As a chinese native speaker, i would suggest that there's no need put too much effort practicing writing the charaters, since you can type them easily in pinyin, people here in China often "forget how to write the character the moment picking up the pen" so it's not a big deal, BUT it's definitely essential to recognize and read the characters because of the reason given in the video
Bro! I can really see your passion learning Chinese. I watched the whole video even if i don't know a thing or two about the language 😂. Good luck to your journey! I remember when we met half a year a go, you only knew the basic stuff. I'm surprised how far you've been. And I'm excited what will be your progress in the near future! I am so proud! and I'm sure she is proud too!
To any learners out there, don’t be scared of learning to read! It’s actually easier that you expect. With exposure, you will naturally start remembering characters. Learning the characters helps you differentiate between vocabulary that sound exactly the same too. The thing you can feasibly disregard (if you’re not planning to work/study in China) is writing. Because, these days, the need to write by hand is next to never and most Chinese people begin to forget how to write properly after completing education anyways. Not saying it’s ideal, but reading is definitely a lot more important than writing.
While useful in the beginning, I soon found pinyin to be a hindrance. Certain reading materials had pinyin underneath the characters and it was hard for me to stop relying on it as a pronunciation reference. Written Chinese also lacks punctuation in places where I'd expect it to appear in English. This means that I sometimes have to re-read a sentence several times before I understand its meaning. Another thing I find challenging is when compound words are separated within a sentence--which, again, initially makes it hard for me to follow. An example might be the word 当面 which means 'face to face' in the sentence 他回到他住的小房子里，弄了点儿水和沙子，放在一个杯子里，当着村里人的面对着水说了些连他自己听不懂的话，然后给病人喝下去。
Anki the HSK word-lists, read graded readers, read HSK textbooks and write out the first 600 or so characters a few time each then forget about writing until much later. Writing the first few hundred helps you recognise character components, and also the strokes so you can use a dictionary better. As a beginner your focus should be primarily on listening, then words, and being able to recognise the characters for those words
I think it is key to know the Chinese characters. You don't need to write them, but recognizing them is vital. They are super helpful, as they give you context in situations where words may sound the same or be similar, and sometimes they can also give you hints on how a character is pronounced and its meaning. Having to learn characters may be something that seems different from learning other languages with alphabets, as you will usually have to use spaced repetition learning so you don't forget them (I recommend Anki). But I think it is convenient in the end, as it provides structure to your learning:)
Actually I would recommend to ignore Chinese characters and PinYin all together at the beginning stage and focus on listening only! Watch/listen to a lot of Comprehensible Input in Chinese. When we Chinese natives started learning Chinese characters/PinYin, we were speaking Chinese fluently for years already. Start reading/writing too early will unavoidably give you some bad pronunciation/accent (you would read the Chinese subconsciously with the incorrect pronunciation/tone guaranteed). If you can find native Chinese speakers to crosstalk with, that will be the best approach.
In my case, I've been learning Mandarin for two years, more or less seriously, and actually I know around two thousand Hanzi, but I cannot listen Mandarin properly. I took calligraphy classes and besides, I love new writing systems and now a lot of them. For example, I can read devanagari or hangeul, but I don't speak Hindi, Korean, Sanskrit... I have a huge problem now, because I can read in Chinese, even in Cantonese sometimes, but listen is too difficult. I'm increasing, but it spends a lot of more time. When other people speak about how difficult Hanzi are, I just can think about how more difficult learn Mandarin is, gathering Hanzi and the hard phonology. This is the fourth language that I'm learning. I can speak Portuguese (native), English, German and Mandarin. Maybe, awkwardly, I speak Mandarin better than a listen. It's strange. It happens due to the huge amount of synonyms in Mandarin. Of course, perfect synonyms are not true. In my experience, I learned that listen a lot is much more important. I don't now, but for me, Hanzi is a kind of memory hack. I can remember a lot of strange thinks with easy-to-catch Hanzi. 凹凸 are two Hanzi that follow this.
As a chinese native speaker, i would suggest that there's no need put too much effort practicing writing the charaters, since you can type them easily in pinyin, people here in China often "forget how to write the character the moment picking up the pen" so it's not a big deal, BUT it's definitely essential to recognize and read the characters because of the reason given in the video
Agreed, the average Chinese person only knows about 4000 characters and am educated person knows about 6000.
