Learn Chinese Characters
An introduction to the principles underlying our Chinese Character Course
The biggest impact on the speed that you can learn Chinese Characters is the order in which you learn them. If you learn them in a random order you will find your progress very slow - learn them in an optimized order and you will be amazed at how fast you can learn.
Some people think that they should learn them in order of their frequency but this is not the solution. You need to be able to recognize around 2000 characters before you can start to read any 'real' chinese text. But learning Chinese Characters in order of their frequency does not help you learn them faster.
The fastest way to learn Chinese Characters is by following these three steps:
- Focus on the basic components
- Learn characters as part of their phonetic series
- Study easily confused characters together
Take a look at the examples below.
Focus on Basic Components
To learn Chinese Characters you should start with the most basic components first. Although Chinese Characters are written as a series of strokes, they are more logically thought of as consisting of one or more basic components. So before you try to remember more complex characters you must first make sure you have a good grasp of the basic components.
As mis-recognising characters is a major problem for beginning students you should start by focus on make sure you can distinguish similar looking basic components. Beginning students for example might not realise that the characters mù and ěr here are actually two different characters, not the same character written differently.
Likewise, the difference between these characters is subtle but very important so it’s useful to see them all together and to study them all at the same time.
These characters are also easily confused and you need to make sure you get passed that confusion as early as possible.
Learn Characters as Part of Their Phonetic Series
Once you have a good grasp of the basic components you can start looking at characters that share a common phonetic root (ie. sound the same or similar). Using the picto-phonetic method these characters are easy to remember and by grouping them like this you can learn whole groups of characters at a time.
Sometimes the picto-phonetic methods works really well, like in these characters that are all based on the character fāng.
Other times like you have seen it works well although there is some phonetic drift.
On other occasions it works well for some characters and not at all for others. Despite this, it is still beneficial to learn all these Chinese Characters at the same time so you know where the exceptions are.
Study Easily Confused Characters Together
Finally, you should also study easily confused characters together. These characters for example have no real relationship to each other. However, they are likely to be confused with each other by beginning students. Learning them together helps you differentiate between them so that you don’t confuse them later on.
As you can see the order in which you learn Chinese Characters is going to make a big difference in how quickly you can learn them.
In creating our Chinese Character course we have spent many hours grouping and ordering the 2289 most common Chinese characters and entering them into our flashcard system ready for you to learn.
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