#hanzi study

[rigelmejo]

Beginner Resources: Studying Hanzi

Are you starting to learn Chinese? Are you trying to figure out how to approach studying hanzi?

First, I would suggest you read some short article that explains radicals in hanzi. Those are the components that 'spell' the hanzi character, there's not very many, and they can often help you guess the meaning or pronunciation of a hanzi you run into. Here is a list of Chinese radicals on Berlitz.com so you can get some familiarity with what they look like, their pronunciation, meaning, and some example hanzi that have those radicals. This Chinese Character Radicals wikipedia article explains how radicals can sometimes contribute a meaning or sound to the hanzi. I suggest reading through both of these articles fully, and saving them to reference later. You do not need to memorize, or spend more than a couple hours reading these. Just having a basic familiarity with what radicals are, and what they contribute to a hanzi, will be helpful as you learn hanzi.

For Chinese beginners, this is still absolutely my favorite study resource for learning hanzi. The book teaches 800 common hanzi, from HSK 1-3, and it uses mnemonic stories it provides you (so you don't have to come up with stories on your own - unlike Heisig) to teach meanings and pronunciation and tone. After studying this book, it's achievable to keep using the same kind of mnemonic story strategy used in this book to keep learning hanzi on your own. That's what I did. This book got me from 0 hanzi knowledge, to enough to read graded readers (I read Mandarin Companion and graded readers sold on Pleco app), and then from there I'd picked up enough additional hanzi to start reading the Newcomer/Beginner stories suggested on Heavenly Path Notion Site's recommendations. (I jumped into reading harder stuff way faster than I perhaps should have, and eventually went back and read some of the Newcomer/Beginner stuff Heavenly Path recommends such as TuTu DaWang 禿禿大王).

Learning Chinese Characters: (HSK Levels 1-3) A Revolutionary New Way to Learn the 800 Most Basic Chinese Characters; Includes All Characters for the AP & HSK 1-3 Exams

There is also an anki deck, with mnemonic stories provided, to keep studying hanzi if that method works well for you and you need a little more aid for a while before moving onto learning hanzi entirely on your own. This is the anki deck I used for around ~500 hanzi when I was trying to speed up my hanzi recognition, since I jumped into reading BL webnovels pretty fast (faster than I probably should have lol): Mnemonics - 3018 Simplified Chinese Hanzi

There is also a traditional version of that anki deck: Mnemonics - 3035 Traditional Chinese Hanzi

[yeoubbi]

suggestions and advice on how to remember and memorize characters? it's the part I'm finding the most difficult

i struggle w this too rn bc of the pace my professor has been going at. if you dont have a practice workbook i def recommend those bc they show the stroke order and just give space for you to write repetitively. otherwise just try and write sentences using the characters/words you know or generally practice writing/reading as much as possible.

i like skritter a lot for practicing characters or learning new vocabulary related to things im actually interested in and would talk about in real life rather than a lot of the stuff ill learn in class.

because of the lack of alphabet a lot of people (me included) tend to rely heavily on pinyin but since ive started learning zhuyin i’ve definitely felt it helps. not having romanization means i have to actually try and cant just fall back and give up like i would if something was shown only in characters + pinyin.

i specifically like using my ipad or an external monitor when im studying characters so i can blow up the characters and look at them like an image rather than a letter (im learning traditional these little things have so many strokes i like to make sure i can see/recognize all of them) then also i feel like it stays better as a visual in my brain.

im still taking elementary level mandarin so realistically i dont know all that much, only what ive been trying and what works for me if anyone else has tips pls feel free to reply

[loveasianlangauges]

My first post on this studyblr! Today's Hanzi of the day is love, could it be more beautiful!

I hope you enjoy it! Support my work here: Buy Love Asian Languages a Coffee. ko-fi.com/loveasianlanguages - Ko-fi ❤️ Where creators get support from fans through donations, memberships, shop sales and more! The original 'Buy Me a Coffee' Page. and follow me on IG!

[indigostudies]

thinking about maybe starting studying korean since it's got a ton of resources online that would make it easier for me to pick up.

