When a character says: To be or To do

If you're anything beyond a beginner in studying Mandarin, you would have come across situations when the same word can be used both as a noun and a verb.

There are untold examples of this, the one that comes to mind right now being 选择 (xuǎnzé) which can either mean 'to choose' or 'a choice'. This diversity makes Chinese both easier and more difficult.

In this short post, I wanted to point out another interesting aspect of Chinese - that is when the same character can either be a noun or a verb, but there is a tone change that goes along with the change in meaning.

This might be something you already are very clear on, but for those who find this new (or a timely reminder) or for those who kinda half noticed half didn't notice, then enjoy!

• 数 (to count = shǔ) (a number = shù)

This is the first character where I realised that the matching name & verb had to involve a tone change to reflect the swap between meanings.

• 扫 (to sweep = sǎo) (a broom = sào)

This is another example where the verb is third tone, and the noun is fourth tone. Of course Chinese doesn't alway operate in single-hanzi words - so you're probably more likely to see a double word like 扫帚 (sàozhou) to mean broom, but the fourth tone still remains.

• 钉 (to nail = dìng) (a nail = dīng) 

OK, so it's not always that the third tone is the verb, but again note it's the same character, but with different tones giving different meanings. And even messier, the verb meaning can also be a first tone when paired with another character - for example 钉牢(dīngláo) means 'to nail' yet uses the first tone.

Nothing earth-shattering, but it is probably useful enough for beginners that it's worth pointing out.

Can you think of other examples without using a dictionary? Please leave comments below to let others know ...

Full interview with Timothy Richardson - the man who brought the Heisig method to Chinese characters

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I have been really lucky to get some time with Timothy Richardson, the co-author of the Remembering Hanzi book series. Although it is known as the “Heisig method”, it was through the initiative and effort of Tim that this approach was brought from the original Japanese application, to Chinese characters. Although I gave you a teaser to some really interesting facts about Tim and about the process of writing the books with Heisig, below you will find the full interview. Thanks again to Tim for this time, sharing so much about the books.


Tim, let’s start off with two quick questions, one about you in the big world, and about you in the context of the Heisig method:

• How would you describe yourself now, so that the reader can 'place' you?

I've been interested in language learning for a long time, but I also have broad interests in a number of other fields (philosophy, religion, science, etc.) and spend time reading about all that when I have a chance.

I'm a family man. I'm fortunate to have a capable, talented, dedicated wife and nine irreplaceable children. Each is a treasure.

• How did you first come across the Heisig method?

I was teaching English as a Second Language at Snow College, a community college in central Utah, when a Japanese-speaking colleague showed me a copy of Heisig’s Remembering the Kanji 1. I had taken three undergraduate courses in Chinese before that time, and this colleague thought I might be interested in Heisig's approach to the characters. He was right. Within minutes, I knew that (for me) this approach to character learning was better than anything I'd ever seen. Within a very short time, I was looking at and writing down correspondences between the Japanese elements and kanji in Heisig's book and what I knew of Chinese characters.

OK, great start. We’ll get back to the book in a moment, but I’d like to know more about you, Timothy Richardson:

• You live in Hawaii, but weren't born there? How did you end up in Hawaii?

You're right that I didn't start out in Hawaii. I was born in Mesa, Arizona, a place that has many wonderful people, but one that's way too hot for me. I have a definite preference for cooler climates. In fact, my biggest complaint about Hawaii is its lack of cold and snow from time to time. I'm aware that anyone who complains about the weather in Hawaii is likely to be seen as a crackpot, and for good reason. It's lovely here year around. I only have a preference for the cold because I absorbed so much heat in Arizona while growing up. I suppose I ended up here in Hawaii mostly because the University (Brigham Young University–Hawaii) needed someone who could teach both Chinese and Spanish.

• When we started chatting last year, you were actually working outside Hawaii - do you do a fair amount of travel like that?

I was on a sabbatical leave in Utah when you contacted me last year. I do travel some in my current position (it's been mostly to Japan to work with Jim Heisig in recent years), but I used to travel more. Before I decided to work full time in the field of language learning, I worked in several administrative positions in which international travel (or residence) was an important part of the job description. The time I've spent in various countries has definitely helped me as a language teacher.

• What are your current areas of activity?

For 13 years now, I've been part of the International Cultural Studies and World Languages Department at Brigham Young University–Hawaii (BYU-Hawaii), where I teach both Chinese and Spanish, and on occasion, Portuguese. I'm also involved in coordinating the teaching of world languages on campus.

In addition to ongoing work on the learning of Chinese characters, there are non-language topics that I hope to get to in the future (philosophy, religion, science, etc., as mentioned above). But I suppose I'll hold off on commenting about them at this point.

• How would you summarise your language skills?

I'm a native American-English speaker from Arizona.

I do speak Chinese. My wife and I lived in Mainland China for two years, where we taught English at the Xi'an International Studies University. I studied Chinese in much of my free time (unfortunately, without knowing anything of Heisig's approach at the time). I later studied Chinese at the graduate level and currently teach BYU-Hawaii's first three Chinese courses. I'm very fluent in some areas of the language and less skilled in areas that I haven't spent much time in.

Spanish was the first foreign language I learned, while serving as a missionary in Chile for two years. I later lived for six months in Spain and a number of months in Mexico while teaching Spanish on study-abroad programs for Brigham Young University (Utah) and finishing up a Masters degree in Spanish linguistics. I also lived in Brazil for over a year while working for a petroleum company headquartered in Texas, and became very interested in and involved with Portuguese. (Before the M.A. in Spanish, I had completed a Masters degree in public administration [MPA]. Then, after working at the Agency for International Development for a short time in Washington, D.C., I decided that I might prefer the private sector, and ended up working in it for several years before going back to school for the M.A. in Spanish.) While completing the Ph.D. at the University of Texas, I taught both Spanish and Portuguese (mostly Portuguese) and mostly studied Chinese and linguistics.

