I come.
• Over the next few days I'm simply going to review these 504 characters. It will give me a chance to confirm my recall, and make sure my foundations are strong because the connections are becoming more advanced.
  

This habit of decomposting hanzi into their components is becoming automatic - and powerful:

• For example, this morning I saw (for the first time) this character: 做.  
• I knew that 故 (#342) means 'deliberate' (you don't want to know the image I use for this one!), and that 亻 means person. 
• A 'person being deliberate'? I guessed it might mean either 'do' or 'make' or something like that - and it turned out the definition is indeed 'make'.
• So I was able to follow the sentence using a word I'd never seen before - and now I'll never again forget how to read/write the word for 'make'.
• (Have I mentioned before that I'm liking the Heisig approach?)
  

So if you're sitting on the fence about whether you should use this approach, I have a strong yes recommendation.

Here's an affiliated link to the books page at Amazon:
Remembering Simplified Hanzi: Book 1, How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Chinese Characters


So here's to the next 500!  And I would appreciate your thoughts too - whether you're a fan or opponent of Heisig, and especially if you have observations or suggestions to share, please leave a comment ...

The "sleeping cats" guide to pinyin pronunciation

How much does pinyin confuse you? Which is the worst part for you?

In this short post, I show how "cats & zeds" will help you overcome a common pronuncation mistake. (PS. I know Americans say "zee" not "zed" - but for this to work, pretend you don't.)

Pinyin is the system which provides a method for pronouncing the Chinese characters using a Roman alphabet (and tone marks). It was developed by the Chinese for the Chinese - and let's face it, although it's the system we use in the West, if Westerners had designed it, I think we would have used different letters to represent the different sounds.

c is pronounced "ts",  z is "dz", zh is like "j", x is "sh" (kinda) ... sigh.

For me, the parts I got wrong in the beginning were mainly 'c' and 'z', and even today I find myself stumbling over words like "cún​zài" (存在 - to exist) when I talk too fast for my brain.

You might have a similar problem. In fact, you might not even realise you have the problem!

For example, when I meet other students of Mandarin in London, and I listen to sentences like "I live in London" (wǒ​ zhù​ zài​ Lún​dūn​), the 'zai' is often pronounced 'tsai' and not 'dzai' - so I know I'm not the only one.

Perhaps this might help ...
    cats & zeds
    [c]a[ts] & [z]e[dz]
    c is prounced 'ts'  &  z is pronounced 'dz'

Test yourself - how do you pronounce 汉字 (Hàn​zì​ - Chinese character), 现在 (xiàn​zài​ - now), 菜单 (cài​dān​ - menu), 词典 (cí​diǎn​ - dictionary)?

So cún​zài would (phonetically) be [ts]un-[dz]ai. Got it?
Cats & Zeds. Got it?

Good.

Flashcards: just do it

There's a lot of debate about whether you should use flashcards for learning Chinese. And perhaps the advice I should give you is: Use it if it works for you, and don't use it if it doesn't work for you.

Simple.

But I should also state that I have benefited so massively from the use of flashcards, that I really believe you should use it - regardless of whether you think it might be useful or not.

Just do it.

My use of flashcards has evolved over the years, and that's probably why I'm still getting value out of them, starting with individual words (excluding Chinese characters), progressing through to much more complex sentences which include the hanzi.

I use Anki, which is an SRS (spaced repetition system) program that runs on most operating systems. It's incredibly intuitive, very flexible, and free. You may as well install it now, if you haven't already done so, and you can learn more about how to use it optimally in the next few posts I write.

One of the more common arguments against using flashcards is that if you are reading books & newspapers & websites in Chinese, then you will end up learning the most common words anyway, without wasting your time on words that you might almost never see.

But most students of Chinese are not at that level, and therefore most students really should be focusing on accumulating words as quickly as possible. The more words you know, the more you will understand and the more you will be able to say. A flashcard system is, in my opinion, the best way to get there.

So if you're an advanced student, flashcards might not be for you. But for anyone else ... Just do it.

I have begun Heisig Book 2. Kinda.

If you've been following my posts, you'll know that I have been preparing for a while to study the second book in the Heisig & Richardson series about learning to read & write Chinese. And I've been re-discovering good things too!

I set myself a goal to begin on 1 July (after fully re-studying Book 1), and to finish by year-end. Although I did the first book in about 3 months, I decided not to get carried away this time.

The bad news: I'm already behind schedule.
I thought I would begin at about 10 characters a day, expecting to slow down as I needed more time to revise. As of last night (21 days in) I had learned just 170 characters. I have also done a lot less revision than I should have done by now. Damn.

The good news: I am 170 characters further than when I started 3 weeks ago. (Even slow progress is progress, right?)


Here are some of the things I've noticed along the way:

• It is definitely going more slowly that Book 1 - but that isn't a surprise, right?
• The average number of strokes in the first couple of hundred characters looks to be about 10, which is quite a bit more than the first book
• My retention in the early weeks of the first book was nearly flawless - it was easy enough to remember the stories because the images were clear & obvious
• I'm not suggesting that there is a massive step up from the first to the second book - it's all about progressing slowly from character 1 to character 3000
• I'm mainly behind schedule because of work-based time constraints, and not because of a lack of interest in completing book 2
• There are some really strange keywords (the preface even explains this was necessary in order to ensure each character has a unique keyword), like: "father's sister" (maybe it would be easier if my father had a sister :-), "smidgen" (OK, I can cope with this), "cinnabar red" (erm ...), "flouds" (you'll get there, don't worry), "paulownia" (uhm ...), "vermilion" (sheesh ...), "succor" (hello dictionary), "brick heated bed" (seriously?)
• I got a little confused by 1559 ("widowed") until I realised that the 'head' primitive is actually written in traditional (not simplified) style
• And I smiled when I saw their copy-and-paste screw-up in character 1663 ("sow" - verb)
• It's so nice to finally get to know characters intimately that I have only come across in sentences in my flashcard pack
• It's clear that the authors have learned from Book 1, and they are improving Book 2 with this. For example, certain sub-primitives are getting different images to what they were allocated in the first book - I like what they've done here with Eiffel Tower and Disneyland
• And finally, I have created a Harry Potter themed image in all my Heisig work ("snitch" - I know it's not the way the authors intended it to be interpreted, but it made the story/character very clear for me)

So I'm really enjoying myself. Time constraints prevent me from doing any more time than I'm doing at the moment, but I'm enjoying the progress - and the fact that I'm already recognising characters from around, shows it's already adding value.