[xiaotoda]

今天我学了这个：

汉字：耳；闻；联；系； 女 (225/3050)

词汇：关系 ； 联系；女人；美女；女儿

[profic-mafuyu]

:)

[mandarinmoon]

how i'm studying mandarin (in 2024)

as a low-maintenance language learner working a 9-6 office job, i've been muddling around how to improve my mandarin in my free time and keep it fun! And I've found what works for me (thanks to a lot of lurking on here - appreciate all you mandarin langblrs <3), so wanted to share :)

Evening lessons (or italki) - Self studying is great but I do need a kick up the ass sometimes, so these really help. Plus my teacher is great at giving tips here and there which I probably wouldn't pick up on on my own.

ChinesePod - Their podcasts are really well made and accessible, I can't recommend them enough!

HelloChinese - This is my 'I'm bored waiting for my train/bus but I still want to learn Chinese' option that isn't Duolingo. It's not perfect but it has fairly good grammar explanations and native listening segments. You do have to pay a subscription if you're over HSK1 level FYI.

I am an anki hater first and foremost, so here's the vocab learning / dictionary tools I use instead:

TofuLearn - It's straightforward, uses spaced repetition learning AND teaches you stroke order - so ticks all my boxes. Picked it up due to @marilearnsmandarin's posts about it!

Pleco - Obviously, everyone has it downloaded for a reason.

Yabla Chinese Dictionary - Not seen this one talked about so much, but would recommend! It sometimes has video examples of the hanzi in use, which I find helpful.

A big goal for me this year is to consume mandarin content more regularly! It's all well and good watching Peppa Pig, but I need something that I actively want to engage with:

Bilibili Comics - Currently reading 肉店楼上的工作室 and able to understand a fair chunk, so would recommend as a "easier" option.

Mandopop - Not sure how much I'm picking up from listening, especially at my level, but it's fun to jam out to some good tunes. Faves include TIA RAY, Song Qian, Lexie Liu, No Party for Cao Dong & Shi Shi.

Dramas/Movies - Modern chinese dramas are a lot more hit-or-miss for me, especially compared to historical/fantasy. Recent faves include Accidentally in Love & Stay with Me (on Netflix/Viki). Currently watching Reset :) Any other recs, please send my way!

YouTube - I have a separate YT account just to follow Taiwanese/Chinese creators - it takes a bit of searching but you can find some great youtubers who talk about whatever hobby you're into (whether that's cute golden retriever vlogs, travel vlogs or reading vlogs!)

[marilearnsmandarin]

These are the apps and links I currently have on my phone to study Chinese:

SuperChinese: my main study resource. There are currently 7 levels, level 7 (still incomplete, they are still slowly adding lessons to it) being HSK 5 stuff. Each lesson has vocabulary, grammar and a short dialogue where those are used in context (I love context). It has a few free lessons in the lower levels but after that you have to buy a subscription. There are many sales though. When I was a beginner I used HelloChinese instead, which has more free content, and switched to SuperChinese when I finished all the free content there. It also has social network features and chat rooms I don't use.

TofuLearn is like a flashcard app with many pre-made decks (you can also create your own on their website and import decks from Anki) and the option to practice writing hanzi. Anki didn't work for me, but I find Tofu very helpful. Practicing writing helps me with character recognition, and it also helps me remember the tones thanks to the audio in the pre-made HSK decks.

Dot is a reading app with new texts being added every day. It used to be completely free, which actually seemed too good to be true, and then they put practically everything behind a paywall and very strict limits for free users. After a couple of months they made it a little less restricted though - we still can't choose the articles but we can read as many as we want as long as we do the vocabulary exercises after each article (plus, during the Spring Festival, they made all articles available for free for 3 days and we could save the ones we were interested in to read later). It follows the new, not-yet-implemented (and harder) HSK levels, so you should start one or two levels below yours and if the texts are too easy move up.

Google Translator: not the best but helpful when I need to translate whole sentences, plus I can point my camera or open an image and it translates writing.

Pleco: best Chinese to English dictionary.

Stroke Order: not an app but a website, does what it says in the tin: shows stroke order for a specific character.

YouGlish: also a website, you can put a word or phrase and it shows videos where people say that word/phrase. Very cool.

Todaii is a graded news app that has only two levels: easy and hard. I'm around level HSK4 and the "easy" level is quite hard though (but I admit reading is my nemesis).

I also use YouTube and Spotify a lot.

[spocks-kaathyra]

thoughts about the Cardassian writing system

I've thinking about the Cardassian script as shown on screen and in beta canon and such and like. Is it just me or would it be very difficult to write by hand?? Like.