Finally, it’s worth noting that I don't have any expertise in Japanese. Our whole family lived in Japan for four months while Heisig and I were hard at work on the Book 1s, and I have accumulated more time than that there during other trips, but I have not tried to learn Japanese at all (even though I do find it appealing).

• What was the original trigger for becoming interested in the Chinese language?

I was working on the previously-mentioned Masters in Spanish linguistics at the time. I began to feel a strong interest in Chinese right in the middle of that program, so I started taking beginning classes. This meant that I was teaching undergraduate Spanish courses, taking graduate Spanish courses, and studying Chinese, all at the same time. My Spanish professors wondered about this 'irrelevant' interest I had developed, but they were good enough to tolerate it.

Now back to the work on the books you co-authored with James Heisig:

• I read that there was a 10-year period between seeing the method and writing your thesis - what happened during those years?

I don't know if it was 10 years or not. I could reconstruct this if I could spend time with my boxed-up journals from that time period, but right now that's not possible. It may have been about 10 years between my first seeing Heisig's approach and my finishing my thesis. During the intervening time I was teaching at Snow College, and then studying as a doctoral student at The University of Texas, at Austin.

• How did you get in touch with Heisig originally? Did you just drop him an email? You called? You met him at a university event?

I'm not sure if I wrote him a letter, wrote him an email, or phoned him, but I believe it was probably back in 1992 that I first contacted him, at the beginning of my doctoral studies. I might have something on an old floppy disk somewhere, but that will have to wait to be resurrected, if ever.

If I recall correctly, I asked him if anyone had ever done anything for Chinese along the lines of what he had done for Japanese. My recollection is that he responded that a number of people had asked him that question over the years, and that some had actually begun on the Chinese project. He said something to the effect that none of them had any idea about how much work would be involved. But he also gave me the name of a person who, with his native-Chinese-speaking wife, had actually made some progress toward producing materials for Chinese and suggested that I get in touch with him. I did so, and it's true that this person had done quite a bit of work on the project. Still, my feeling was that he had taken it in directions for Chinese that weren't as appealing as what Heisig had done for Japanese, so I was lukewarm about any sort of collaboration with him.

What contact with Jim Heisig and the other fellow did, though, was convince me that little enough had been done that I could focus on the project as part of my doctoral work. I did have to deal with the fact that I was fluent in both Spanish and Portuguese, less fluent in Chinese, and that the sensible, practical thing to do would be to focus on the two Latin American languages. But my persistent inclination wasn't toward the sensible or practical, so I taught Spanish and Portuguese while focusing my studies on Chinese.

• So what happened in the 10 years after your thesis but before publishing the book?

I don't think I had too much contact with Heisig while working on the thesis (a few communications, I suppose, but not a lot). Immediately following completion of the thesis and graduation, I returned to Snow College, where I taught both Chinese and Spanish (and occasionally Portuguese) and served as the Foreign Language Department chair for three years. I remember that I did have occasional email contact with Heisig, and with the fellow who had been working on a Chinese adaptation, during that time.

Then, in 2001, I came to BYU-Hawaii, where I again began to teach Spanish, Chinese, and, on occasion, Portuguese. During the first number of years here, I continued examining a number of Chinese-character frequency lists (four or five) to come up with a unique list of most frequently used characters for Chinese. I also did a bit more of the relevant theoretical research that had been part of the dissertation.

• How much convincing did you have to do before Heisig agreed to 'coauthor' with you? Was it easy or hard?

At some point, I sent a hard copy of my doctoral thesis to Heisig. From what I remember, he took a couple of evenings to read/skim it and seemed pleased. Then, in 2003, I contacted him about making a short trip to Japan to meet him and show him the frequency list I'd been working on. We met and discussed things, and he was very generous in his encouragement for me to go ahead with the project. I told him that my thought, all along, had been that we might work on the project together, and that he would be the lead author.

I don't remember exactly when we decided to actually collaborate on the books, but an outside financial donor who had used Heisig's Japanese books, and who was at that point interested in some similar Chinese books, played an important role early on. I went back to Japan for part of the summer of 2006 to begin work on the books. Heisig, the outside donor, and I took care of a lot of details so that I could return with my family for the first four months of 2007 to continue the process. I returned later that summer and again in subsequent summers.

• What can you share about the time you have shared with Heisig?

I have worked side by side with him on this project for days and days on many, many occasions. He works hard and at a fast pace. He's good humoured and extremely knowledgeable. In his approach to the work of the books, he uniquely combines, it seems to me, 1) a real bent toward systematicity and 2) an impressive ability to find non-systematic solutions when problems require them. I have enjoyed many good meals with him and lots of good conversation. I've even had occasion to have my entire family visit with him. He's remarkably good with children and has a large store of jokes and magic tricks at the ready to keep them entertained. Much, much more could be said.

• Did you co-author the book mainly through emails and document sharing? Would you meet regularly over lunch and Chinese rice wine, arguing about which 1500 characters should be in book 1?

We have exchanged many, many emails and done plenty of document sharing, as well as my spending about nine months in Japan and him spending a few days here in Hawaii working on the project.

When it came to character selection he basically trusted the approach I was taking and left that to me – although we did collaborate on some character decisions with both books. With the Book 1s, we wanted the top 1,000 characters by frequency plus 500 other top-3,000 characters that would allow us to use Heisig's method for ordering them. This is detailed to some degree in the introduction of the Book 1s. We also collaborated on decisions about some of the last characters in the Book 2s when we were having to consider how many frequently-used surnames we should include in the top 3,000.

• Are you still in contact with him?

