
Learn to read a sentence of Chinese in 3 minutes - bmj1
http://blog.memrise.com/2011/11/learn-to-read-a-sentence-of-chinese-in-3-minutes.html
======
westiseast
it's good - Chinese has an extremely steep initial learning curve, and this
would be a good start. I also think the methods are sound (ie. mixing the word
in, substitution, the way the actual tool tests you).

<pedantry> It does feel very limited. I think you'd outgrow this in a couple
of weeks TBH.

For example, this article gives 子 as one of the first characters, and says it
means "child". It does, but it also doesn't. On its own it is purely
conceptual, and only has meaning combined with other characters. If you said
"my 子 is 4" then that makes no sense. It can mean bullet (子弹), atom (原子), son
(儿子), or a generic "thing" measure word (eg. 骗子, conman).

An early learner doesn't need to know the word for 'bullet' or 'atom', but
it's not good either to tell them that "子" means child and then they think
they can say "child" in Chinese. What's the parallel in English? It's like
teaching you "pre-" and saying that means "early", and then you run around
saying "He arrived pre-". Why not just teach the word for child (孩子) and then
substitute that? Then you learn to recognise _meaningful words_ and not
_conceptual characters_ , which is actually the key skill in reading Chinese.

You have to start somewhere, but I wish that more Chinese learning tools/books
used modern learning methods like these, but with better linguistic accuracy.
</pedantry>

~~~
klodolph
Extending this farther, I'd say everything you read or listen to in a foreign
language should be in some kind of context, the richer the better. Reading
characters outside of their context in words is pretty useless, but reading
words outside of sentences isn't that much better, and sentences can be pretty
awful by themselves.

For example, in English: "Do you have any paper towels?" What does the
sentence mean?

Context #1: At a supermarket, talking to a clerk. The sentence means, "Please
direct me to the cleaning supplies."

Context #2: At a friend's house, after I spill soda on the floor. The sentence
means, "Please give me some cleaning supplies."

Context #3: A friend asked me to help pack for a camping trip, and we're going
over the list of what's packed. The sentence means, "I suggest packing
cleaning supplies."

Context #4: A friend spilled spilled soda on someone else's rug, but is
unconcerned. The sentence means, "You should clean that up."

Exercise: Come up with a context where the sentence has its literal meaning,
"do you have any paper towels?"

Pragmatics (as above) are a pretty extreme example, but even fairly plain
descriptive sentences can be indecipherable without context. E.g., in Japanese
「本を貸してくれた。」 you know that somebody lent someone else a book and that the
speaker somehow benefited from this action, or perhaps feels grateful. It
probably very clear in context, but you have to practice reading it with the
context.

And this is why flash cards suck (not that they're useless...)

~~~
westiseast
exactly. Actually, the Memrise thing would have been better if they _had_
actually put it in context, ie.:

"My 孩子 is very naughty"

------
aidos
I've always wondered what would happen if you read a big book (like Lord of
the Rings) that was translated progressively into another language. So it
starts in, say, English and finishes in Spanish. At the start the sentence
structure could even be in Spanish form (word ordering-wise) and words are
progressively switched to Spanish as the book goes on.

Probably wouldn't work at all but it'd be an interesting experiment.

~~~
tomjen3
It would. Not necessarily with a book like that because fantasy tends to have
way, way more difficult worlds than ordinary writings. I am not a native
english speaker, but I am working my way through A song of Ice and Fire as an
audio book.

I can keep up with ordinary podcasts just fine, I can keep up with television
shows for the most part (extremly heavy accents can be a problem) but I
really, really have to listen to the words carefully.

I do believe you would be better of with a book that wasn't written as well.
Atlas Shrugged would be pretty awesome for this precisely because it has so
many repetitions.

~~~
aidos
Ha, yeah, I was just trying to think of a long book. I tried reading Harry
Potter in Portuguese once upon a time - quickly learnt that fantasy novels are
a hard way to learn a language.

~~~
tomjen3
The only thing you could choose that is worse would be Shakespeare. I did read
one of his stories, but only because I got edition where I could look up
almost all the words in a little handy dictionary in the back.

------
eric-hu
I grew up in a Mandarin speaking household failing to learn Chinese when my
parents tried forcing me to. I forced myself to learn in college for personal
reasons. Oftentimes, this was hard, really hard.

Having said all that, this page was quite a joy to read. I know all those
characters, and the page has one big flaw for learning these characters--the
pronunciation. Nevertheless, it was a fantastic way to express the meaning of
these characters.

If anything, I'd say that it captures the essence of Chinese characters--
building up new meaning blocks by compounding basic pictographs together. This
is the premise of the Chinese 'radical' system--radicals are the subcomponents
of characters like the "child" and "female" characters that comprise "good".

Developer aside: the majority of written Chinese is comprised of about 1000 or
so radicals. This may seem like a lot, but having learned enough to recognize
them has helped me even in development--I feel like I learn hotkeys, plugins
and VIM commands a lot faster than my coworkers because I forced myself to
learn how to memorize.

