Aimed at helping students of Chinese learn and remember Chinese characters, including the pronunciation of characters, fast and effectively, Learning Chinese Characters Volume 1 is a systematic study aid to this difficult language.
Designed specifically to ease students into the daunting process of learning Chinese characters, Learning Chinese Characters Volume 1 incorporates the key principle of visual imagery. A book for serious learners of Chinese, it can be used alongside (or after, or even before) a course in the Chinese language. Concise, clear and appealing, this practical guide is well designed and includes an easy-to-use index.
Tuttle Strikes Again Following the success of their popular books on learning Japanese, Tuttle releases its first comprehensive guide to learning Chinese characters with mnemonics. Matthews presents an organized and thorough system for learning the 800 most basic hanzi by creating a short, visual story to associate with each character. While some of the stories are simple and effective, others seem to be too long and complicated to actually help the beginning learner of the language. Words referencing pronunciation and English translation are written in bold in the text, but it sometimes becomes difficult during recall to remember which was which. A solid effort and a good desk reference, but some of the stories - which require the reader to remember the special linguistic significance of flying saucers, ghosts, and dwarves, among others - could be edited for length and clarity.
Nathan Dummitt author of Chinese Through Tone & Color
Finally! A system that works! This is the most effective system for learning Chinese characters that I have found.
Why I recommend this book:
1) Fully developed system for learning simplified characters
Unlike other character learning books which try to shoe-horn the simplified characters into the semantics of the traditional ones, the memorization system in this book is rooted entirely in the simplified characters. I consider this a plus because I WANT to learn simplified characters.
2) Very high retention of characters using the method in this book
I must admit that when I first flipped through the book and saw the stories for each character I thought that memorizing a story for a character is more effort than simply memorizing the character...
Now that I have been using this study method for a while, I have seen huge gains in character retention (compared to 'rote learning' or 'equation' methods I've tried in the past). Now when I see a complex character that I have not studied for a while, I can easily use this book's method to break it down into it's components. The story then pops back into my mind, and I've successfully recalled the meaning, tone, and pronunciation of the character.
3) Easy to review
The table of contents are laid out in such a way that they can be used to easily review all characters learned so far. There are also many 'review boxes' as you progress through the book to help reinforce previously learned characters.
4) Basic radicals are illustrated to help you visualize them
5) Introduces characters based on frequency AND builds-up on previously learned radicals/characters
Most character books that order characters by frequency-of-use neglect to introduce the character's components first, making the learning process more difficult than it needs to be. This book makes sure to introduce all basic characters as they're needed AND introduce the characters based on the frequency-of-use.
6) Introduces compounds which only use characters learned up to that point
This allows you to start rapidly building up vocabulary using the characters you know. This also helps helps reinforce the characters.
7) Includes ALL HSK Level A characters and compounds as well as additional useful character compounds.
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Things that could be improved:
1) Some of the basic radical/characters do not have illustrations or suggestions to help memorize their shape. In these cases I dig up my set of Fun with Chinese Characters 1 (Straits Times Collection Vol. 1), Fun with Chinese Characters 2 (Straits Times Collection Vol. 2), and Fun with Chinese Characters 3 (Straits Times Collection Vol. 3) to fill in the gaps. Overall, only a small percentage of the radicals fall into this category.
2) A review list for the introduced character compounds.
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I recommend using complementing this book with Tuttle Learner's Chinese English Dictionary which provides sample sentences and usage information for all HSK and most additional characters and compound introduced in this book.
Eagerly awaiting Volume 2!
Learning Chinese Characters Volume 1 This book really works for me. For three years I have bought and studied flash cards and various books with hope of learning to recognize and remember Chinese characters with not much success. This book uses various mnemonic techniques coupled with brief stories sometimes with drawings based on the character. For example the character for "cup" is composed of the tree radical and the character for "not". In the book there is a drawing of a tree with a cup on it and a logger saying to his fellow logger, "NOT the TREE with the CUP". /The giant collects the sap from that one and to cook his BACON in." It seems sort of corny but since I read that "story" I have had no trouble remembering the character and it's pronunciation of bei1. The "giants" are always related to the first tone. It is not for everyone. I have shown this book to many fellow learners and some like me have been quite enthralled and others have turned their noses up and turned away. I hope that Volume 2 is published soon because I will buy it in a Flash.
Useful I bought this book after looking at many "Learning Chinese" books. I bought it because I wanted to learn reading, writing, and pronunciation of Chinese. This is a formidable challenge starting from zero, but this book is very helpful. I would suggest supplementing the book with other Chinese instruction methods, particularly as they pertain to conversation, pronunciation, and grammar of the Chinese language. Consistent effort with the book has increased my Chinese vocabulary quickly.
reasonable attempt... I feel compelled to share that I think this is a reasonable and admirable effort, however the semantics of the characters are lacking in most instances, and the effort required to learn the stories can be counter-productive...
I would actually recommend two key books: "The Chinese Characters - A Genealogy and Dictionary", and the DeFrancis Chinese Readers. The former provides a more thorough and accurate semantic definition of the characters (at the atomic and composite levels), whilst the latter will actually teach you to read Chinese Text in a logical and efficient manner.
Both concentrate on traditional characters (with simplified supplement), which should hold you in good standing to then learn the simplified characters - which unfortunately have lost much of their beauty and meaning (but that's another story)!
That being said, this book is interesting and I would consider buying a Volume Two if and when it becomes available.
Good luck, and enjoy the fascinating journey of learning Chinese!
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