Customer Reviews

Tuttle Learning Chinese Characters, Vol. 1: A Revolutionary New Way to Learn and Remember the 800 Most Basic Chinese Characters

5 star:		(44)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I so wish I had had this book when starting to learn Chinese! While studying on my own, I was fascinated with Chinese characters, but I never managed to retain them. During an immersion course in Beijing, I learned to memorize Chinese characters by rote, just writing them over and over again - it worked for the 6 weeks I was there since I had classes every day and used the characters a lot. However, back home and only studying Chinese once a week or so, I quickly forgot all but the most common ones again.

Then I stumbled upon James Heisig and his method for learning Kanji (Chinese-derived characters used in Japanese). It was enlightening! I actually remembered the characters, and I can still remember them several years later! Unfortunately many characters in his book aren't really useful when learning Chinese, or they may even teach you incorrectly due to the meanings having changed over time. But I had learned what method would work for people with an analytical Western mindset like me, people who don't have a good memory for pictures and who hate the dull, time-consuming and ineffective Eastern method of writing characters over and over again.

From then on, I used a similar method to learn new Chinese characters I'd encounter or old ones that refused to stick. It was tedious though. My incomplete knowledge of Chinese characters wouldn't let me see the most useful order in which to learn characters and their parts; wouldn't let me distinguish between really useful ones and obsolete ones, and so on. I also had trouble memorizing the pronunciation and especially the tone with each character.

The sample of Heisig for Chinese was a disappointment, as it didn't tackle these problems. The characters introduced are mostly the same as in the Japanese version, never mind their usefulness (or lack thereof) in Chinese, the book doesn't even mention the pronunciation of a character and after the first few lessons you're left alone to invent stories and links.

When I got this book, "Learning Chinese Characters", I immediately knew that I had found the answer to all those years of searching. This book is everything I would have wished for as a beginning student of Chinese and more:
- explanation of how Chinese characters work and how to write them, plus stroke order diagrams with each character
- introducing basic elements through pictures
- introducing more complex elements through short and memorable stories that combine the basic elements, sometimes also accompanied by an illustrating picture
- stories also remind you of the pronunciation, including a special mnemonic for the tone
- teaches the 800 most basic Chinese characters, with a focus on the ones necessary for the HSK Level A exam, and there's a story or picture for *every single character*. It doesn't leave you alone after the first few steps.
- the most useful characters (e. g. the ones for "to be", "I", "you", "good", and so on) are actually taught in the first few lessons, even though these are hard to teach and some books avoid them on purpose. This will be extremely useful for students using this book alongside a beginner's Chinese course.
- also teaches words if they can be formed using only characters that were already taught
- based on simplified characters, as these are the most common ones today, but equivalent traditional characters are given in brackets if different

Great job, authors! I haven't yet found anything worth complaining about, so my rating is 5 stars!

(Note: while the usage of particles is briefly explained whenever they come up, this book is not suitable to teach you grammar or conversation and it doesn't try to be. Use a regular course for that instead, or Chinesepod. These won't help you learn characters though, so you do need this extra book. Learning characters and learning the language have to be separate tasks in Chinese, though you can do them at the same time.

I have finally worked my through this entire book and the pages are thumb worn so I believe I can offer an informed review. At first I really liked it and felt it was helping me learn the Hanzi characters quickly. However, after now studying Chinese for over a year I would not recommend the approach I took. I tended to use this book in isolation, learning characters, writing them out, and using homemade flashcards, but not reading them in actual text. I think that that is a big mistake. I have found I need to see the characters in an actual text to really digest them. Perhaps if the student uses this book while learning new characters from a Chinese textbook that would be better, but I would advise strongly against just plowing through the book as I did, learning one character after another and thus do less reading. I find that you don't retain the Hanzi this way.

My second criticism is that the book's stories for the characters sometimes seem to determine how they define the word. The more common definitions are at times chosen for less commmon ones and many definitions are completely missing. It would be vastly better if all the words were used in sentence like Tuttle's flashcards are. Moreover, I think a big drawback of the book is that they don't sell accompanying flashcards that use the story. (I think Tuttle's flashcard series is very good but they certainly don't give you the stories used in this book.) Otherwise the student wastes a lot of time creating their own flashcards and mistakes in the writing of the Hanzi are inevitable for the beginner. Thus you are memorizing your own mistakes.