I am still frequently in contact with him, as the project still has many ongoing aspects to it. Spanish translations of the Book 2s have recently been published in Barcelona, Spain, and German translations are in progress. (Heisig is, by the way, fluent in both Spanish and German. I teach upper-division Spanish courses at BYU-Hawaii, and I can tell you that Heisig's Spanish is excellent.) Our translators, in both cases, are exceptional, but Heisig and I have been quite involved as well. I've helped quite a bit with the Spanish key words, and Heisig oversees the layout and typesetting in both languages. We occasionally have Hanzi-book errata to communicate about. We've also been considering the increasing demand for review apps and a set of books on character pronunciations, but the project that is absorbing our energies at present is an eBook that combines the two simplified books. We hope to have it out soon.

• On a more technical basis, were there any particular challenges that you two faced when doing the hanzi book, that perhaps were not an issue for the kanji ones? (For example, the issue of Simplified/Traditional is one that comes to mind, but maybe you can think of others?)

Yes, the simplified/traditional divide always had to be dealt with, and it had significant impact on almost innumerable details in the books. Initially, Heisig thought we should have just two books, one for the first 1,500 simplified and traditional characters, and another for the last 1,500. In other words, he thought we should introduce the simplified and traditional characters together in the same volumes, and he had figured out a promising way to do this. I was a bit hesitant that going this route would introduce too much complexity, but the deciding voice in the matter came from the outside donor. He expressed a preference for separate simplified and traditional volumes, and that's the direction we ended up taking.

• Can you tell us a bit about the fonts? They match the stories perfectly - but I’ve seen other fonts where the ‘make-up’ of the different characters is actually slightly different.

There were many details that had to be dealt with in terms of the Chinese fonts we used. No one font we looked at, whether simplified or traditional, showed all of the elements we wanted in the way we wanted them. With full-form fonts, especially, there were lots of variants to deal with. We ended up using proprietary fonts, with Heisig doing most of the heavy lifting here. His ability with the software needed to modify characters to suit our purposes was critically important.

• Uhm, Book 2 took a while! (For people like me who had done book 1 and were eagerly awaiting book 2, it seemed to take forever. And given that even official comment from the publishers seemed to use deadlines that were seriously exceeded several times, we all came to the conclusion that book 2 had some interesting challenges in wrapping up.)

You're right about the Book 2 delay. We were very aware of it. I think it's safe to say that one reason for it was that around the time of the publication of the Book 1s my university, BYU-Hawaii, made some significant administrative changes. The School took major steps toward emphasizing the teaching mission of the Institution. That meant significantly increased teaching loads and correspondingly less time for research. Heisig and I both wanted to move quickly on the Book 2s, but my situation at BYU-H made that impossible.

Another thing that probably delayed the books by a year is that we decided, when the Book 2s were well on their way, to change the ordering of the characters. We were both a little dissatisfied with the ordering that we had decided on previously (all too complicated to detail here). I was literally on my way to Japan for several weeks of work when the idea occurred to me that we could perhaps use the same ordering we had used for the Book 1s. That is, we could simply arrange the characters from the second 1,500 in Book 2 lessons corresponding to Book 1 lessons in which we could have logically introduced them. This meant that at least one Book 2 lesson would only have one character in it, and that at least one would have more than 100, but there was a 'cleanness' to this organizational idea that was appealing. I approached Heisig about it shortly after I arrived at the scholars residence in which he lives. He immediately saw some advantages to it, but he also saw some disadvantages, not the least of which was that it would mean redoing days and days worth of work from the previous year and delaying the publication of the Book 2s. After more discussion, we decided to take the new direction, and we're both glad that we did. This Book 2 ordering allows learners to choose between the sequential (Book 1, and then Book 2) path we originally intended and a simultaneous (Book 1 and Book 2) path that we had not. Both have their advantages.

• Are there any funny stories that you remember about the time you were writing the book?

We had a lot of fun with many, many of the character frames. The great majority of the creative work was Heisig's, but we often worked on or modified stories together. I feel that one of the best things I did was express reservations if I didn't think a story worked as well it should. This often led Heisig to add a twist or take a different direction altogether, and the frame involved was very often satisfyingly improved. Heisig has a gift for story creation, to say the least. (I suppose you might be aware that he once received a marriage proposal from a woman in India who had enjoyed his stories and approach to kanji learning so much that she had fallen in love.)

Here’s a major tangent. When my entire family was in Japan for those first four months of 2007, Heisig and I would go down to the gym at Nanzan University and play basketball on Thursday afternoons. We always took three of my boys with us (Nathan, then age 15; Seth, 13; and Jacob, 11), as well as another faculty member or two. I was 56 or so at the time, and Heisig was (and is) a few years my senior. I think my boys would all say that Heisig is a 'crafty' basketball player, and all of us could tell that he knew what he was doing on the court. Once, the previously-mentioned donor brought his two teenage boys and joined us for the day. We had lots of fun, and it was a nice change from writing.

That has been fascinating! Thanks. I’d now like to shift back towards you a little, without straying too hard from the Chinese path ...

• Is there somewhere your original PhD can be downloaded, for interested readers?

The dissertation is rather heavily theoretical in places and heavily referenced. The paper we previously discussed [aside: see link below] is easier for most people to handle. In any case, the dissertation can't be downloaded. The most recent information I have on ordering it (and some people have done so) is this:

If in the U.S.:
          The publication # (or UMI #) is 9838097.
          Call toll-free: 1 (800) 521-0600 (ext. 7044).
          Or write:
                    Dissertations: Customer Service
                    PROQUEST
                    300 North Zeeb Road
                    Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106

If outside the U.S.:
          Again, the publication # (or UMI #) is 9838097.
          Write: Dissertations: Customer Service International Department
                    PROQUEST
                    300 North Zeeb Road
                    Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106
                    U.S.A.