I traced some of this image for a recent drawing I did and like. The varying line thicknesses?? The little rectangular holes?? It's not at all intuitive to write by hand. Even if you imagine, like, a different writing implement—I suppose a chisel-tip pen would work better—it still seems like it wasn't meant to be handwritten. Which has a few possible explanations.

Like, maybe it's just a fancy font for computers, and handwritten text looks a little different. Times New Roman isn't very easily written by hand either, right? Maybe the line thickness differences are just decorative, and it's totally possible to convey the same orthographic information with the two line thicknesses of a chisel-tip pen, or with no variation in line thickness at all.

A more interesting explanation, though, and the one I thought of first, is that this writing system was never designed to be handwritten. This is a writing system developed in Cardassia's digital age. Maybe the original Cardassian script didn’t digitize well, so they invented a new one specifically for digital use? Like, when they invented coding, they realized that their writing system didn’t work very well for that purpose. I know next to nothing about coding, but I cannot imagine doing it using Chinese characters. So maybe they came up with a new writing system that worked well for that purpose, and when computer use became widespread, they stuck with it. 

Or maybe the script was invented for political reasons! Maybe Cardassia was already fairly technologically advanced when the Cardassian Union was formed, and, to reinforce a cohesive national identity, they developed a new standardized national writing system. Like, y'know, the First Emperor of Qin standardizing hanzi when he unified China, or that Korean king inventing hangul. Except that at this point in Cardassian history, all official records were digital and typing was a lot more common than handwriting, so the new script was designed to be typed and not written. Of course, this reform would be slower to reach the more rural parts of Cardassia, and even in a technologically advanced society, there are people who don't have access to that technology. But I imagine the government would be big on infrastructure and education, and would make sure all good Cardassian citizens become literate. And old regional scripts would stop being taught in schools and be phased out of digital use and all the kids would grow up learning the digital script.

Which is good for the totalitarian government! Imagine you can only write digitally. On computers. That the government can monitor. If you, like, write a physical letter and send it to someone, then it's possible for the contents to stay totally private. But if you send an email, it can be very easily intercepted. Especially if the government is controlling which computers can be manufactured and sold, and what software is in widespread use, etc. 

AND. Historical documents are now only readable for scholars. Remember that Korean king that invented hangul? Before him, Korea used to use Chinese characters too. And don't get me wrong, hangul is a genius writing system! It fits the Korean language so much better than Chinese characters did! It increased literacy at incredible rates! But by switching writing systems, they broke that historical link. The average literate Chinese person can read texts that are thousands of years old. The average literate Korean person can't. They'd have to specifically study that field, learn a whole new writing system. So with the new generation of Cardassian youths unable to read historical texts, it's much easier for the government to revise history. The primary source documents are in a script that most people can't read. You just trust the translation they teach you in school. In ASIT it's literally a crucial plot point that the Cardassian government revised history! Wouldn't it make it soooo much easier for them if only very few people can actually read the historical accounts of what happened.

I guess I am thinking of this like Chinese characters. Like, all the different Chinese "dialects" being written with hanzi, even though otherwise they could barely be considered the same language. And even non-Sinitic languages that historically adopted hanzi, like Japanese and Korean and Vietnamese. Which worked because hanzi is a logography—it encodes meaning, not sound, so the same word in different languages can be written the same. It didn’t work well! Nowadays, Japanese has made significant modifications and Korean has invented a new writing system entirely and Vietnamese has adapted a different foreign writing system, because while hanzi could write their languages, it didn’t do a very good job at it. But the Cardassian government probably cares more about assimilation and national unity than making things easier for speakers of minority languages. So, Cardassia used to have different cultures with different languages, like the Hebitians, and maybe instead of the Union forcing everyone to start speaking the same language, they just made everyone use the same writing system. Though that does seem less likely than them enforcing a standard language like the Federation does. Maybe they enforce a standard language, and invent the new writing system to increase literacy for people who are newly learning it.

And I can imagine it being a kind of purely digital language for some people? Like if you’re living on a colonized planet lightyears away from Cardassia Prime and you never have to speak Cardassian, but your computer’s interface is in Cardassian and if you go online then everyone there uses Cardassian. Like people irl who participate in the anglophone internet but don’t really use English in person because they don’t live in an anglophone country. Except if English were a logographic writing system that you could use to write your own language. And you can’t handwrite it, if for whatever reason you wanted to. Almost a similar idea to a liturgical language? Like, it’s only used in specific contexts and not really in daily life. In daily life you’d still speak your own language, and maybe even handwrite it when needed. I think old writing systems would survive even closer to the imperial core (does it make sense to call it that?), though the government would discourage it. I imagine there’d be a revival movement after the Fire, not only because of the cultural shift away from the old totalitarian Cardassia, but because people realize the importance of having a written communication system that doesn’t rely on everyone having a padd and electricity and wifi.