I guess the book may be good if combined with other materials in which the student is learning to read Chinese. However, I think if I were to do it over, I would skip this book and get a really good software program like Wenlin which has a great dictionary. This gives you all the meanings of the words, it gives you the words in context, and a history of how the Hanzi developed. Probably using Wenlin, Tuttle's flashcards, and this book would be a great way to start.

Finally there are a few typos in the book. I only started writing them down after I noticed a few so there are more.

Character 782A mistakenly identifies "Tian" as "slave."
Character 511: not sure what happend here. The top Hanzi is not "Ji" it's "Jiu" and the story is also wrong - not sure where they get "baseball" from?
Character 121 is pronounced "zhi" not "yi"
Character 561 - typo for the word "moon."
Character 779: story has a typo

Although this book seems to please many reviewers, I think that it is too limited to be of great help to other serious learners. To begin with, the definitions are too limited and not really very accurate. To take two examples, their character 137 is xian1 which is defined as "ahead," but the central meanings are surely "first," "previous," and "before." "Ahead" is one of the meanings, but to single it out and present it all by itself is very misleading. Character 145 is dao4, which is defined as "way," and the little mnemonic story suggests that it is to be taken in the sense of "which way should you walk?" Again, the central meanings are surely "road" and "path."

A second fault is the method itself. People may be able to learn characters fairly rapidly this way, and that might help them on exams, but they may also find that they have to go through the whole song and dance each time they want to bring a character to mind. I once taught myself Morse code using short sentences, as in "Sam Said So" to remember that "S" (...) is three short sounds (one-syllable words in the mnemonic). It was very hard to build up any speed because I had to bring the mnemonic to mind in order to access the code. I'm afraid that this would work in much the same way. Brute force has something to recommend it, and that something is an immediate connection. Moreover, to put this method to use, one must spend a lot of time reading and learning little mnemonic stories (and ridiculous ones at that) that have no real relevance to Chinese.

I should also say that the "equations" they use to explain "composite" characters completely falsify the nature of the characters themselves. For example, the equation for li4 "stand" (which is their number 177) goes like this "lid + feet = stand." "Lid" is the colloquial name for radical 8; "feet" is their own invention; and "stand" is the colloquial name for radical 117, which is actually a pictograph of a standing man and needs no further clarification. (I have been referring to the traditional radical numbers here. In Chapter 24 they mention that they are using the system of 189 radicals--presumably the Xinhua system--and both "lid" and "stand" are a part of that system too. "Feet" is nowhere to be found.) To give just one more example, they say that number 195 xin1 (which they define as "spicy") "also means 'bitter' or 'acrid' and hence also "hardship." In fact, the character is a pictograph of an instrument used to mark the faces of prisoners and slaves, and the meaning "hardhsip" is basic. "Hot" (not really "spicy") is an extended meaning--not the reverse. Many of their explanations falsify the known etymology, which is very often more useful than their mnemonic stories.

One more point. No book that teaches someone to write the characters should present them in a Song typeface or other face with serifs and ornamental distortions. A Kai face that resembles Chinese writing should be used. This is more than a mere quibble.

I have been working my way through this book and it does appear to result in better retention than other Chinese character books. It also covers a reasonable number of characters (800), which is not too many to cover but which provides at least the capability to read simple texts. Presumably the authors will follow up with further volumes, or one could use their Chinese Character Fast Finder using the same method.

heisig and Richardson's book is yet to be announced (and it is not in Amazon yet) but they have made an exerpt available with the first 90 or so characters. Based on this, I would recommend the Matthews book for several reasons: available now, covers pronunciation as well as meaning, also covers vocabulary, stories easier to remember, and stories for all characters.

Author please note: the pronunciation for character 121 is evidently wrong; 511: 'baseball' not 'several'.

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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Eagerly awaiting Volume 2!

I agree with the other glowing reviews. One of the hard things about Mandarin is remembering the tone of the words. There are four tones - high, rising, falling/rising, and falling. The characters are either building block characters or formed out of two (and rarely three) building block. E.g., the character for good is comprised of the symbol for woman and child and it has a falling/rising tone.

The book has a "dorky" story about each character that help you remember the constituent building blocks which has one of 4 prototype characters woven into the story depending on the tone. Thus, if I am trying to remember the character for lamp, there is story about a giant (which signifies first tone) and fire and nail (the two constituent buiding blocks) plus a sound word which helps to jog the memory.

