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Remembering Simplified Hanzi 1 and Remembering Traditional Hanzi 1
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adrianlondon -

Any pricing for these yet? Were the japanese volumes expensive?



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Luobot -



Quote:

Hurrah! The world of Chinese learning will never be the same again. I am a satisfied disciple of
the Heisig method ...

I just got my checkbook all soggy salivating over it. Why does it sound too good to be true? Any
more testimonials?

JimmySeal, at 1500 chars per month, he has the learning rate at around 50 chars per day with
retention. Does this about equal your mileage on an average day? In other words, vol. 1 can be
swallowed in month 1 and vol. 2 is wiped clean the next month. All 3000 characters done in two
months with retention!










JimmySeal -

@adrianlondon

Dunno about the pricing, but as a reference, Remembering the Kanji, vol 1 (which would roughly
correspond to both Hanzi books, costs $32 on Amazon so I'd place the Chinese ones around $24-30
each (just a guess). A little pricey but not prohibitively expensive.


@luobot

1500 in a month might be a bit ambitious. 2-3 would be more realistic. I finished RTK (2042
characters) in about 3.5 months of moderately dedicated work. I tried to shoot for 40 a day, but
there were days when I took breaks, and other days when I went as high as 60 or 80 characters. I
think 2 months is very doable if you can spare about 1.5-2 hours most days to work on it.










sthubbar -

I have not used the Heizig method. I agree with the quote about not trying to learn all aspects of
the characters at once. If I have to choose between two options:

Option #1 - I can pronounce 3000 characters but might not be able to write them and some may not
even know what they mean.

Option #2 - I can write 3000 characters and know at least one meaning for each of them, but can
say very few of them.

I choose option #1. My goal is to be able to communicate in Chinese. In my opinion the most
important aspects of communication are listening and speaking, in that order. If I can read out
loud a string of characters and my ears can't understand what I'm reading then I need to improve
my listening skills, not improve my understanding of characters.

Now there are some people who are content to be able to read Chinese, and maybe don't understand
what is said so much and are shy to speak. If that is your goal then the Heisig method sounds like
a great option.

If you are interested in being able to communicate in Chinese, daily use of a spaced repetition
system is a great assistant in allowing a student to rapidly learn and retain the pronunciation,
and meaning if wanted, of many characters.










gato -



Quote:

Additionally, even after finishing, one must make an effort to review their learned knowledge
systematically or it will be forgotten.

This is a big qualification. How much review does one have to do with Heisig system? And by
review, do you mean that you have to review the Heisig book or merely review materials written in
Japanese or Chinese, whichever the case might be?

If the "review" needed is extensive, then I'm not sure you can really say that you actually
learned those 3000 characters in those two or three months.

In any case, I think the Heisig method has merits. It's basically a mnemonic system to associate
the shapes of characters with their meanings. If you don't use the mnemonics created by Heisig and
his co-author, I'm sure many of us have some of our own for the characters we've studied. But I do
find the idea of learning 1500 or 3000 characters before one studies any pronunciation or read any
material in the target language odd. I guess we'll just have to wait for JimmySeal to prove us
skeptics wrong when he starts reading Chinese newspapers in two months (though he does have a head
start by already knowing 2000 Japanese kanjis).










Mugi -



Quote:

Originally Posted by JimmySeal
I say without a doubt that the authors know what they are talking about and fully understand the
simple idea of hanzi phonetics (If you don't believe me, have a look at Heisig's Remembering the
Kanji, volume 2. Half the book is based on that concept.)

I'll try and do that - I'm intrigued after the authors made such a blatantly inaccurate comment.



Quote:

What he says is true. While 伯's makeup may suggest that it is pronounced similarly to 白, there
is nothing intrinsic about 白 (or its derivatives) that dictates that it is pronounced a certain
way and a trip around China will show that to be overwhelmingly true.