~~~
gliese1337
The lack of pronunciation information doesn't seem to me like a flaw; it's
just not what they were trying to teach. After all, Chinese uses semantic
logographs, not phonetic representations, and lots of different spoken
languages use the same Chinese writing system (thus a Shanghainese speaker can
exchange letters with a Mandarin speaker despite difficulty actually
conversing). Unlike learning to read, write, and speak English, or Russian, or
Hindi (e.g.), learning to read Chinese and learning to speak some specific
dialect of Chinese are much more distinct tasks, and this is tackling only one
of them.

~~~
eric-hu
But there are phonetic similarities with characters that share the same right-
radical. I can honestly say that many intermediate-level characters were
easier for me to learn because I knew 2 things: they followed the pattern of
symbolic-radical on the left and pronunciation-radical on the right. Learning
the pronunciation can help learning to read characters as well.

------
jiyinyiyong
You will be confused when there are much more characters to learn. It's not a
general rule to learn characters like this. Even Chinese characters might be
invented like this 2000+ years ago, the shape of them haved changed for
several times. The meaning of most characters cannot be judged by its share.

Reading posts on Chinese forums( ruby-china.org , zhihu.com , douban.com ,
weibo.com ) I think would be benefit, the phrases and sentences used
frequently in daily life are always better for people who are still learning,
comparing to novels or something like that which contains many language
skills. Ancient Chinese is not a good choice, it's a bit hard for a big part
of us to read, Though many articles in acient Chinese was teached in school,
it is rarely used during conversations. (Like Haskell, it's great but not
widely used.) And I speaks Chinese well, I'm worrying about how to learn
English well.

~~~
creamyhorror
Actually, there are a few books that teach characters through mnemonics like
this, going through the first 1-2,000 characters. (The mnemonics don't need to
be correct - they simply need to give the right general meaning for that
character.) Quite a number of learners have already used these systems to
learn characters.

Learners don't rely purely on this to read - absolutely not. They learn
reading and grammar separately, usually starting with everyday conversations
and words. This is merely the initial base to develop a knowledge of
characters quickly, and I definitely think it's helpful (though I studied
Chinese in school and haven't needed to use this mnemonic approach).

（难得见到一位中国程序员在HN发帖。）

~~~
vorg
Learning the first 1000 Chinese characters are the easiest. Moving from 1000
to 3000 characters is really hard. The first 1000 we reinforce seeing street
signs when walking along the road, words in the menus, the newspaper
headlines, subtitles on TV shows. But beyond that, we don't see the remaining
2000 in contexts often enough, and need to use flashcards and other more
artificial methods to learn them.

------
CitizenKane
This article unintentionally highlights one of the difficulties in learning
Chinese characters, that understanding them and reading them (in Chinese) are
two completely different things. While understanding the meaning (Chinese
characters are fun to learn!) isn't too difficult, getting to how it would
truly be read is more tricky (the Pinyin for Mandarin being hàn zì hǎo xué).

------
tokenadult
This is unintentionally an illustration of how LOUSY general (all-languages-
included) materials for language-learning are. I am a native speaker of
English who acquired Chinese as a second language at adult age during the late
1970s and early 1980s, gaining professional work as second-language teacher
(Chinese for English speakers and English for Chinese speakers) and translator
and interpreter. I don't like Rosetta Stone materials (as I have seen earlier
editions of those) for the same reason that I don't like this Memrise lesson:
the lesson is based on frameworks of learning Spanish or French for English
speakers, and the lesson doesn't work nearly as well for Chinese, a non-Indo-
European language.

The astute criticism already given in another comment has full force--the
lesson here doesn't do a thing to teach a reader how to pronounce Chinese.
Moreover, the lesson totally muffs up Chinese grammar, because "汉字好学" is not a
"condensed form" of an expression that would include a copula verb in Chinese
such as "汉字 [form of verb 'to be'] 好学" but rather the sole grammatical way to
convey the idea in Chinese. Chinese grammar prefers stative verbs to
combinations of copulas and adjectives. The word and character etymologies are
also treated abominably poorly in the Memrise story. I never advocate filling
one's mind with junk just to have memory hooks for learning new information.

This approach doesn't lay a good foundation for successful learning of Chinese
by a native speaker of English. The tried and true textbooks by the late John
DeFrancis from Yale University Press and their accompanying audio recordings
reflect an older period of standard northern Mandarin, but are much better
resources for learning Chinese than Memrise. Especially, DeFrancis's Beginning
Chinese Reader is still the royal road for learning to read Chinese, the
subject of the article kindly submitted here. DeFrancis made a very careful
analysis of reading difficulties second-language learners of Chinese
encounter. That is published in condensed form in the front part of Beginning
Chinese Reader, and in full form in the classic article "Why Johnny Can't Read
Chinese" in the Journal of the Chinese Language Teachers Association.

As Confucius said, 學而時習之 不亦說乎, so there is no substitute for practice in
language learning. Language learning is overlearning, and learning languages
well takes time.

AFTER EDIT:

Two kind replies below raise questions about what I've written above. I was
asked about James Heisig. I have perused his books about Japanese (another
language I have studied, not as much as Chinese). Doing some looking-up just
now to answer the question, I would say that the James Heisig interview

[http://www.japanvisitor.com/index.php?cID=419&pID=1979](http://www.japanvisitor.com/index.php?cID=419&pID=1979)

gives, in Heisig's own words, cautions about using his texts as a
comprehensive approach for learning literacy in Japanese. For memory aids for
Chinese characters, I much prefer Grammata Serica Recensa by Bernhard
Karlgren, a less popular but much more accurate reference book.

On the issue of "royal roads" to language learning, I am aware of the work of
the Foreign Service language program and of its frequent failings. United
States diplomats sometimes attain amazing success in learning languages--I met
one once who was the best non-native speaker of Mandarin I have ever met, and
who apologized for his Mandarin while saying that Lao is his stronger foreign
language--but many United States diplomats are hobbled in their work by poor
command of the relevant languages, which plays little role in the selection
process for United States diplomats. I'm very respectful of differences among
learners and agree with Israel Gelfand that "Students have no shortcomings,
they have only peculiarities. The job of a teacher is to turn these
peculiarities into advantages." That said, there is an irreducible body of
fact in any new subject that each learner has to learn somehow, one hopes with
the guidance of a good teacher. The late John DeFrancis was a very good
teacher indeed of Chinese, and by validated test, most of the best readers of
Chinese as a second language in my generation came into their reading ability
with help from his textbook series. The approach taken by Beginning Chinese
Reader is certainly better than that taken by the James Heisig popular books
on Japanese, if I may say that to tie together the two kind comments.