As someone who went through medical school, I appreciate good mnemonics. This is an excellent book. If you want to learn the hanzi (Chinese characters), just get this book! It teaches the 800 most common characters. But also, it teaches a method to learn even more. When I see a character now, I start making up my own stories following the pattern of the book.

I am a semi-retired professor of linguistics and an intermediate learner of Chinese. This book presents the most innovative AND useful system for learning Chinese characters that I have ever come across. It really works.

Basically the authors provide pictures to help you learn the most basic characters and very short stories to help you remember the composite characters that are built out of these more basic characters. It's true that the stories usually have nothing to do with the actual historical development of the character-- but who cares! Your goal is presumably to learn to read and write Chinese not to become a scholar of the language's history. It's also true that this is not the way the Chinese native speakers learn them-- but again so what? You are an adult speaker of English learning Chinese as a second language not a Chinese speaking child learning to read and write his native tongue. There's a big difference!

I really applaud the authors' innovative approach, which I have found really does work. Of course, you will still need to put some effort into learning, but their system truly does make things tremendously easier. I have been able to learn and retain about a dozen characters per day (studying maybe 30 minutes total in ten minute sessions) versus only one or two characters daily using the old rote memorization system (which I usually forgot within a few days anyway). Pretty amazing!

One last note, the authors also have a system for helping you recall a character's pronunciation in addition to its written form and meaning. But because I already knew the pronunciation of most of the words in the book I did not attempt to make use of these additional stories. Those seemed to be to be less useful-- but you may find they help you

Bottom line-- if you are open to innovative approaches to learning then you can't do better than this book for mastering Chinese characters. (Oh, and I do not know the authors or have any connection with them.)

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.

I took a Chinese course for a year in pinyin and I learned a lot of words, but I could never begin to learn any characters or read anything. I tried the workbooks where you write them over and over again and it was meaningless, it didn't stick. I found this book and immediately started learning them-it's like this method flipped a switch and suddenly they no longer looked like a jumble of lines. The first time I sat down to read it, I spent a half hour and learned 25 characters. The success right away made it really fun to study, now when I see characters I don't know I try to figure them out, I look for elements I have learned instead of feeling overwhelmed. I would recommend this book to anyone-casual learner or serious.

This book can help you on your way to learning Mandarin. If you work at it, you will be able to read and write the Chinese characters (hanzi) using this book. It's important to keep in mind that this book is not a complete recipe for learning the language but only a small part. For instance, millions of illiterate people can communicate effectively only by spoken word and yet reading/writing these characters remain beyond their ability.

What I found most useful:
* Provides a useful learning set and ordering of the thousands of characters in the language.
* Helpful for identifying the various parts that make up some characters.
Stroke orders are accurate and a must for learning to write the characters correctly
* Pinyin text is accurate and helps you learn to pronounce the characters. Some of the characters have English 'sound words' to help you with the approximate pronunciation. Learning to speak pinyin correctly is a problem with all materials.
* All HSK Level A characters are in one place.

I am using this book as part of my study of learning Mandarin but here are some things I found to keep in mind or that are are not so helpful:
* Doesn't teach grammar at all. This is to be expected as it is character-based and not sentence-based. If you only want to learn to recognize, understand basic meanings, pronounce and write Hanzi characters, this book will help you do that. If you want to become more fluent in conversing in Mandarin Chinese and reading and writing complete sentences then you'll have to go elsewhere.
* Some of the character 'meanings' offered seem arbitrary and chosen to fit the 'story' as compared to the more common meanings found in other resources (books, official HSK A list, internet...)
* Sound-words don't always help with the pinyin. A lot of the characters are DIY pronunciation anyway (have no sound words) and so offer no help at all. Perhaps it's just differences with dialects/regions, but the sound words chosen do not sound like real-world speakers. Having an audio companion to this book would be very helpful.
* In my opinion, the character stories are of little value for recognition. With enough repetition, you will eventually recognize the character instantly (pinyin + meaning(s)) vs. remembering the 'story' can take a long time and clutter your mind with useless trivia.
* Helps with speaking but listening is the other skill needed for communicating orally and that is not addressed - other than listening to yourself.
* The HSK Level A words are not all single characters but most are 2 and some 3 and 4 characters. This books does not make it easy to learn these compound words. All the compound words are in there but it's not the most effective layout for learning them.
* Using the book in 'flash-card' manner for learning new characters and testing yourself is difficult since you have to cover up various parts of the page. I have supplemented by using flash cards (purchased sets and missing ones printed on business cards).