The tricky art of learning Chinese characters

I thought it would be impossible for me to memorize Chinese characters. Turns out I just needed to use the right techniques.

Photo by Artur Kornakov on Unsplash

I used to believe that my memory was so terrible that learning Chinese characters would be impossible for me.

However, a few months ago I had to get a tech certification for work. I panicked. How was I supposed to remember all this information?

I tried mind maps, which helped me get a distinction in A-Level Law, but it took too long and a lot of the data I’m trying to remember didn’t relate logically to each other.

Then, I tried flashcards. It worked brilliantly. I took the tech exam and I passed and actually did well! I'm talking about a high distinction. Not bad for somebody with zero software engineering background.

Now, my Brainscape flashcards are being used by some folks in my company. Not bad for a non-engineer.

My attempt to earn the certification taught me that it was not my memory that was the problem, but my method of remembering.

I can’t repeat things 10,000 times and hope to remember. My brain just doesn’t work that way and I suspect yours don’t either.

Learning Chinese characters, however, was a little more challenging than the tech exam, to say the least.

While flashcards were useful, it isn't very useful to learn how a character looks like if you don't know how to use the word in context, for example. And I needed several tools and techniques to learn how to remember the characters.

Here are three things I put in place to create a good environment where I learn to read Chinese:

1. Use the right memory techniques. For me, it was:

• Mnemonics

• Breaking down a character into components and understanding why they were constructed that way.

2. Use the right tools:

• Space repetition systems - Tofu Learn

• Pleco Chinese dictionary

• Frequency list - Subtlex-CH

When I posted my reasons why I'm learning Mandarin, one of the most common question I got was how to memorise Chinese characters. In this issue, I'll lay out the techniques I'm using to learn how to read Chinese.

Step 1: Learn how Chinese characters work

You cannot remember Chinese characters as a series of strokes. That way leads to pain. (Believe me, I've tried.)

Fortunately, I learned way back in 2010 that the best way to learn Chinese characters is to break a character down into components and understand the logic of how they came together to form the character.

This is why I bought the Chinese characters and reading course from Outlier Linguistics, which helps me understand how Chinese characters are constructed.

However, I wouldn’t recommend that course to people who just want to learn a few phrases of Mandarin for an upcoming vacation in China. It’s a serious, full-blown course for language nerds who wants to go beyond the basics. I would say this is meant for intermediate Chinese language learners.

I can recommend this lengthy video from Mandarin blueprint instead:

Step 2: Use mnemonics

Some characters “look” like what they mean, so it wasn’t hard to remember them.

Take the numbers one to three, or even three: 一，二，三。

Sometimes, I just make up stories.

For example, the word 忙 (máng - busy, in a hurry), which I have no problem remembering because it looks like a man at a standing desk working on a laptop.

For words like 后 (hòu - empress, behind), understanding the historical background of the characters and how they were constructed helped. The character was drawn to look like two spread legs with a box and a slash coming out from them to represent ... a child kid coming out. “Giving birth to an heir”, basically. The story is so, er, graphic that I can’t look at 后 the same anymore!

I realise that if I take time to come up with the stories it is nigh effortless to remember the character.

One thing to acknowledge is the great advantage I have as a heritage speaker: I already know a lot of vocabulary, and have strong listening skills (but shite speaking skills, but that’s another story), so all I have to do is match the character to the word.

But don't despair. Just because you do not have the same advantage, doesn't mean you can't do it. The book, Remembering Simplified Hanzi 1: How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Chinese Characters by James Heizig is often recommended to help people remember Chinese characters.

However, just a note that the Heizig method doesn’t help you master the tones associated with a character. It is essential to master tones if you want to be understood when speaking Mandarin.

The Mandarin Blueprint method has a good video on how to use mnemonics and memory palaces to remember the characters.

Frankly, their method is far too complicated for me since I already know the tones and vocabulary, so a lot of it is redundant for me. I may use their method for unfamiliar words, but I wonder if I'll remember the complex mnemonic story I craft for each word!

Step 3: Revise using flashcards

Oh boy, one can write essays on the use of flashcards and why it's useful, but I'll keep mine simple.

Spaced repetition systems are vital to help jog your memory as you memorize the characters.

In the bad old days, I used paper flash cards. And promptly lose them.

Fortunately, there are digital SRS apps now.

In the language circles, Anki is the god of all SRS apps because it's free and very flexible. However, I am a rebel - I don't use Anki, I use Tofu Learn.

The reason is simple. I do not want to waste precious time building Anki decks. I took a good half hour to plug in the data into one card because I wanted audio as well. With Tofu Learn, which is free, I can just add a character and it will build the card for me - with audio, quizzes, writing practice and more.

There are many SRS apps in the marketplace, but Tofu Learn is targeted towards specific languages, and is especially good for Chinese.

There's also Hack Chinese, which is another favourite. However, I found Tofu Learn's quizzes far more robust than Hack Chinese's, which only allows you to create Chinese to English flashcards.

Well, I hope this issue was enlightening. I didn't want to go on too much as it can be overwhelming, but this is roughly what I use to remember characters. In the coming issues, I will explore the importance of using graded readers.

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