The best way to learn Chinese characters?

[jm_torresg]

大家好！
I've now been learning Chinese for a few months but I've mainly been focusing on my oral expression and comprehension skills, even if I've learnt approx. 70 characters at school. What would be the easiest and quickest way to learn enough characters to get by in the everyday life (800 if the informations I've found are true) since I'm going to Taipei for to weeks in April ?
谢谢

[jm_torresg]

No one, really ?

[Wolf to the Bees]

你好！

I am not the most advanced learner in Mandarin here (understatement!), but I can try to give you a few tips that work quite well for me.

First of all, try to learn a bit about the logic behind Chinese characters; radicals can be very useful for understanding the type of thing a specific character is describing, which allows your memory to be jogged more easily. For instance, 吃 and 喝 both have 口 as their radical (meaning mouth), and both are to do with eating and drinking, so if you find a word that has that radical, you can hazard a guess that it is to do with eating and drinking!

Find a list of Chinese words to learn in its entirety. Setting a goal to learn specific characters rather than, say, random ones picked out of a dictionary (extreme example), is always good because it gives you more direction. If you can, get someone to help you practice using flashcards every day.

Also, I think that in Taiwan they use Complex/Traditional characters, so you'll want to learn those rather than Simplified characters (if you're not already).

I hope that helped a bit.

[enricmm]

I'd say you better center in learning the words and not only the characters. Learining characters alone is useless.

[Pangu]

大家好！
I've now been learning Chinese for a few months but I've mainly been focusing on my oral expression and comprehension skills, even if I've learnt approx. 70 characters at school. What would be the easiest and quickest way to learn enough characters to get by in the everyday life (800 if the informations I've found are true) since I'm going to Taipei for to weeks in April ?
谢谢

Immersion.

I would recommend the following:

• Write the name, in both Traditional Hanzi & Pinyin, of all the major items in your house on a small card and tape them to the objects. Even if you don't think you will ever need to purchase a refrigerator during your stay in Taipei, it will still help. Each time you approach the object, say it out loud and pay attention to the character.
• If you live somewhere that has a local, over the air, Chinese TV station, tune to it as often as possible. If not, there are plenty movies, TV series and other videos in Mandarin that you can find easily online.
• When you are driving, jogging or otherwise doing a task where you need to focus your vision, play songs in Mandarin.
• If you have Mandarin-speaking friends, speak to them only in Mandarin and speak to them as often as possible. When they aren't around, write them e-mails, text them, all in Mandarin of course. Also ask them to correct you whenever possible.

[enricmm]

It is need to look dictionary!

这句句子是什么意思?

[linguistixx]

There are so many ways to learn characters. I have been studying Chinese for years and I got quite a lot of experience when it comes to studying characters. My classical chinese teacher always stresses the importance of writing things done. He holds the view that (only) when you write characters down again and again, you can learn them effectively and they will stick in your long-term memory.

I was pretty skeptical about this rather easy method in the beginning and I thought that there are maybe better methods than just writing down every character about 50-100 times. However, once I started doing this with new characters, I was pretty successful and I was able to learn characters faster and I also feel like I don't keep forgetting them as much as before. (He explained to us that writing down is very effective as the brain is linked to our hands and the movement of writing and when writing down stuff it is much easier for our brain to learn and remember things).

Another thing that I am pretty fond of when it comes to learning characters are the radicals. Every character has its radical and knowing the meaning of radicals can really help you to understand the character better.

At the moment, most people learn the system with 214 radicals. If you are serious about learning characters, you should learn the 214 radicals and of course you should also learn the meaning of those. This will help you a lot to "reconstruct" the meaning of a certain character.

I could go on forever with tips and tricks about studying characters..but I will stop here for the moment. Hope this is useful for your study of Chinese Characters.

[ChronoC]

What's the best way of learning enough characters to be able toread and understand what you are reading?

[linguoboy]

What's the best way of learning enough characters to be able toread and understand what you are reading?

That depends how you learn best. There are all kinds of approaches available. Try a couple and see what works for you.

[Pangu]

What's the best way of learning enough characters to be able toread and understand what you are reading?

As linguoboy said, it depends on how you learn best.

However, it generally comes down to immersion. We all forget skills if we don't use them often enough.

There are many ways to immerse yourself, such as media or social.

With media, you can watch TV shows & movies with subtitles. Listening or music while reading lyrics or even sing karaoke if that's your thing.

When you go to a Chinese restaurant, try reading the menu in Chinese and not English. Sometimes just walking around your local Chinatown you may be surprised how many characters you may recognize.

At the end of the day, focus on your attitude toward learning characters. It's supposed to be fun, although like many things, it will require work. But if it ever becomes more work than fun to you, first check your attitude then your method.

[TeneReef]

What's the best way of learning enough characters to be able toread and understand what you are reading?

By practicing writing:

'Reading depends on writing, in Chinese''
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1150863/

[OldBoring]

Threads merged. Some tips about how to learn Chinese characters have also been discussed here.