• What other published material of yours would I be able to find online?

I wrote a paper that I presented at a conference in Germersheim, Germany, in August of 2005. A draft that I had submitted to the conference committee has somehow found its way onto the Internet at http://www.fb06.uni-mainz.de/chinesisch/Dateien/hanzirenzhi_papers_richardson.pdf

The paper was later officially published as a chapter in a book that saw the light of day in 2007. Here's the reference:

• Richardson, Timothy W. (2007). Chinese Character Memorization and Literacy: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives on a Sophisticated Version of an Old Strategy. In A. Guder, X. Jiang, and Y. X. Wan (Eds.), 对外汉字的认知与教学 [The Cognition, Learning, and Teaching of Chinese Characters] (pp. 315-353). Beijing: Beijing Language and Culture University Press.

There's also the short piece (at the link just below) that has some brief comments about the dissertation. I don't know why the owner of the site announced the books as being by Timothy W. Richardson and James W. Heisig, rather than vice-versa. I'll have to write her about that. http://www.kanjiclinic.com/richardson.htm

• Do you feel left out when - in relation to the Chinese book series - it's called the 'Heisig' method, and not 'Heisig-Richardson' method?

I can honestly say that I don't feel left out at all. You've been very kind in acknowledging my involvement in your blog [aside: see reference to 2009 article below], but I'm content to have Heisig's name most prominently associated with the project. It is, after all, his approach to character learning.

• Your draft paper linked to above spends some time defending the use of mnemonics, and it certainly seems clear that based on research that they are indeed effective tools - yet I see plenty of people who look down on such methods. Does this frustrate you? Defending against such fallacies - is this a strong area of interest for you?

I think it's understandable that people look down on mnemonics. They've frequently been used or peddled by disreputable people for less than noble purposes. Too, as I've said elsewhere, I have personally seen mnemonics that seemed so silly that I have wondered if any advantage in recall could possibly compensate for having to think in the terms they suggested. And there are many other objections, some specific to the use of mnemonics with Chinese. Still, we do now have clear evidence of their potential effectiveness, and they have gained legitimacy as language-learning strategies. I, personally, don't know of a task that seems more appropriate to their use than the memory challenge the Chinese writing system presents for the non-native learner of Chinese.

Defending mnemonics isn't "a strong area of interest for me," except as a justification for the work Heisig and I are doing together. I'm content to leave the general defence of mnemonics in the hands of experts in the field of psychology, and elsewhere.

• And what about other fallacies - such as "you must learn the pronunciation at the same time as you learn the characters”?

We do say something about this in the intro to the Book 1s. Maybe I'll allow that to suffice.

• When I originally approached you about this interview, you told me that you already knew of my MandarinSegments blog - because someone had sent you a copy of the 2009 article I wrote. Is there a story there? Was it a friend who sent you the link, or student, or other?

I wish there were a juicy story here, but I honestly don't remember how it came to my attention anymore. A friend may have sent it to me, or it's possible that I happened onto it myself. I don't remember. What I do remember is that I felt (and feel) appreciative of your kind comments.

You & China, the country:

• Have you ever lived in China?

My wife and I lived in Xi'an, China, for two years, while on a faculty exchange through BYU (Utah). Our first baby was born in Xi'an. We had arranged for everything to take place at the 4th Military Hospital, but when the time came, my wife informed me that there wasn't enough time to get there (maybe 30 minutes away through city traffic). Fortunately, the driver that was going to take us knew where there were a couple of midwives on the university campus. They arrived in the nick of time, helped us welcome our daughter into the world, stayed to help for perhaps 45 minutes, and, when all was under control, left. There had been the two of us in our bedroom, and then, that quickly, there were three. It was a beautiful experience. My wife deserves all the credit, of course.

• What are your favourite Chinese cities?

Xi'an, since that's where we lived for those two years. But I also enjoyed Guilin (for its scenery), Kunming (for its wide-open skies), Sanya (for its wonderful seafood), Urumqi (for its unique combination of Han and non-Han cultures), and Yan'an (for its historical connection to the revolution). There are lots of cities I haven't been to, though, so my selection is limited.

• Do you still return every now and then, if so then where? Do you get opportunities to guest lecture out there?

I was last in China (in Xi'an) in 2004 helping with a study-abroad group. I also took a group in 2002. I haven't been back since I started working with Heisig, but would like to return again in the not-too-distant future.

• Do you ever visit Hong Kong? (this is a selfish question - I'm wondering if I might get a chance to meet you :-)

My wife and I have been to Hong Kong twice and really enjoyed it both times. I don't know when the next opportunity will present itself, but I'll be happy to get to meet you if you're still there when that time comes.

• Do you have any favourite Chinese foods?

Yes, definitely. I really like 酸辣土豆丝 (sour spicy shredded potatoes) and 茄子 (eggplant), in almost any of the ways it's prepared in China.


Here endeth the interview. Thanks again, Tim.



(And as a reminder, the full collection of articles about learning to read & write Chinese using the Heisig system can be found here)

Meet the man who brought the Heisig method to Chinese characters (an interview teaser)

Dark Times

There was a time when the so-called Heisig method was for Japanese only. Those were dark times.

And even though the original version (“Adventures in Kanji-Land”) had been published as far back as 1978, no one had successfully produced a full working version for the Chinese character system. People who were learning Chinese - including me - were still hoping that one day the method would be applied to Chinese characters. (After all, the Japanese kanji come from the Chinese character set in the first place!)

The Age of Enlightenment

And then about five years ago the buzz was that it had been done: a book on Remembering Hanzi would be published. The person who had made it happen, working very closely with James Heisig of course, was Dr Timothy Richardson. And so Book 1 arrived with the first 1500 characters (which I devoured in about 3 months), and then 3 years later Book 2 arrived with the next 1500 characters (which I savoured over a year).