[suthnmeh]

I'm kinda late to the party, but life is cray! So here's my latest contribution to the Good Omens universe agsfaagds.

I really wanted to see our demon and angel in more alternate historical settings and chose the Tang Dynasty, with some help from my friend. I wasn't going for something entirely historical looking, but inspired. So I studied the style of a bunch of drawings and paintings of the era, as well a whole lot of traditional clothing.

And DON'T even get me started on those hanzi. To any Chinese reading this, I'm sorry, I did the best I could XD And hey, if anyone would like to offer to rewrite the poem PROPERLY, that would be amaziiiiing! (It hopefully says "To the world" and that red thing would be the artist seal with my name.)

[unforth]

Whenever I see danmei discourse reliant on translations, especially where translator interpretations differ, it's so clear that a lot of English-speaking danmei fans truly believe, consciously or unconsciously, that translation is a plug-and-play, one-for-one prospect - that languages are interchangeable and there is an Exact One True Translation that the Perfect Translator will be able to unearth and provide to the masses that ideally encapsulates the original using accurate words.

I suspect this is a venn diagram in the shape of a circle with people who are English monolingual.

I also suspect this is a venn diagram in the shape of a circle with people who think their own interpretation of a text is Truth instead of one possible reading.

Like, even when we read a book in the language it was originally in, there isn't only one true meaning - different people will interpret it differently.

That is magnified when we can only access the text via translation - translation can never be a perfect art because languages aren't one-for-one and English doesn't have words or phrases for every concept in every other language (no two languages do!) and translators have to take what's in the original, interpret it as best they can through their own lens, then convert that into another language while trying to preserve the meaning, the intent, the nuance, the lyricism, and give the secondary language reader something readable, polished, and eloquent.

It cannot be done perfectly.

Having access to multiple translations that differ is a strength, not a weakness - a window into the nuance that is lost in any one translation, a glimpse at how complex and beautiful the original language is.

But there will never be One True Translation, anymore than there will ever be One True Interpretation. That's. That's not how books work.

I am begging English-speaking danmei fans to wrap theirs heads around this, and maybe attempt to study even a little Chinese before opening their mouths about the translation aspect of these books.

If I never see another "I plugged the hanzi of this characters name into a machine translator and they literally mean this hahaha" post again it'll be too soon. If I never see another "this version of the translation is Wrong I will use the version that narrowly supports my personal interpretation" post again it will be too soon. Like. Uggggh.

(This wasn't prompted by anything I saw recently/today it's just a constant low-level annoyance.)

[rigelmejo]

Modu chapter 8. A little example of guessing as you read? (But also, feel free to ignore this lol. Its to record my thought process if I ever wish to look back later at how i was doing in july 2024. There may be errors lol).

郎乔拎着把折叠伞，三步并两步地冲进市局办公大楼，留下一长串湿哒哒的脚印。

Lang Qiao (a character we know) 拎 (i didn't know this word but it reminded me of another hand radical hanzi that means carry/hold i guessed it means holding - upon looking this up its lin1 "carry"), the next part has fold (which showed up in a prior chapter when fei du was folding the a paper boat) then umbrella. So: Lang Qiao holds(carries) a fold up umbrella, a few steps (3 steps 2 steps) enters the City Bureau office main floor, leaving a long trail of wet (i guessed wet because 湿 is in the word moist) footprints (i guessed footprints because foot+trace).

I didn't know the words: carry, fold up umbrella, few steps, trail of wet, footprints. So I guessed these.

After running it through an mtl, it gives: Lang Qiao rushed into the municipal bureau office building in two steps, carrying a folding umbrella, leaving a long trail of wet footprints. (So 3steps2steps probably truly means "cover 3 steps distance in 2 steps, and enter was "rushing in.")

