Should you practise writing Chinese characters by hand?
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- Опубликовано: 29 сен 2016
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My name is Olly Richards, and on this channel I document my experiments in foreign language acquisition.
This video is part of my project to learn Chinese characters. You’ll get regular videos that show all the lessons learnt, and big decisions I make along the way.
You’ll get an insight into the entire process of learning to read and write in Chinese, which will help you take on the challenge of learning Chinese yourself!
The two resources you’ll see me refer to most often are:
1) Skritter App - iwillteachyoualanguage.com/skr...
2) Remembering The Hanzi - amzn.to/2e2bcgE
To see some of my previous experiments, why not try...
• Learn Thai in 14 Days:
• Learn Thai Mission
• Learn To Write Chinese (Traditional Characters)
• Project: Learn To Writ...
• Daily Study Routines and Schedules
• Foreign Language Study...
If you're interested in becoming a better language learner, and discovering the secrets to learning languages quickly, be sure to check out my podcast:
www.iwillteachyoualanguage.com/podcast-home/
Writing by hand engages the motoric cortex which creates a stronger imprint in your memory, so absolutely you should.
Yes... but amazing the number of people saying you don't
SRS though
I love this. I really need to refresh my Chinese characters. I did not feel like I was learning Chinese until I started reading and writing. Writing Chinese gives you this intimate relationship with the language that I find missing when i'm learning German. I find writing calming - even when I'm learning a new character. It does get faster the more you learn. I find it amazing that my brain can do this when it's not even to my native language. It's very rewarding. I think it also helps to know how to say it when you're writing it. I know you've said this book doesn't incorporate pronunciation but it was helpful for me to learn the whole package and kind of say what it means with the pronunciation while I'm learning it. Either way. Good luck! I'm tempted to get this book and learn along with you. I've lost a lot of characters. They are tough to learn but so worth it!!
I would definitely learn the pronunciation if there was a suitable method that addressed Cantonese pronunciation.
You could just look up individual characters on Cantodict and write the romanization down yourself. It would take more time but I think should be worth it.
What clear handwriting you have, Olly! Since I still use paper flashcards on occasion--and write new vocab from my reading into notebooks--I need to make sure that at least my stroke order is correct, so I do a little writing practice like you're demonstrating here. Writing isn't my goal, reading is. (I still plan to master writing, but not until after I can read at least at the 6th grade level, i.e. about 1000 characters. I'm learning Japanese, but the principles are the same with someone learning Mandarin. Of course, your situation learning to speak Cantonese but read/write Mandarin is different.)
I agree with you!
I find the Chinese characters beautiful! I am starting to learn how to write them because I used to just learn the pinyin.
Wow, you're doing what I did when I was a primary student in Hong Kong. Your handwriting looks neat and nice to me. I just took a close look at your book in the video. Many Chinese characters have more than one meaning. The character 向 in your book means 'orientation'. Well, this sounds a bit complicated. In fact 向 is a noun only when it is combined with another character, e.g. 方向 means 'direction', but 向 alone is mostly used as a preposition which means 'towards'. Besides, 冒 means 'risk' only when it is combined with another character as in 冒險. 冒 alone means 'to emit' or 'to give off' but this is not very common. We usually use 冒 in a pair of characters, e.g. 冒充 (to pretend), 冒犯 (to offend), 冒牌 (counterfeit), etc. Just remember Chinese usually takes two or more characters to have the same meaning as in English words.
I like your videos very much and really want to help you in person, haha.
Yes, it's a great point. If you have a look at my earlier videos I explain the concept behind this approach. The idea is not to learn complete words at this stage, rather to develop a foundation of common characters that can later be used to learn real words. I'm also aware the "meaning" of the characters is not the true meaning when found in words. Heisig's method is a series of building blocks, which gradually fall away as you learn to read and write the real language.
I think there's some value in writing out the basic characters many times, but there is some diminishing returns involved with the less common characters that you might need to recognize to be a proficient reader, but even most Chinese people might have trouble remembering how to write.
Yes, that makes perfect sense.
我同意，and being able to type is really important I think， because it gives you a way of self-correcting. When I am reading, I will copy-type what I am reading to make sure I have remembered the pinying and meaning correctly.
I really like this video. May I add it to my playlist? I am from Taiwan and just started a channel about how to write traditional Chinese characters. I mainly focus on writing, provide a step-by-step tutorial, and also character decompositions. I hope my videos will be helpful for anyone who wants to learn more about how to write Chinese. (especially in traditional form, not the simplified.) Thank you. 😊
Pinyin is typically used on computers (it also helps you with pronounciation).
I agree that writing helps a lot. I also learned the pronunciation of the characters at the same time; you will need the sound later and it will help to explain the sound of more complex characters you will reach later on, when one part of the character serves as a phonetic symbol.
I'm also a bit nervous about your just learning the characters in isolation. The DeFrancis books I followed years ago introduced as soon as possible the very common 2,3 and 4 character combinations (from already learned characters) that occur very frequently in the language.
By the way, in the character you drew with the three-dash water radical on the left, I think you would write the main part of the character first, and the water at the end. But I'm ready to be corrected!
I'm a native Chinese speaker. For your info, writing the most written Chinese characters one by one is akin to writing all the 26 letters of the English script based on the Latin phonetic alphabet one by one, except that Chinese is the one & only major international language that doesn't use a Phonetic Alphabet as its type of Writing System. Chinese actually uses the type of Writing System known as Logograms, with most, though not all, characters having 2 parts: the radical［部首］, giving the meaning, & the component［部件］, giving the pronunciation. In all characters containing the ［三点水］radical, the［三点水］must be written first and foremost before the component is ever written.
