Heisig Book 2 - now finished! (this is how)

Today I completed the 1500 characters of Heisig & Richardson's Book 2. (Actually there are 1519 characters in this book, including the bonus ones.) This takes me to a total of 3019, which is about as far as I plan to go.

I finished Book 1 about four years ago, and was happy for quite some time not to bother with Book 2. Then about 1.5 years ago, I tried starting Book 2, but failed. By the start of 2013, I had decided I would begin again - but the difference that time was that although I managed Book 1 in just over 100 days, my decision in January was that I would take my time, and focus on finishing the book by the end of the year.

And that's what I did - I stuck with the slow-and-steady approach, and completed the book in 11.5 months. And it feels great! (you should try it one day)

Although there is something to be said for throwing yourself at it - like I did with Book 1 - it does take a bigger time commitment and certainly more focus. My first attempt to begin Book 2 was too intense, and that's why I failed. The second time I was ready to focus on just 5 new characters a day - and that succeeded perfectly.

There is no Book 3 - and to be fair, even if there were, I think I would be focusing on actually reading books now, rather than memorising new characters. So for 2014 my focus will be books and not textbooks.


It's not even noon here in HK right now, so perhaps a little early to go out and drink champagne. But I will do that this afternoon.

Learning to Read Chinese (3 months!) [pant pant]

差不多

Nearly there. Finished off today at 1278 characters - which is over 85% of book 1 completed!

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.

I must admit, though, it's going slower than I would like. On paper it looks quite good - having learned 278 characters in just 9 days - which is over 30 a day for about a week. But it feels like I'm wading through treacle.

The stretch from 1000-1100 was relatively easy - the words felt concrete, lots of nouns, easy to create images. And while 1100-1278 wasn't that bad, now that I'm this far advanced I'm having to spend a solid chunk of time revising, and coming across more & more words which have similar keywords to previous characters I've learned. So it's taking quite a bit more effort, but I'm getting there.

And I'm still enjoying it!


As I've previously observed, although Heisig doesn't teach the pinyin, I already know quite a lot of words from podcasts & flashcards. And so, with little effort, I'm learning the pinyin along the way. By accident.

For example, I've [verbally] known the word "yǒu​ xiàn" for ages, but couldn't write it, and only sometimes could remember how to read it. When I discovered (Heisig #1151) that 限 means "limit" - all the pieces just fell into place.  有限 --> "has limit" --> finite.  And I now also know the pinyin for 限.

This kind of thing has been happening plenty along the way.


So, I'm into my last stretch. Just more than 200 to go ... maybe I'll try get it done by the end of next weekend?

Please do me a favour ... start putting the champagne on ice.  (You can do this 'virtually' by leaving me a comment below ... thanks :-)