(Also something to note here: mtl - at least some I have used like Google Translate and DeepL - have a tendency to simplify descriptive phrases sometimes. Its not a big issue in this example, but if you can understand most of a passage and notice the mtl cut out several words? It probably simplified a descriptive phrase into 1 rough synonym word, or did some other general simplification - i would guess maybe because less meaning is lost if a "stiff as a coffin" is translated to "stiff" than if the mtl mistranslates one of the individual words and spits out "hard as a coffin." At least i suspect thats why mtl tends to do this, but i dont know for sure. To avoid this problem, if you look up individual words instead of passages, mtl is more likely to give you fuller translations. Even sentences or parts of sentences, will teanslate with more details kept than full paragraphs depending on the mtl used. And of course, individually looking up words in a chinese specific translation tool like Pleco may give you full specific translations for 4 character phrases. Looking up individual words will give the fullest translation, detail wise. Which yall probably already know ToT)

Back to the example above. I guessed some meanings wrong. But the overall guess of words was roughly similar in meaning. At least enough to grasp what Lang Qiao did, and the general description (but not enough to translate well enough to convey the precise meaning). I understood enough with guessing, to keep reading without looking things up. To learn those words "roughly" by guessing and clarify the meaning in my head more if I see those words again in the future.

[meichenxi]

Hanzi update (+accidental trauma talk)

tw illness, trauma, vomiting, weight loss, recovery. I didn't plan to write about this but because of what happened in the last year I can't really write about how I studied Chinese without talking about it. so. but it's mainly about hanzi lol

I've been learning how to write traditional characters with the vague idea that I'd go and study in Taiwan, and also that if I want to write Classical Chinese or Japanese they're far more useful - but the program I want to go to Taiwan for requires HSK7, which I DO not think I can achieve and have the results of before March. Who knows! Perhaps within me lies untold brilliance and dedication!!

...well, I wouldn't rely on it. (I am also busy with a job, a partner, studying an A-level course to begin tutoring it in September, and writing the second draft of my novel.)

And even if I ended up going to Taiwan with my absolutely fantastic HSK7, there's no way I could handwrite all of those words within a year. If I learn 10 characters a day, that's like 3650 characters in a year, but realistically that will never happen - and you still have to actually remember them.

I also know from my last experience where I learnt a stupid amount of characters very quickly (about 800 in two weeks) that I can technically do it, I have a very large swollen brain, but then the brain, being very large and very swollen, promptly burns out. And leaves me to not do any Chinese again for like two months. So basically - completely pointless, because after those two months of rest I had forgotten most of them anyway. I will not be doing that again.

This time around I have been slowly, very slowly, learning things on Skritter. I have about 400 characters so far. I'm not doing words but doing characters, which is a bit slower, but I figure it'll be more useful in the long run. After I have the first 1000, I'm planning to then systematically go through the HSK and TOCFL lists and check I know how to put characters together and which 'jing' is used in 'yijing' etc.

This approach is only really going to work because I know a lot of vocabulary and can read a lot of stuff already - otherwise I wouldn't recommend to anybody without that backbone of vocabulary to just learn random isolated characters, unless you're masochistic or much harder-core than I am.

As I have said in a lot of posts before, I had a very difficult experience in China last August and have basically taken an entire year off studying because in all honesty I just couldn't bring myself to face the language again. Every time I tried I had this crazy grief and nightmares and stress response. What I went through was so stressful that during those two months in China that I lost seven kilograms, as I couldn't eat much without vomiting it back up due to stress and fear, didn't sleep, and ended up having to leave for Thailand pretty severely malnutritioned - which then made me susceptible to illnesses there and I spent the next two months after with awful health, vomiting and weak and generally sick. Luckily I was with friends and I gained the weight again and my period and digestive system sorted itself out.

And I never expected that a language itself could carry trauma? Like. Nobody died, it wasn't like that, I wasn't abused or assaulted or anything but still...for just under a year, every time I spoke or heard or read Chinese I couldn't help thinking of those two months. Even now it's still hard. I'm finding my way back to it but, to be honest, I didn't expect how hard it would be. I thought I could just - move past it, because I'd already had so many great experiences in China and Taiwan and with Chinese, that they would cancel each other out or at least be aided by the huge amounts of love that the language has shown me. Alas, it was not the case.

Anyway. All of that to say - I have only managed to do about 400 characters in a year, because I essentially gave up studying completely.

Now I've just finished reviewing and re-remembering those 400 characters on Skritter, so I'm ready to start again! I don't know what's changed, I guess just time - I feel more positive, I feel curious and interested about the language again. I don't know. I'm not going to question it too deeply. But for these past two weeks, I've been having a lot of fun :)

I'll update everyone on my progress as I go! Next post - 500.