These were good times.

The Interview

Over the last few months, I’ve been in touch with Tim - throwing a barrage of questions at him, including:  When did this all begin? How did he approach James Heisig in the first place? What was the worst part of transferring the Heisig system to Chinese? Why did Book 2 take so long?!

And Tim has been ever-patient, answering my questions in amazing detail, telling a backstory which I found fascinating - and I know you will too!

In the next article, the full interview will be published. But for today I just wanted to share some of the really fascinating things I learned about Tim Richardson along the way …

Did you know … ?

• Tim is married, and has 9 children
• His first child was actually born in the Chinese city of Xian, on the university campus!
• He was born in Mesa, Arizona, and now lives in Hawaii
• There was a time when Tim was a missionary in Chile, and later he worked in Brazil ...
• … so in addition to lecturing on Chinese, he also teaches Spanish & Portuguese at his university
• It was about 20 years ago that Tim originally approached Heisig with the idea of applying the method to Chinese characters
• The amount of effort the two of them put into deciding which font to use for the characters in the book will surprise you!
• His favourite Chinese food (because we are all curious :-) is 酸辣土豆丝 (sour spicy shredded potatoes)

I’ve enjoyed connecting with Tim, and look forward to being able to publish the full interview in the next article.  Stay tuned ...

(For the full collection of articles I have written about the Heisig method - including its history, and hints for its use, click here)

Saddle up … for the Year of the Horse

Horse calligraphy, by Jasmin

It's riding into town - The Year of the Horse - and it will arrive on 31 January 2014.

In the same way that the western Zodiac has different personality types for people born in different months, the Chinese Zodiac has something for people born in different lunar calendar years. For a bit of fun, if you'd like to understand better what personality you are, and what the Year of the Horse means for you, then take a look at this site which has some great summaries.

But this is a Mandarin-learning blog, so let's dig a little into 'horse' as a character, a word, and as part of larger phrases. This is all consistent with my WordPack philosophy - which helps make learning Chinese much more efficient.


The Character Itself
The Simplified Chinese character for 'horse' is 马, which is written as 馬 in the Traditional Chinese character system - this is pronounced mǎ.  Although it's hard to tell, the character actually evolved from something that used to look like a horse! Here's a diagram which I got from Taeglich Chinesisch (a German-language Chinese blog) to make that etymology more obvious:

Just part of a Character
Sometimes, though, the 马 character isn't used as a full character, but rather only as a part of the character. For example, the word for 'camel' is 骆驼 (luòtuo) - note how the horse radical appears in both of the hanzi. When you're learning to read & write Chinese, you need a system to help you memorise all of these variations - I recently wrote an article called Stoned Horses which covers exactly that topic.


Horse Words
There are many words which include the 马 character - some related to horses, and some where the connection is a little more obscure. For your convenience, I have include the full details of the words & phrases below, so that it's easy for you to copy into your flashcard pack. And seriously, if you want to massively increase your vocab, in my opinion you really should be using flashcards.

The format I will be using is:

• english (simplified / traditional) pinyin: comment

The Actual Horse

• horse (马 / 馬) mǎ
• measure word for horses: (匹) pǐ: for example, 'three horses' is 三匹马
• horse (马匹 / 馬匹 ) mǎpǐ: given the above two characters, this alternative word isn't really a surprise :)

Things Related to Horses

• saddle (马鞍 / 馬鞍) mǎ'ān: literally a 'horse saddle'
• horseshoe (马蹄铁 / 馬蹄鐵) mǎtítiě: literally 'horse hoof iron'
• to ride a horse (骑马 / 騎馬) qímǎ
• horse racing (赛马 / 賽馬) sàimǎ

Because English uses the Word 'horse'

• horsepower (马力 / 馬力) mǎlì: uhm, it's 'horse power'
• seahorse (海马 / 海馬) hǎimǎ: again, as simple as 'sea horse'
• ponytail - for hairstyles or similar (马尾 / 馬尾) mǎwěi: if you pretend a pony and a horse is the same thing
• wooden horse / rocking horse / gym vaulting horse / trojan horse in computing (木马 / 木馬) mùmǎ: literally it's a 'wooden horse'

Names & Places - because it makes the 'ma' sound

• Mark (马克 / 馬克) Mǎkè
• Marco Polo (马可波罗 / 馬可波羅) Mǎkě Bōluó
• Barack Obama (奥巴马 / 奧巴馬) Àobāmǎ
• Rome, capital of Italy (罗马 / 羅馬) Luómǎ
• Malaysia (马来西亚 / 馬來西亞) Mǎláixīyà
• Himalayas (喜马拉雅 / 喜馬拉雅) Xǐmǎlāyǎ
• Amazon (亚马逊 / 亞馬遜) Yàmǎxùn
• … and so many more example like this.

Figurative Horses - where the connection is slightly tenuous

• immediately (马上 / 馬上) mǎshàng: get on your horse right now!
• street or road (马路 / 馬路) mǎlù: I guess it's the place where horses used to ride
• BMW cars (宝马 / 寶馬) Bǎomǎ: quite a clever name, by sound & meaning
• zebra (斑马 / 斑馬) bānmǎ: I suppose 'striped horse' is about as accurate as you can get!
• hippopotamus (河马 / 河馬) hémǎ: it looks like a horse in the river (said no one, ever)
• fine steed (千里马 / 千里馬) qiānlǐmǎ: literally a thousand mile horse, which would be fine!
• unexpected winner (黑马 / 黑馬) hēimǎ: literally a black horse, similar to English usage
• knight in shining armour (白马王子 / 白馬王子) báimǎwángzǐ: a Prince on his White Horse
• so-so (马马虎虎 / 馬馬虎虎) mǎmahūhū: horse-horse-tiger-tiger, neither one nor the other
• suck up to / toady (拍马屁 / 拍馬屁) pāimǎpì: to pat the horse's buttocks, to encourage it forwards

Idioms

Chengyu is a massive body of Chinese idioms (usually four characters) which you can read about here. Below are some of the ones I have found which relate to horses. If you take a look at Chinese-Tools, you will find at least 50 chengyu that use the character 马 - so I will only include a few here, and leave you to trawl through the others if you're overcome with desire.