Who was it that said it's better to keep your mouth shut and have people think you're ignorant
than to open it and prove the fact?
Although the most common pronunciation of 白 in Putonghua is bái, there is a second (literary)
reading, bó. In fact, in classical texts, 白 was sometimes used for 伯, precisely because the
pronunciation was the same. And to compound things, 伯 has a colloquial reading of bǎi. Most
educated Chinese should know that 'bai' is a colloquial pronunciation of 'bo' with respect to the
白 phonetic. To my knowledge, with only a couple of exceptions (read 'mo', which is actually
phonetically very close to 'bo'), all characters with the 白 phonetic are read as 'bai' and/or
'bo' in standard Putonghua. And as soon as you move away from standard Putonghua to local Mandarin
dialects, there is even greater consistency - often there is only one extent pronunciation
(particulary with regard to 白 vs 伯. Same thing in non Mandarin dialects, the pronunciation is
also almost always identical, although sometimes it differs in tone or aspirated/unaspirated
initial.
So contrary to your claim that "a trip around China will show that to be overwhelmingly true", in
actual fact (with this particular example anyway), a trip around China would prove the exact
opposite, whether you're talking about Mandarin or other Sinitic languages.



Quote:

Really all he is trying to do in that paragraph is assuage purists who think that learning
characters in terms of English is "wrong" or "unnatural." That's all.

Yes, I can appreciate what they're trying to say - I just think that it is irresponsible of
academics to make a blatantly false claim in order to market their book to the unknowing. In a
similar way, I don't think it is very responsible of these guys and a few others who casually pass
off mnemonics and pop etymologies as genuine character etymologies.










JimmySeal -

@sthubbar

Yes, if someone had to choose between options #1 and #2, #1 might very well be the better choice.
However the goal of Heisig's books are not to reach #2 and stop. It is simply an intermediate goal
on the road to literacy. So why learn the meaning before the pronunciation?
Well, the value of the system is that each character is given a unique spot in your brain, with a
mnemonic story to tie it there. And the markers you are giving it are not just unique, they are
familiar (they're English), not just some arbitrary syllable that holds no meaning to you.
In linking the character to its reading by rote memory, you are forming a hazy connection,
building the character-information relationship on quicksand.
By tying the characters to a unique and familiar word, you are building a strong foundation for
your character knowledge, so that the next step in the process, learning the readings, is
veritably a breeze.

@gato

By review, I mean review with flashcards or the like. That is, looking at a keyword, recalling the
mnemonic story, writing the character, and checking the answer.
Upon finishing the book, a learner will be able to immediately put their new knowledge to use, but
the keyword->character connections will weaken and fade over time if they are allowed to, just
like any type of knowledge. Mnemonics help a lot, but they are not infallible.
With spaced repetition, this can be reduced to very little daily review after a few more months of
reviewing.

Heisig does not pretend to enable people to read a newspaper, or anything for that matter, simply
by finishing his books. What the books do is give learners a strong familiarity with 3000
characters, which puts them in a prime position to tackle the rest of the task of becoming
literate.










JimmySeal -



Quote:

I'm intrigued after the authors made such a blatantly inaccurate comment.

There's nothing inaccurate about it.



Quote:

Who was it that said it's better to keep your mouth shut and have people think you're ignorant
than to open it and prove the fact?

I repeat:

There is nothing intrinsic about 白 that dictates that it is pronounced a certain way and a trip
around China will show that to be overwhelmingly true.

That is, 白 is pronounced "bai" and "bo" in standard Mandarin. "mo" in other Mandarin dialects as
you say. It is "baak" in Cantonese, and various other similar syllables in other dialects. It's
"payk" in Korean, and "haku," "shiro," etc. in Japanese.
So which of the above is its inherent pronunciation, making the rest of them perversions of this
"pure syllable?"

These 5 strokes have no direct relation to pronunciation at all. The character is based on a
pictographic representation of a bright shining moon, devised to convey the meaning of "white,"
which just happens to be pronounced "bai" in Mandarin. Since all the character intrinsically
conveys is its meaning, "bai," "shiro," "white," and "blanco" are all equally valid names for this
character. The Chinese cannot lay claim to the single "correct" name of a character any more than
the Italians can dictate universal names for the alphabetic letters.