[kiragecko]

Hey, guys! Want to vote on the best 6th-10th Century script (writing system) that I, Gecko, personally like?

Of course you do! Writing systems are SO COOL!

And here's a bit about each of the contenders:

Arabic (Naskh Script)

Derived from the Aramaic Script, which grew out of Phoenician, Arabic has a variety of forms. The Naskh script is the one I find the most beautiful, with it's extreme variation on character length and height. I also love the use of multiples colours for Ḥarakāt (vowel marks and other diacritics). Add in the elegant curves and solid lines, and Naskh Script becomes one of the most stylish scripts around.

Latin (Insular Script)

Derived from Greek, the Latin alphabet is usually a competent and pleasant mix of lines and curves, uprights and descenders. Insular script plays with these qualities, and the result is electric! many of the uprights (t, d, f) are gone. New descenders are added (r, s, f). Horizontal lines take a new prominence. Line weight is increased, and the curves become more angular. Something old to us becomes new again.

Chinese (Semi-Cursive Script)

There are many ways to write Hanzi (Chinese characters), and Semi-Cursive Script manages to combine the best qualities of most of them! The expressive curves and flow of a cursive script. The solid shapes and readability of Regular Script. One of the joys of Hanzi is the visual interest of so many unique characters; which share components, but use them differently. Semi-Cursive keeps much of that interest, while also providing a dynamic energy and movement.

Sogdian (Cursive Script)

Derived from the Syriac script, which grew out of the Aramaic Script, the Sogdian Alphabet was developed by traders who met most of the major cultures of the Old World, and let all of those cultures affect their language and writing. Sogdian can be written write to left, like most Aramaic scripts, but also top to bottom, like the Chinese Scripts of their main trade partner. Curvy cursive lines, and characters of wildly varying length, give this script a interesting sense of flow.

Hebrew (Ktav Ashuri Script with Palestinian Vocalization)

Another offshoot of the (Imperial) Aramaic Script, the Hebrew Alphabet has a really interesting, heavy, square, solid feel. In contrast, Palestinian Voicing (an extinct form of writing vowels where all of them were above the consonants) is really light, stacked on top their vowels in little floaty towers. It's a cool combination!

Maya (Classical Maya Script)

The most famous script of the Americas, Maya has one of the most unique reading orders of any script. Characters are written in blocks, which are then read in a zigzag (right, and then down-left) pattern. Full of heads (both animal and human), torches, seeds, and other half-identifiable shapes, Maya texts are works of art, and the more you study them, the more beautiful they become.

Nubian (Old Nubian Script)

Derived from Greek with additional letters from Coptic (Egyptian) and Meroitic (a previous Nubian culture). Lines above letters are used to skip parts of words deemed unnecessary. The mixture of rectangles and triangles, heavy and light line weights - it reminds me of telegrams, or early typewriter text. I love it!

Khmer (Angkorian Khmer Script)

Derived from the Pallava Script, which derived from the Brahmi Script, Khmer is probably my favourite script to write. The curves feel so good! The spirals so pleasing! You write consonant clusters by writing little letters below the main one! A joy to create, and a joy to look at.

Japanese (Cursive Script)

See these wiggles? They're Chinese characters. Elegant, looking like poetry no matter what they're saying, Cursive Japanese is art. It's also ridiculous. 3 different characters, each with multiple strokes, indicated by wiggling the brush as you draw a line! Most cursive scripts are like this, but the contrast between the square solidness of Regular Script and the flow of Cursive is one of the more extreme. What a delight!

Sanskrit (Siddham Script)

I had SO MANY options for Sanskrit (Brahmi) Scripts, you guys. SO MANY! But in north-west India, during the period I study, this version of Siddham is the prettiest. Look at the curves! Those aren't just decorative, each curvy line that goes above or below the text is a vowel. Consonant clusters are shown by combining the characters together in one spot. The lines at the top haven't yet started connecting, like they do in modern Devanagari, but there's already a sense of it's existence. Such a cool script!

[mejomonster]

How did you learn Chinese, like did you use a specific program like Duolingo or did you take classes? How hard was it to read Priest's novels with where you were at in your language learning journey? I want to get back into learning (been wanting to since I watched The Untamed,) but I gave up about 8 months ago 😭

Hey ovo)/ so uh. That's a big question. I have a studyblr @rigelmejo so if you really want the full on journey lol its on there, steps i took and what I studied and progress and study tools I found and used and stuff I've linked for people.

