This is a follow-up to the repetitive methods. Again, don’t forget the three aspects of a character you have to learn:

1. the pronunciation
2. the writing
3. the meaning

Now, here are some creative learning methods for learning new characters.

Analyze its structure

When you encounter a new character, this is something you should always do! Ask yourself: Is there a radical? Where is the radical positioned? How could I divide the character? Left - right (左右结构) or top - bottom (上下结构) or even left - middle - right or top - middle - bottom or is one part surrounded by another part (包围结构)? Before you get all confused and wonder what I’m talking about, here are some examples:
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One of the biggest pain of learning Chinese is memorizing all these characters. There are a hundreds, even thousands of characters one needs to master, in order to read a normal Chinese text. When you are learning a new character, always remember there are three independent aspects you have to learn:

1. the pronunciation
2. the writing
3. the meaning

This is a main difference to English, where you can usually write words you know the pronunciation of. So make sure you covered all three aspects when you are learning a new Chinese character.

In this post I will cover repetitive methods, meaning they are rather monotonous or “traditional” if you want. If you are looking for more creative methods read my follow up. However, these are all methods with which I learned most new Chinese characters:
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Learning to write Chinese characters is probably the most difficult part for people who are learning Chinese. In English we only have to learn the 26 letters of the alphabet while in Chinese there are over 2000 common characters that we have to know in order to read a newspaper or a book. And writing Chinese characters can really be a challenge, because they are so completely different from our alphabet. Now have you ever looked at Chinese handwriting? It seems so complicated, messy, small and totally overwhelming at first. Here are some examples. But then again you really want to be able to write in Chinese, too. After all being able to write is an essential part when learning a foreign language. So in this article I will give you some tips on how to acquire a nice Chinese handwriting.

First of all we have to know what is considered as a nice handwriting. Maybe you had the same experience as I, that you absolutely can’t tell what is considered to be nice beautiful handwriting and what is considered to be illegible ugly handwriting in Chinese. With German or English or any language using letters I could tell perfectly fine, because I am used to them and write a lot myself. However, with Chinese handwriting I hardly see any, so I even have problems deciphering it. Now in order to get a feel about Chinese handwriting, just READ READ READ! A good starting point is the site I mentioned, where you can find many handwriting samples. I will put some more links at the end of the article. You could also look at some calligraphy works, to see what is considered beautiful. But I always found those very hard to decipher. In my opinion, just get as many handwriting samples as possible, analyze them and decide which sort you like most. After all the most important point is that *you* like your handwriting!

So after you have found a style that you like, you already have your goal. So we already have the first half ;) Now we have to chose an efficient way to reach the goal. But some words in advance: it takes a lot of patience and practice to acquire a good Chinese handwriting! However don’t see this as a deterrence but rather as a challenge! There are two main styles of writing, 楷书 (kai3shu1) and 行书 (xing2shu1). Kaishu is like printed script and xingshu is like cursive script. Both have their difficulties that one has to master.

At first you have to start out with kaishu. This is very crucial, since kaishu teaches you the structure and the framework of each character. It is an important base in order to succeed with xingshu. There are special Chinese grids that help you practice it. When starting out, first practice the strokes. Learn the differences between the strokes and on what you need to pay attention especially. For example some strokes (like 横heng2, 竖shu4) are very straight and give your character the framework. Other characters are more curved (like 撇pie3, 捺na4) and give your character the fluency, just like water. After you practiced the strokes long enough (too long is always better than too short, since strokes are the basic elements of all characters. Then you can go on to practice some easy characters. With easy I mean those with only a few strokes, like the numbers or some pictogramms (like 日月水火). Another good idea is to practice the radicals. Analyze them, learn their meaning and write them. Then you can buy yourself a calligraphy practice books. It is very important that you chose one handwriting that you like. Now it is best to practice in three steps: First write over the characters with the thin paper film. Then copy them in your own exercise book and compare to see if they look the same. At last you put the calligraphy book away and try to recall how the characters looked like and what their peculiarities were. This may sound like a lot of work, so the best way is to just focus on a few characters every day.

After you think your kaishu is good enough, you can go on to the next step: xingshu. However I would suggest you to write at least one year of kaishu or even longer. You don’t have to hasten to learn xingshu, because as I already mentioned kaishu is an important base and moreover it is already great for a chinese learner to write good kaishu. With xingshu it is again the same procedure as with kaishu. Choose a writing style you like, analyze its peculiarities and practice it. The key to success is simply practice. And with time and effort you will get your desired handwriting!

Links:

• Handwriting samples: http://www.bijifenxi.com/graphology/zxfx/
• Calligraphy samples: http://www.yingbishufa.com/zuopin/index1.htm

Related Posts:

• Howto look up Chinese characters in a dictionary
• Some tips for character memorization I (repetitive methods)
• Writing Chinese with wubi 五笔

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There are many different Chinese input methods for writing on the computer. The most commonly used is some form of pinyin. That means that you type in the pronunciation of what you want to write. This method is rather easy because you just have to think auditory just like when typing in English. It is however a problem for some people who haven’t learnd pinyin properly or who do not speak proper mandarin, but a dialect instead. For those people it is hard to write with pinyin, because they often spell the words wrong and cannot find the correct characters thus.

The other input method is not based on pronunciation but on the characters themselves instead. That means when typing you do not have to think about how it is pronounced but about how the character looks like, how it is written, the radicals, the structure etc. This is certainly more complicated, because normally (at least that’s the case with me) when thinking or typing I hear the words in my head but I definitely don’t picture in my head how the words look like and how I write them. However on the other side typing is also just a sort of writing, so what’s wrong about thinking about how the characters are written?

Now about my own wubi experience. I used to type with MS pinyin, but I’ve read that wubi is faster. I guess the completely different approach and the complex usage attracted me most. For writing with wubi you have to break apart the characters into their components in your head. Then you write basically by typing mostly the first two components of a character, meaning that you need just 2 letters or even less per character. But before all this you have to memorize an annoying table called 五笔字根 (wu3bi3 zi4gen1) which can be found here. This table assigns several radicals/components (ranging from 3-12) to every letter. If you really decide to learn wubi you absolutely need to spend some weeks memorizing this table first. That’s absolutely crucial. I realized this after being too lazy for about half a year, where I just put the table beside me or put stickers with the radicals on my keys and thought I would know them after a certain time. But it was really no use and I thought that I was never gonna learn it. So finally I wrote them on flash cards and really studied and memorized them. After that writing with wubi went soo much better. Now I really love ot, although I’m not really proficient on it, but it’s just something different, quite confusing for others, fast and a nice typing experience.

Software for writing Wubi: right now I am using 极点五笔 (ji2dian3 wu3bi3) which I am very satisfied with. I can customize it a lot, add own word combinations, use pinyin in case I’m stuck, and the feature I like most: it has a built-in dictionary with which I can look up unknown characters or their writing key combination extremely quickly!
At first I used 万能五笔 (wan4neng2 wu3bi3) which was supposed to be ‘omnipotent’. I think there are also a lot of people using this, but somehow I didn’t understand it being a total newbie at that time. So later I gave up on it and switched to 极点五笔.
Anyway, there are tons of wubi input software out there apart from those two I mentioned. Have fun researching~

Links:

• 五笔字根表 Wubi chinese conversion table: http://www.wnwb.com/wnwb2005/images/wbzigen.gif
• 极点五笔 input software I use: http://www.freewb.org
• 万能五笔 another good input software: http://www.wnwb.com

Related Posts:

• Howto get a nice Chinese handwriting
• Howto look up Chinese characters in a dictionary
• Useful Chinese Software

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