• 马马虎虎 (mǎ ma hū hū) so-so: I have already mentioned this one above, but it's one of the first chengyu/idioms that we learn when studying Chinese so it's worth a second mention
• 兵荒马乱 (bīng huāng mǎ luàn) the chaos of war: soldiers wasteland horses confusion
• 单枪匹马 (dān qiāng pí mǎ) single-handedly: single spear one horse
• 非驴非马 (fēi lǘ fēi mǎ) it resembles nothing: neither donkey nor horse
• 快马加鞭 (kuài mǎ jiā biān) as fast as possible: fast horse add whip
• 露出马脚 (lùchū mǎjiǎo) unmask the true nature: expose the cloven hoof (also: 露马脚)
• 马到成功 (mǎ dào chéng gōng) achieve instant success: succeed as soon as the horse arrives
• 盲人瞎马 (máng rén xiā mǎ) rush headlong into disaster: blind person kills the horse
• 秣马厉兵 (mò mǎ lì bīng) be combat ready: feed the horse, strict soldiers
• 一马当先 (yī mǎ dāng xiān) be the first to take the lead: one horse goes first
• 走马看花 (zǒu mǎ kàn huā) examine a thing hurriedly: ride the horse while looking at flowers
• 车水马龙 (chē shuǐ mǎ lóng) heavy traffic: car water horse dragon (sorry, what??)

Saddle Up

So now you know the character, the words, the implications. All that is left to do is to have a great Year of the Horse - bring on the dancing horses!!

   Happy New Year!  

   新年快乐!

   xīnniánkuàilè!

Don't read books, read sculptures

Firstly, happy new year - welcome to 2014!   Secondly, just a quick post about something I saw which I thought was totally amazing …



Zheng Lu is an artist who creates very impressive things - you can see his full collection here. But it was in particular a series of sculptures made up of thousands of Chinese characters that really caught my eye.

The article which talks about these can be found here, it's well worth a look. And to give you a sense of scale, take a look at the picture above, and you can see the most incredible detail Zheng Lu goes to in his work.

So if you're tired of practising reading Chinese books, and you'd like to read something a little different, then read that!

Stoned Horses

When students learn to read & write Chinese characters, there are broadly two ways of doing it. The first is 'brute force' where you practise the strokes over & over again until you have internalised them, and the second is to use some method of visualisation which allows you to decompose the characters into parts - and piece them together again using imagary (which is much easier to remember that just pure strokes).

Although I used the Heisig method to learn 3000 characters (and I've blogged extensively on this - you can find the full collection here), note that what I'm writing below is about visualisation in general, and is not specific to the Heisig approach.

Take for example the character for 'numeral' - which is 码 (mǎ, also written 嗎 in the traditional system). You can see it's made up of 石 (stone) and 马 (horse). When I learned this character, I naturally had to create an image of why stone+horse=numeral. In this case, a flood of images came to mind, and I realised there were so many options.

So many examples!

It got me thinking of times I've spoken to people about visualisation methods, and they say it's so hard to create images. So in addition to the very popular article Tips & Tricks for Heisig Visualisations, I decided to share here a range of images that I could use for this character.

• I picture the Terracotta Army, but instead of rows and rows of soldiers, I picture rows and rows of stone horses. And of course, since this is a very valuable collection, I imagine each horse is numbered - as you often see in museums. I suppose you can use this & this to help you create the image yourself. Ultimately this is my preferred image for remembering that stone+horse=numeral. Your preferred image may be different, and that's OK.
• Or I can see a horse doing maths. You know, with numerals. But horses can't write in books, so this horse has a few stones laid out on the ground before him, and he is moving them around, a little like someone might use an abacus, to do the calculations. 
• I can also visualise a ten-pin bowling alley, but you won't find pins at this place - instead you will find 10 stone horses at the bottom of the bowling lane. Can you see as your ball hits them, they break from the impact - and your score (such a high number!) appears on the board above you.
• Maybe there are horses running a race, but the track has lots of loose stones on the track, and each time a horse stumbles on the stone and falls, someone keeping score of 'lost' horses chalks up a higher numeral on the board.
• How about a large piece of cardboard which is part of a colour-by-numbers approach. But with this one you don't paint according to the number, you place a stone of different colour on that number. And when it's done and you step back, you can see it's a horse!
• Another possibility is to imagine cave paintings of horses scratched into the stone walls, but when you look more closely you notice that between the pictures of horses there are numbers - almost like the person was doing maths with horses as numerals. 
• Alternatively, I can see a gateway with a stone horse head mounted on top (it looks a little like this) - there is someone sitting astride that head, and as people pass through the gateway, she updates the numerals in her notepad, since she's counting people who use this entrance. 

Choosing the best one

Let's be clear, the one that is best for me may not be the best for you - so don't simply choose the one that I have chosen, but recognise which one best matches the way your own thinking works.

(It is possible to come up with really bad images, which I've written about here, but none of the above ones fails the tests in that article.)

After having done 3000 characters this way, I know instinctively how my brain works. And if you repeatedly hypnotised me to forget this character, and kept asking me to (re)create an image, it would probably be the first one, again & again. This is important, because in future when you're facing the character in The Real World © you will indeed need to see 码 then think stone+horse, and if your mind comes up with a different image, then you're never going to be able to work out what character you're looking at!)