For the shortest tip I can give you? Would be to check out the Heavenly Path site if you're interested in learning to read novels. You'll need to figure out your own way to study about 1000 common hanzi, basic grammar, and basic pronunciation (I link resources on rigelmejo), but after that point the Heavenly Path site has reading resources for graded reading, easier kids novels, easier manhua, webnovels by difficulty level, all the way up! So you can at that point just follow their recommendations and use reading tools they link (like Pleco and Readibu apps which I suggest you download asap - they include tools where you can click a chinese word when reading for translation and audio pronunciation and pinyin). So yeah at 1000 hanzi, just start reading from their suggestions! (Also consider downloading Bilibili Comics app as it has English and Chinese free manhua, so you can start reading manhua earlier, and youtube/viki.com learn mode and Any platforms with dual english/chinese subs and start trying to look up 1 word every 5 minutes or more as curious and practicing reading the chinese words in subs you've learned). I suggest you check out all pages on the Heavenly site, they link a ton of resources.

The short-ish version of what I did the first year I studied chinese? I fumbled a lot, read through an entire grammar guide summary in a few weeks here http://chinese-grammar.com/, watched some YouTube tone videos and went through a pronunciation guide here https://www.dong-chinese.com/learn/sounds/pinyin which took a week or two and I'd do it every few months, read through the book Learning Chinese Characters: (HSK Levels 1-3) A Revolutionary New Way to Learn the 800 Most Basic Chinese Characters by Tuttle publishing in about 2 months (I really liked their mnemonics to help me remember hanzi), started Ben Whatley memrise decks 1000 Chinese common words and 2000 common words (took about 2 weeks to finish one then I took a few months break then studied the other 1000, mainly focusing on studying new words and not reviewing until the last week if I had time - in retrospect I think learners would do better with the Chinese Spoonfed Anki deck but the memrise courses I used worked fine for me). I was watching cdramas as usual most weeks, English subs with the Chinese hardsubs on the video file like most youtube cdramas, with Google Translate app on my phone to look up a word every several minutes as curious. Once I was 3ish months in and learning the memrise Ben Whatley 2000 common chinese words, I read some Mandarin Companion graded readers in Pleco app then some more 300-600 word graded readers in Pleco. That gets me to like month 6ish. Then I started reading manhua and looking up words in pleco or Google translate when I needed to in order to grasp main idea overall (or was curious about a particular word). Kept reading graded readers in pleco.

Around month 8 I tried 天涯客 and 镇魂, both brutally hard. I was reading in Pleco in the Clipboard Reader (from websites) or the Reader tool (i bought it for like $20 dollars along with handwriting recognition, OCR, and expanded dictionaries). Mandarinspot.com has a good reading tool too that can add pinyin if you need it, and Readibu in some ways i prefer to Pleco depending on your particular reading needs on a given day. Tried a few easier webnovels, tried a pingxie fanfic 寒舍 which was hard but easier than priest novels (love that fanfic). I kept bouncing between webnovels then around month 10 天涯客 novels took about 1.5 hours to read through a chapter. At that point I brute force tried to read it or 寒舍 daily with 1 chapter a day, got 28 chapters in before i burned out with 天涯客 and 60ish chapters into 寒舍. It was about a year in. I cram studied 500 hanzi in some common hanzi deck with mnemonics I found on anki over a month, hoping if I improved vocab I'd read easier. I also was gradually trying to watch more cdrama with only chinese subs, around month 6 I finally watched Granting You a Dreamlike life full episodes with no eng subs (about 5-10 word lookups an episode), watched 15ish eps, then after that shows got less daunting to try watching.

A little over a year in Word of Honor came out and I watched it in chinese first because I was too impatient for eng subs. After that went decently I got braver about reading, tried Listening Reading Method (see @rigelmejo for those experiments), more stuff etc like extensive reading with no word lookups.

In retrospect I WISH I'd started with easier novels Heavenly Path recommended. However on the other hand? I've seen people who read their first cnovel with Pleco as early as 3-6 months in which blows my mind. So me picking hard novels to start isn't the Hardest thing in comparison lol. This past year (so at start of year 3 studying lol) I actually read like 10 things on Heavenly Paths easier recommendations and it helped immensely in filling in gaps in vocab and reading fluidity I had. So if you do pick a priest novel as your first novel and manage to chug through it without giving up, be aware "easier" novels may still have stuff you can learn later so don't rule them out as reading materials later on.