伯 can be said to have a phonetic relation to 白 insofar as it was conceived that way, but that
in no way suggests that 伯 has an "inherent" pronunciation, since 白 itself does not. Even if
the etymology historically states that 伯 is pronounced similarly to 白, that doesn't mean it
absolutely has to be that way. How many characters have deviated significantly from their original
etymologies? So if James Heisig wants to refer to 白 as "white", and 伯 as "chief," he has every
justification in doing so.

With that, I'll leave you with a line from Shakespeare which I think sums up my point quite well.
"What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet"










JimmySeal -



Quote:


Originally Posted by Mugi

In a similar way, I don't think it is very responsible of these guys and a few others who casually
pass off mnemonics and pop etymologies as genuine character etymologies.


Ahem.


Quote:


Originally Posted by Heisig

On one hand, much of the course is grounded in scholarly consensus on the history of the
characters. On the other, we have not hesitated to ignore established etymologies whenever doing
so seemed pedagogically useful....Should a student later turn to etymological studies, the
procedure we have followed will become more transparent, and the fact that we did not indicate
each departure from an established etymology should not cause any obstacle to learning.


Where is he passing of his mnemonics as genuine etymologies? All he claims to provide is an
effective means for learning characters, nothing more.










leosmith -



Quote:



Quote:

there is nothing in the nature of a character dictating that it must be verbalized one way or
another.

This statement is fundamentally wrong for the majority of characters

It sounds like you're saying in over 50% of the characters you can tell how it's pronounced by
looking at one of it's radicals. I've heard it's more like 30%. Am I understanding you correctly?


Quote:

The authors should perhaps read DeFrancis' The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy.

I haven't read said book, but I read on a forum somewhere that one of the myths that DeFrancis
dismisses is the ability to read most characters by looking at one of it's radicals. Do I have it
backwards?



Quote:

Any more testimonials?

I finished RTK1 (2042 kanji) in 7 months. It took 300 hours. I could have finished sooner, but
that would have meant more than 10hrs per week, and I didn't want to do that. I used paper
flashcards exclusivly. I think if I'd used it in conjunction with supermemo, it would have been
200-250 hrs.



Quote:

How much review does one have to do with Heisig system?

I need to review them until I'm actually using them. Like vocabulary, I review Heisig stuff until
I'm actually reading and writing words. Like all mnemonics, they slip away, but I no longer need
them anymore; they've served their purpose. I've got the RTK1 stuff in supermemo. For reasons I
won't go into, my Japanese is on hold right now. The RTK1 reviews take about 10 minutes per day.
10 minutes per day to maintain 2000+ characters isn't bad IMO. When I finally start using all of
them regularly, that will go to 0.



Quote:

the goal of Heisig's books are not to reach #2 and stop. It is simply an intermediate goal on the
road to literacy.

This is true. There seems to be a lot of confusion about this, so let me expand a little.

Normal road to literacy:
1)learn words & their characters
2)read simple literature
3)repeat steps 1 & 2 many times
4)read normal literature

Heisigs road to literacy:
1)learn characters (Heisig)
2)learn words
3)read simple literature
4)repeat steps 2 & 3 many times
5)read normal literature

Notice that the last step is the same. Heisig is just one step on the road. Granted, the road is
different, but it ends in the same place.

Heisig is not a good choice for someone who is having to learn the characters using a different
method; using 2 methods to learn the same character is generally not a good idea. Heisig is not a
good choice for someone who can't do mnemonics, or can't finish the free PDF.

Some people don't like the idea of dropping everything to do an intensive Heisig study. This is
what Heisig recommends, but there are ways around it. I chose to work on it only 2 hrs per day,
and continue with my other studies.

Also, if you don't like Heisig's order of learning characters, and you must learn things in the
order you encounter them, you can always just use his mnemonic technique and ignore the order.

Whichever way you choose, I recommend using an SRS to review. Good luck!












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