So?

Did this help? Is it useful to be reminded that there really are so many (good) ways of creating images, that we shouldn't feel helpless, and we shouldn't forgive ourselves for feeling we can only come up with poor images?

So while you're in a visualisation mood, challenge yourself … Pick one or two of the characters below and create a few images that actually work. For fun.

• 敌: tongue+taskmaster = enemy
• 妄: perish+woman = absurd
• 坏: earth+NO = bad
• 如: woman+mouth = if

Leave a comment if you have any clever thoughts. Or if you have any dumb thoughts, that's OK too.

Ridiculously flexible words

When you start learning Chinese, you figure out relatively quickly how the language puts characters together to make words.

Since 好 (hǎo) means 'good', it makes sense that 好友 is a 'close friend', 好看 is 'good looking', 好处 is an 'advantage', 好心 is 'kind hearted', and so on.

Deep down, I want Chinese to be like this all the time: consistent, and easy to learn. Unfortunately, life isn't fair. And Chinese isn't like this.

The one character, more than any others I have found, that seems to represent so many different things, is the character 节 / 節 (usually pronounced jié). The MDBG dictionary provides this selection of possible meanings: "festival / holiday / node / joint / section / segment / part / to economize / to save / to abridge / moral integrity / classifier for segments, e.g. lessons, train wagons, biblical verses".

I was seeing this character appearing in so many (very different) words, which is what got me thinking,  including: 节目 (jié​mù) = program;  春节 (Chūn​jié) = Spring Festival (but it also applies to most festivals including Christmas & Valentines Day);  章节 (zhāng​jié) = chapter;  细节 (xì​jié) = details;  空气调节 (kōng​qì​tiáo​jié) = aircon;  etc.

Not sure about you, but I find this confusing!

In an attempt to gain control of this character, with Judy's help, I came up with the following sentence to put in my flashcard pack.

     On Thanksgiving, frugal people might buy energy-saving lightbulbs in order to save money
     在感恩节，节俭的人可能买节能的灯泡来节省金钱
     在感恩節，節儉的人可能買節能的燈泡來節省金錢
     zài Gǎn'ēnjié, jiéjiǎn de rén kěnéng mǎi jiénéng de dēngpào lái jiéshěng jīnqián

(And if you remember, it really does help to create 'special' sentences for you flashcard pack, as I've written about here: The clever butcher uses a cleaver)


What about you? Do you have a character in mind that has many meanings? If so, please leave a comment below (anonymous notes are welcome too!).

Mandarin does not use these Cantonese characters

In the previous article I wrote - about Chinese people confusing 'he' and 'she' when speaking English - we discussed a very common word that is used in Cantonese, but not in Mandarin. That got me thinking about other characters which similarly appear in Cantonese, but not in Mandarin.

Of course there are many expressions that are used in one and not the other (for example, while Mandarin says 不好看, Cantonese instead says 唔好睇) - after all, they are two different languages. But in this article I'm going to avoid expressions, and rather focus on individual characters that have this feature.

As a cheat - since I don't speak Cantonese :) - my starting point was to search in the MDBG online dictionary for the word 'Cantonese', which gave me 99 results, from which I started to whittle the list down to ones worthy of being included in this article ...

• 唔: This is the first obvious one which means 'no' or 'not'. In theory it's pronounced wú in Mandarin, but it's only* used in Cantonese where it's pronounced m4. This is extremely common in Cantonese, generally used where Mandarin would use 不 - so for example 'bad' in Mandarin is 不好 whereas in Cantonese it would be 唔好.
• 冇: In Mandarin it is pronounced mǎo, but in Cantonese it's mou5. The closest Mandarin word to this character might be 没有 (méi​yǒu - which even sounds very similar to mou5). This is another very common character in Cantonese. To be clear, I have never seen this used in Mandarin.
• 佢: This is he/she/it in Cantonese: keoi5. No need to discuss this one - since I wrote an entire article on it before :-)
• 嘅: This is the Cantonese equivalent of the Mandarin possessive article 的. In Cantonese 嘅 is pronounced ge3.
• 呢: This character as used mostly in 呢個 to mean 'this' - basically it's the same as 這個 in Mandarin (or 这个 in the simplified system)) and is pronounced ni1.
• 嗰: Similarly, this character is used for 'that' in Cantonese - usually in the word 嗰個, which is pronounced go2go3. Mandarin would use 那個 (Simplified: 那个) instead. 
• 喺: This is the Cantonese equivalent of 在 (to be at) - and it is pronounced hai2.
• 咩: This is pronounced me1, and it indicates surprise by turning the sentence into a question. For example, 係咩 (hai6me1) means "Really?"
• 佬: If you're a foreigner living in HK, you will hear this character every day - part of the word 'gweilo' - this character is actually pronounced lou2. Therefore 'gweilo' actually means 'male ghost' (and not 'old ghost' - which is a common mistake that confuses 佬 with 老).
• 乜嘢: This is pronounced mat1 je5 in Cantonese, meaning 'what' or 'why'. Since both characters are unique to Cantonese, and since they are commonly used together in this compound word, I just gave them a single entry. It has the same meaning as Mandarin's 什么 or perhaps 东西.
• 咗: This is pronounced zo2, and puts the sentence into past-tense, in the same way that Mandarin might use 了 or 过 (過).
• 咁: The character is pronounced gam3, and can mean 'so' (like Mandarin's 这样) or 'very' (like 很).
• 噉: This is the other 'gam' word of interest, although the tone here is different: gam2. It means 'in that case' or 'and then'. When I'm listening to my colleagues speaking on the phone, I hear this word a lot! (In written Cantonese, this is sometimes just written as 咁, apparently.)
• 啱: The character is the Cantonese equivalent of Mandarin's 对 (Traditional:對), meaning 'correct'. It is pronounced ngaam1.  (And because you, Dear Reader, are so clever - you probably already worked out by yourself that we can piece together two of these characters to get the Cantonese word for incorrect: 唔啱.)
• There are a few more that are worth listing here because they are quite common, but I will just group them together: They include 搵 (find, like 找), 瞓 (sleep, like 睡), 噏 (gossip), 攰 (tired, like 累), 嘥 (to waste), 屌 (to fuck), and finally 餸 (a side dish). 