Woo you're a leftie :-). I've really struggled with making nicely formed characters with my left hand, but I think it's really helped with retention.
Bruce Jefferies we are geniuses.... apparently ;)
I think that when you learn new characters you should learn how to write them, then you can learn them better. and while you may not remember how to write them in 3 months, you will recognize them, and be able to type them through pinyin on the computer or phone.
I write them over and over again, a few days pass, then I write them down again. I've made flashcards as well, both handwritten and on Anki. However, I don't know what I'll do when I have many characters under my belt. It'll take me a lot of time to review them. Lol
is it a good idea to can write only hsk1 words? and learn to read characters above hsk1 (with flashcards)?
That's awesome! l really want to learn Japanese.
go for it!
Awesome video! Encourages me to not be so lazy and pathetic about getting a pen to paper!May I ask what the book that you have is called? How are you finding it when it comes to helping you learn the language?Looking forward to your reply!
Thank you for showing how to write characters in mandarin Chinese ever made other question is this how do you wait Harry Potter and the sorcerer‘s stone and iPhone in Mandarin Chinese
Hi it's me again. Just wanna remind you that the first stroke of word “向” is to the left, not like a dot in the middle. And btw are you going to learn some vocabulary that consist of two or even four characters and sentence structures after you learn all these characters in the book?
Belle Leung thanks for the reminder. Yes - I'll talk more about that in future videos.
Search up the wubi keyboard, though im not sure about using it with traditional characters. It basically has a group of strokes designated to each key and you type words by typing a combination of 1 to 4 keys. It seems very interesting and when I start learning chinese, I want to start typing with a wubi keyboard right away. Also, what type of notebook are you using because I would like one of those to help with my Japanese writing.
NaTs24 I had a friend bring it from HK, but you can google a template and print it off
Do you know the name of the type of book or the name of the book itself because I want to buy a few.
chinesewritingpaper.com/paper
thanks!
can you please trll me what is the name of this book ? i m thinking of learning chinese too ,, thank you , keep it up !
Remembering the Hanzi, by Heizig. Good luck!
I noticed your stroke orders are correct and I think that's important. IMO, the proper stroke order guides the character and allow the character to be in proportion. I tried not to follow the order and the characters didn't turn out good. They are still correct just not beautiful.
Writing with proper stroke order is mainly important because that's how they're usually indexed in dictionaries, and when Chinese people write, they simplify them down and if you don't know you're stroke order, you've got no hope of undrestanding what was written.
There's also the benefit of efficiency as once you've written a component or character enough times, the process of writing it becomes very fluid and efficient.
Neatness and prettiness, mostly come from placing care and attention in writing.
Everyone learns stroke order nowadays, me too (and radicals) but it's mainly to torture students and make them used to obey order. Older people don't use the same stroke order, and in cursive or fast writing you also need to change the stroke order to be able to speed up writing.
Muscle memory is a benefit that has been discussed in several studies; see the references cited in the Language Learning Stack Exchange question at languagelearning.stackexchange.com/questions/2029/does-learning-the-stroke-order-in-chinese-help-with-learning-that-language.
You did not make clear if you had ever lernt to write kanji when you had been learning japanese ?
Guess it can help a lot for hanzis.
Lefties unite! 😊 On a serious note I really want to know how to write Chinese but I'm so stuck on whether to learn simplified or traditional? This is crazy 😟😟😟
You should try using paper with grids in the squares
Bruce Jefferies yeah... I have a PDF with grid squares, just need to print them off!
Olly Richards Also, make sure you are imitating 'handwritten' characters when you write, not printed or calligraphic ones. There are some differences in the strokes and the proportions of the characters.
Bruce Jefferies yes... super important and confusing!!!
What is that text book called?
Remembering the Simplified/Traditional Hanzi
The only way I can truly learn a character is by writing it. I could see the character one hundred times but I need to write it hundred times before it sticks.
That's what I'm finding
I noticed that you are left handed!
I noticed it too. Left-handed people are very talented by the way. Just my observation.
what's the difference between practice and practise?
Ferinoification In British English, practice is a noun, practise is a verb. In American English both are spelt the same.
obrigado Olly!😉
Practice is the noun of the verb practise e.g. A doctor's medical practice is the place where he or she practises medicine.
which is this book pls
Remembering the Hanzi
So... two years later... how has your handwriting progressed?
Olly, do you know to talk japanese? if yes, does a video talking japanese.
dahaha thank you!
Writing is a good way to help you to remember the characters. But getting to the point where you can write from memory will take a very very long time, I feel like it's hardly worth it. I like the advice about learning Chinese is this order. 1. Understand, 2. Speak, 3. Read, 4. Write
inChinaXP the question is... can you learn to read without writing as well? As I said in the video, recognition isn't enough. The act of writing helps you solidify the characters in your mind.
Yes you can because recognising characters and being able to write them are two different things. I can read a fair amount of Chinese yet I'm only able to hand write a few basic characters. Writing serves as a good method to help you remember the character but that doesn't mean that a week after you have learnt to recognise that character you will still remember how to write it. This is my experience.
Recognition isn't really enough, but you don't necessarily have to write the characters out regularly. The main reasons to write them out are to practice penmanship or during revision to keep yourself honest.
If you want to write more than that, good for you, but you may find that mentally writing out the characters is a valuable exercise as well. It's also nice because you can do that even when you don't have the option of writing.
Anybody traveling within China will benefit a huge amount from being able to handwrite at least some important characters. I'm not sure about Taiwan or Singapore, but Hong Kong, it seemed to be somewhat less important most of the time.
Same here, it takes too much time. I started hand-writing the first few hundred, but my goal now is to learn to read as quickly as possible.
You're left handed!
a linguist doing the "obviously" nonsense
shame