I've also seen people do literally no study except maybe some curious Google searches on hanzi or grammar or pronunciation, then brute force read novels in Readibu until they improved. A brutal way to do it but possible. (I really recommend at minimum learning hanzi are made of radicals though as it makes recognizing and remembering them so much easier).

I think the best thing I did for learning to read was just being Brave and Trying to read regularly. And it gradually got less hard.

[achillessulks]

I've read your 'guide' on how to read faster, but I have a few questions of my own, if you would have the time to answer, please! And thank you, in advance, should you do it.

So sorry if you have answered any of these beforehand.

How many languages do you speak, exactly? I've seen you write in korean, english and french, but I assume there's at least another two? Also- do you have any tips on learning languages faster? I am currently learning french and russian, although they come a little easy to me since my mother tongue in romanian, and I live in a very russian-populated area.

And, what did you study in university, if you attended? I'm assuming something to do with classic literature and/or linguistics?

Thank you again if you've read all this :3 Have a good night, or day!!

Hi, I’d be glad to answer those questions!

How many languages do I speak, actually?

Well, I usually say I’m only functionally bilingual, because I’m only comfortable in French and English. And I’m better at reading and listening than I am speaking (as is the usual situation). I also know Arabic (Jordanian and MSA), on paper, but I’m very out of practice.

I can read and understand most Romance languages thanks to having studied Latin, but I’m best at Italian and Occitan. I know German and Russian pretty well, mostly due to having German- and Russian-speaking friends. I studied Korean for several years, but my knowledge of Chinese is entirely self-taught, and any understanding of Japanese I have is from knowing kanji (as hanzi) and knowing how translation works in general. I studied Ancient Greek for an embarrassingly long time. Technically my first word (‘more’) was in sign language!

Tips on learning languages faster:

This is an impossible question, really, because linguistic comprehension is so inevitably individual. Vocabulary flashcards might work for some people; for others (myself included) they’re useless. The uncomfortable truth about language acquisition is that there’s no ‘secret’ to it, no ‘cheat code’ or ‘one weird trick’ to make it quick and easy. It’s hard, grueling, thankless work. It’s also the best and coolest thing in the world, in my opinion, but it’s not something that can be ‘hacked.’ That said, here are some things that have helped me.

Study the linguistics and grammar of your target language’s family. Knowing how to construct a sentence will be much more useful than having a wide vocabulary; you can always talk around a specific word (‘you know, that thing that you use for doing this?’ etc.), but if you don’t know how to ask for clarification, you’re screwed.

Do as much total immersion as possible. Spending time around normal people who are normally speaking your TL will do more to improve your comprehension than almost anything. Make like a little baby who doesn’t know anything.

Read a dictionary in your TL. This will help flip the switch from mentally ‘translating’ (SL -> TL) everything to defining terms in the TL: e.g., instead of thinking of ‘cauchemar’ as ‘coșmar’ but in French, think of ‘cauchemar’ as ‘rêve pénible dont l’élément dominant est l’angoisse’ (for example).

Listen to music in your TL. Any media will be helpful (movies, TV, radio, podcasts, etc.), but music works the best. Listening to an album or podcast while you sleep is good, if you’re the kind of person who does that. (Personal anecdote: I remember one time when I had a dream entirely in Korean, including with words that I didn’t consciously know, and then when I woke up I just knew those words. Human consciousness is weird.)

Keep in mind that your brain can only absorb and process new information at a certain pace; trying to force it to go faster is only going to slow it down. If I could impart one single piece of advice on aspiring polyglots, it would be to spend as much time as possible immersing yourself in your target language, both listening and speaking.

In general, however, as I said, there isn’t really a way to ‘skip the queue’ when it comes to learning a language. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.

What I studied in university:

I studied a very generic ‘classics’ degree, but my specific area of expertise was ‘Euripidean and later interpretations of Homeric canon’ (to paraphrase a very elaborate dissertation title). Functionally this meant that I read a lot of Euripides and Homer and complained about how different scholars throughout history have misinterpreted their corpora. I also did a lot of courses on translation studies. Often it surprises people to learn that I never specifically studied literature or creative writing; I come by that naturally (reading ridiculous amounts of books whenever possible).

Hopefully this all has been at least somewhat helpful/informative, and as always let me know if you have any other questions!