~~~
Wilfred
> The word and character etymologies are also treated abominably poorly in the
> Memrise story. I never advocate filling one's mind with junk just to have
> memory hooks for learning new information.

Etymology is a complex and often convoluted topic, particularly for a language
learner who may not be able to understand etymological information in the
target language. Do you think there's no value at all in simplified memory
aids, such as James Heisig's approach?

~~~
klodolph
Dammit, I stumbled across what looked like a master's or PhD thesis comparing
Heisig's approach to others, quantitatively. I didn't read it even though I
knew I wanted to. Mental note to find it again.

But if you want to be proficient, you have to be able to read words as a chunk
with associated meaning and pronunciation, without the intermediate mnemonic
device. So at best it's something you'd want to forget, and at worst it's
something that you wouldn't want to learn in the first place.

~~~
gregdetre
I'd be totally fascinated to hear about this if you ever find it! I'm greg at
memrise dot com.

There's lots of evidence to show that mnemonics boost recollection by a factor
or three or so across a wide range of domains, abilities and time ranges. See
e.g. <http://www.unforgettablelanguages.com/studies.html>

Re the intermediate mnemonic device, here's the way I picture things. The
mnemonic provides training wheels for your brain, helping you get the answer
right a few times. Then, after enough correct responses, mediated by this
(hippocampal) mnemonic representation, you rely less and less on the training
wheels, and your cortex has had a chance to form a longer-lasting and more
direct semantic link.

Disclosure: I'm one of the co-founders of Memrise, so it's not too surprising
that I think there's merit in this approach :) Drop me a line or reply here,
and I can try and follow up in more detail. Maybe I should write a blog
post...

~~~
aidenn0
Training wheels is actually a good metaphor, since whether or not one should
use training wheels for learning to ride a bike is also fairly hotly debated.

~~~
batista
_> since whether or not one should use training wheels for learning to ride a
bike is also fairly hotly debated._

Really? By who? Because sure as hell training wheels worked wonders for
millions of kids worldwide...

------
tapiwa
Almost reminds me of the Lingua Latina method I used to learn Latin.

You basically read a text that is totally in Latin, with occasional images to
guide you.

It starts off very simply, and gradually introduces new vocabulary and
grammar. You intuitively learn as you go along.