Bro! I can really see your passion learning Chinese. I watched the whole video even if i don't know a thing or two about the language 😂. Good luck to your journey! I remember when we met half a year a go, you only knew the basic stuff. I'm surprised how far you've been. And I'm excited what will be your progress in the near future! I am so proud! and I'm sure she is proud too!
dictation exercise （听写） indeed was the way we used to learn the characters. Bit by bit you will master it! 加油
This is great! I've been wondering if you would jump into an East Asian Language and you do not disappoint!
To any learners out there, don’t be scared of learning to read! It’s actually easier that you expect. With exposure, you will naturally start remembering characters. Learning the characters helps you differentiate between vocabulary that sound exactly the same too. The thing you can feasibly disregard (if you’re not planning to work/study in China) is writing. Because, these days, the need to write by hand is next to never and most Chinese people begin to forget how to write properly after completing education anyways. Not saying it’s ideal, but reading is definitely a lot more important than writing.
While useful in the beginning, I soon found pinyin to be a hindrance. Certain reading materials had pinyin underneath the characters and it was hard for me to stop relying on it as a pronunciation reference. Written Chinese also lacks punctuation in places where I'd expect it to appear in English. This means that I sometimes have to re-read a sentence several times before I understand its meaning. Another thing I find challenging is when compound words are separated within a sentence--which, again, initially makes it hard for me to follow. An example might be the word 当面 which means 'face to face' in the sentence 他回到他住的小房子里，弄了点儿水和沙子，放在一个杯子里，当着村里人的面对着水说了些连他自己听不懂的话，然后给病人喝下去。
Anki the HSK word-lists, read graded readers, read HSK textbooks and write out the first 600 or so characters a few time each then forget about writing until much later.
Writing the first few hundred helps you recognise character components, and also the strokes so you can use a dictionary better.
As a beginner your focus should be primarily on listening, then words, and being able to recognise the characters for those words
Use the book "Remembering the Hanzi" and Anki. You only need to be able to read.
I think it is key to know the Chinese characters. You don't need to write them, but recognizing them is vital. They are super helpful, as they give you context in situations where words may sound the same or be similar, and sometimes they can also give you hints on how a character is pronounced and its meaning.
Having to learn characters may be something that seems different from learning other languages with alphabets, as you will usually have to use spaced repetition learning so you don't forget them (I recommend Anki). But I think it is convenient in the end, as it provides structure to your learning:)
Actually I would recommend to ignore Chinese characters and PinYin all together at the beginning stage and focus on listening only! Watch/listen to a lot of Comprehensible Input in Chinese. When we Chinese natives started learning Chinese characters/PinYin, we were speaking Chinese fluently for years already. Start reading/writing too early will unavoidably give you some bad pronunciation/accent (you would read the Chinese subconsciously with the incorrect pronunciation/tone guaranteed).
If you can find native Chinese speakers to crosstalk with, that will be the best approach.
In my case, I've been learning Mandarin for two years, more or less seriously, and actually I know around two thousand Hanzi, but I cannot listen Mandarin properly. I took calligraphy classes and besides, I love new writing systems and now a lot of them. For example, I can read devanagari or hangeul, but I don't speak Hindi, Korean, Sanskrit... I have a huge problem now, because I can read in Chinese, even in Cantonese sometimes, but listen is too difficult. I'm increasing, but it spends a lot of more time. When other people speak about how difficult Hanzi are, I just can think about how more difficult learn Mandarin is, gathering Hanzi and the hard phonology. This is the fourth language that I'm learning. I can speak Portuguese (native), English, German and Mandarin. Maybe, awkwardly, I speak Mandarin better than a listen. It's strange. It happens due to the huge amount of synonyms in Mandarin. Of course, perfect synonyms are not true. In my experience, I learned that listen a lot is much more important. I don't now, but for me, Hanzi is a kind of memory hack. I can remember a lot of strange thinks with easy-to-catch Hanzi. 凹凸 are two Hanzi that follow this.
How come the Chinese can learn to speak, listen and write at the same time and others cannot?
They don’t. They learn to speak fluently before even beginning to learn to read and write, just like… every other language in the world.
Zuì hâo de bànfâ shì, xiān yòng pīnyīn xuéhuìle Hànyû, ránhòu zài xué hànzì. Bùyào ràng hànzì tuōle nî de hòutuî, shî nî de qiánjìn bùfá biàn dé chíhuân, shènzhì wàng'érshēngwèi, guôzú-bùqián.
Nî shì duì de, nî dāngchū de xiângfâ cái shì duì de.
I want share that mistake with you so you don't do the same thing.