Hello, guys.
My wife used to learn Japanese, but she recently switched to Chinese because it might be used at work. She takes lessons with a private teacher, but looking for a tool to learn hieroglyphs more efficient. Are you are aware of Wanikani like services for learning Chinese?
No idea, but she can use Anki and use a deck, Iām sure.
I remember reading the book Chineasy by Shaolan Hsueh and enjoying it and its graphics. (I had no intention of learning Chinese, I just think kanji are cool in general.) It breaks down kanji into radicals and talks about how they combine to create the characterās meaning. There was also something about Chinese grammar in the back, I think. Itās not going to be enough on its own, but I guess itās not a bad start.
A cursory google search also turns up this other book by the same author, Chineasy Everyday: Learning Chinese Through Its Culture, and this website, https://www.chineasy.com/.
When I was leaning Chinese I really appreciated the app Skritter for learning ę±å. The radicals I learnt there still serve me wel in Japanese.
I personally use the flashcard feature on Pleco. Cost me $10 and I have to add my own words but itās been well worth it for me.
Looks like Skritter is the only moreless good tool which does not require any input from a user.
You could get Remembering the Hanzi by Heisig but thatāll help only to remember the characters, but not their readings. They use mnemonics like WaniKani does so that might be a plus. You can then reinforce them by using a flashcard app with the most common words. I know iknow.jp has a Chinese course for the 2000 most common words. Presumably one might find a shared Anki deck with the same content but I havenāt much experience with Anki or shared decks.
Itās not exactly like WaniKani, but Iāve used Ninchanese before. Thereās an SRS system for reviewing vocabulary, and it also teaches you grammar.
Is there any update to SRS based Chinese learning apps/programs? Surely, someone is developing (or has developed), a more up to date app (even if it canāt possibly be as wonderful as Wanikani - which doesnāt just have good algorithms, but good people, vibes, etc.)?
Anyway, a North American born Chinese friend is looking for ways to learn Chinese better, and also help his son learn. The local classes are using old school methods (which honestly - seem like the dark ages in language learning now, and arenāt particularly effective.)
Thanks!
Is this any different from Remembering the Kanji by the same author? The mnemonics are closer to whatās been found with etymological research, but theyāre not entirely accurate. Also, I think itās really quite handicapping not to learn the readings at the same time, especially since Mandarin doesnāt change readings quite as often as Japanese and meaning differences are quite clearly split across readings. (Iāve been speaking Chinese since I was a toddler, even if English is my primary language.) Learning to write is often recommended with RtK though, and I think that is helpful for learning characters.
This, in my opinion, sounds like the right way to think about characters, Japanese or Chinese. Iād like to add that the French edition of Chineasy is published by Assimil, and anything that they publish tends to be of high quality, so Iād give it a shot.
Especially in such a case, since the author of Chineasy was in exactly the same situation. (Sheās Taiwanese, but she was raising her children overseas.)
Yeah, it was released much later and I think itās laid out better with some of the things they learned in the interim. There are volumes for both simplified and traditional forms. I used the simplified one to cram for a trip to Shenzhen in 2011.
Ah, now thatās nice. I was worried that someone who bought the course would have no choice in which form of Chinese they wanted to learn. I learnt simplified characters growing up, and I think theyāre more practical (Iām biased due to my habits, I guess?), but I think itās good to know traditional characters as well, and people should be able to choose, since both character sets are still used today.
Yeah, even in mainland China I saw traditional hanzi everywhere on signs and storefronts and stuff. Plus I was only about 2 hours from Hong Kong so it felt like the prevalence of traditional form was greater in the south, especially Guangdong.
You could use decks from kitsun.io