The books are out of print, but you can still get them on Amazon.
[http://www.amazon.com/Lingua-Latina-Pars-Familia-
Romana/dp/1...](http://www.amazon.com/Lingua-Latina-Pars-Familia-
Romana/dp/1585102385)

~~~
tylee78
Yes, was going to mention it too. It's incredible and works so well... It's
basically a khan academy for Latin and a shame not more people know about it.
Definitely the way to go if you want to learn Latin the way a roman child
learned it :-)

------
naush
字学 is the kind of confusion you run into only when you learn simplified
Chinese. If I have to interpret 学, it looks more to me like a person sitting
in a house on fire; whereas the traditional form 學 is a man holding 爻 in his
hands in order to learn his fate, hence "learn". Similarly, 覺 is one who sees
(見) his fate. Chinese characters are created with all sorts of clues for you
to pick up. It is unfortunate that some of these clues got taken away with the
simplification of the language. 學 is not only more distinguishable than 学, but
takes the same amount of effort to type.

~~~
cloudkj
Well put; I share the same sentiment. I feel that one of the strongest
arguments for traditional characters is that it retains the original meanings
behind the characters themselves. Simplifying the characters just throws
information away. It's a lossy compression!

------
raldi
The amount of rage in these HN comments makes me think MemRise must really be
onto something.

------
stephenlee
I'm from China, I think the method for familiar with Chinese characters is
creative and useful. But if you want to learn the real Chinese, the most
effective method is using it. I often watch the video on Youtube and make
tweets on Twitter. And I'm benefit from it for my English. So you can
communicate with Chinese people on Youku(like Youtube) and Weibo(like Twitter)
directly, though those websites' designs are not so friendly. We're pleasure
to communicate with you.

~~~
wickedchicken
A while back I tried signing up for some Chinese BBSes to practice my written
mandarin (I believe I tried mop.com and 163) and I found it _utterly_
impossible to figure out what to do. I was expecting something similar to
reddit, HN or traditional phpBB sites and it was nothing like that at all. Do
you know some sites that might be easier to figure out?

~~~
v-yadli
I would suggest <http://www.douban.com/> Much cleaner user interface (just
forget about mop.com or 163.com, those are ancient sites...) Better content,
people discuss about books, movies, music and much more(you can try "groups",
there're so many with a wide range of topics) And www.guokr.cn -- Geek topics
goes here. :-D

~~~
stephenlee
Yeah, I also suggest douban,Very clean design website.

------
VeejayRampay
With all the respect in the world for the great nation of China, I keep
wondering why people would learn Mandarin. I mean, isn't it time we all go for
a common alphabet and language? I'm French, I quite fancy my language, the
culture around it and its sophistication, but it's about time we all focus on
English. Let's make it as ubiquitous as possible, please. It's just so simple,
flexible and expressive...

~~~
splat
If we're after a common language, why not Esperanto? It's simpler than English
and certainly simpler than Mandarin.

~~~
VeejayRampay
Esperanto has a huge bias towards latin-based languages. It's FAR from being
universal.

------
stralep
I have been using their service for Spanish for almost a year... Really useful
for expanding your wordlist.

------
nemo1618
Memrise is pretty cool, I've been using it to learn the lojban gismu and it
seems quite effective so far.

------
Produce
Started losing me at: 学 字 - creative teaching & boring teaching, I don't
understand how those two stack and what they mean in unison. The last
paragraph lost me completely.

~~~
alanning
I was disappointed with that section as well. Thought it could have been
written clearer to differentiate the two.

学 - study

字 - character

So the author actually meant boring teaching of 'characters' with the section
on 字 but I don't think it came across well.

~~~
elliotlai
In my point of view, as a native Traditional Chinese user (I'm from Taiwan)

THIS ARTICLE IS SO WRONG!

学 is actually the simplified version of the character 學. And the character 子
in both of these characters doesn't really have much connections

The character 子 (literally means children) in 學 stands for "student", but in 字
it is just a rebus (phonetic loan) character.

------
tomjen3
That was an interesting idea. To bad it I nearly couldn't finish it because of
all the bigotry.

~~~
PommeDeTerre
Lighten up. You shouldn't be getting offended by something as minor as what's
in that article.

~~~
tomjen3
If they had been making the same claims against women would you also dismiss
it?

------
adlep
I am Polish, but I am convinced that we as a human kind should just pick one
language and stick with it. All these languages are there to prevent us from
freely exchanging the ideas. With the age of the Internet all of us should
just start using English.

------
nirvana
This didn't work for me at all. I think telling a story like that is good, but
you gotta tell us what the characters are/mean at some point. You can't just
start using them an expect us to get it. At this point I think the character
for children is one, the character for characters is children with a roof and
the character for learning is an excited child with a roof. I don't know if
this is correct or not because the sentence "thus X means Y" doesn't appear
before X started getting used... when you have 3 uncertainties in my head,
then I stop reading because its hard to know what you're talking about because
there's too much you haven't answered, and I don't expect you'll get more
clear as I go further.