In the past (before moving to HK), I had been reading Chinese comics which I picked up on my travels, wondering why I was struggling to understand the text so much - and I kept seeing strange characters (like 冇). That is how I originally realised that there are indeed characters which are used in Cantonese and not Mandarin, which explains why at the time I couldn't easily work out what the text was saying.

So now we all know. 冇問題.

A message to my little brother

Hey Bro*

I was sitting in a coffee shop this morning, and realised how often I think about you while I'm learning Chinese.  Here, let me show you …

Take a look at this (poorly-taken) image from the book** that I'm reading at the moment for learning to read ...

I won't bore you with the details, but the method I use basically breaks complex characters into components - then you create an image that uses all those components, which is easy to remember.

• So you can see that #2279 has two halves - the left half means little brother (uhm, that's YOU!) and the right half (those two lines) means sword/sabre/knife. And you can see on the very right of the page, that overall character means shave. So the methods requires me to create an image of those words … so obviously the image I have in my mind is of YOU shaving with a sword!  (Glad you got rid of that beard!)
• Similarly #2280 involves YOU and a road - I picture us standing outside [the home where we grew up], on opposite sides of the ROAD (辶 means, in general, 'road'), and you're HANDING OVER something to me. Doesn't matter what you're giving me - it's the process of handing something over. And that's the image.
• In #2281 I'm stuck in a TREE (that's the 木 character on the left), and YOU are climbing up a LADDER to help me down.

The 'little brother' component is quite common, and you can see it is connected with such different words - but ultimately all those images involve you. So thanks for 'joining me' while I study Chinese. I look forward to your next visit out to Hong Kong.

Greg


* Yes I sometimes call him 'Bro'. Don't judge me :-)
** This is from Heisig Book2. You can read my whole collection of Heisig articles here.

Heisig - book 2 (halfway)

Just a quick note to let you know that last week Thursday (20 June) I reached character 2250, which puts me halfway through Book 2 (1501-3000).

As you know from my post earlier this year, I have set myself the goal of finishing the book by the end of the year, and arguably - since I hit the midway point on 20 June - I am 10 days ahead of schedule.

So, I'm definitely on track!



As a reminder, you can find the full collection of Heisig posts I've written (and some reference pieces) summarised in this popular article here.

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)
• A message to my little brother (for those who want an overview by seeing a few simple examples)
• Meet the man who brought the Heisig method to Chinese characters (this is the interview teaser, with the full interview appearing below)
• Full interview with Timothy Richardson - the man who brought the Heisig method to Chinese characters (I was lucky to get time speaking with Timothy, and understanding more about him, and the work it took to write the above books)

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)
• Heisig Book 2 - now finished! (this is how) (After 11.5 months - at my planned 5 characters a day - I finished the second book of the Heisig & Richardson 'Remembering Simplified Hanzi' series)

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)
• Stoned Horses (examples of how easy it is to think of many possible visualisations for a single character)

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

Chinese characters, or art?

I popped across the border from HK to China a couple of weeks ago (I have a multi-entry visa, so I may as well use it!), and happened to see a couple of really clever stylised Chinese characters that felt more arty than just characters - certainly very cleverly put together.


The first one I took off the side of a box of tissues - which in itself is pushing the boundaries of what qualifies as art! Take a look ...

To my rather untrained eye, it looks like this character: 威 (wēi) - which has a dictionary definition of "power / might / prestige", and a Heisig keyword of 'might'.   I actually think it's quite beautifully done!


This is the second character I saw, at the China Ferry Terminal building:

This one was easier to identify, being 海 (hǎi) - meaning "sea / ocean / maritime".  I left the full picture in, so you can see it is the logo for the Marine Department.  The water radical on the left has been replaced by a stream of water, and the 母 (mother radical) has been made to look like a flag - which suits what it is designed to represent.


These are not the first times I've seen characters written up so artistically, but this time I happened to take pictures of them. If you have seen other characters done unusually, please include links below ...

Just stick to one image, OK?

This post is for people who are using Heisig to learn to read & write Chinese, or for anyone using another image-based system with similar structure.

This is an issue that I came across relatively early on with the first book, but now after reaching a certain page in the second book, I had to roll my eyes a little ...

• If you look at the photo on the right (you can click on it for a larger version), you will see that all three of these consecutive characters use the '王' primitive.

BUT - and this is the crazy part - the first instance of 王 uses the 'ball' keyword, the second uses 'jewels' as the keyword, and the third uses 'king'.  Sure it's nice that the book gives us various options for what we might use to visualise a certain character, but I've found multiple images confusing. And if you happen to be working with the wrong one for that 'scene', the Heisig approach might fail

For example let's say that you're reading Chinese and see the character 汪. - and the image you constructed was based on "water ... jewels" as indicated in the photo. But later, when you try recall the meaning, you discover that "water ... king" doesn't ring any bells, and neither does "water ... ball". And so you fail.

Please try, when you're creating images, to have just one image for each keyword, and stick to it. I wrote an article entitled Tips & Tricks for Heisig Visualisations back while studying Book 1, and even at that time I had a section devoted to "Pick just one meaning for primitives" - because experience showed quite early on that it's a recipe for failure.

Chinese is hard enough when you do it right, so try to avoid the alternative.

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.

"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!!