#meichenxi manages

[meichenxi]

special interests are wild. they really have you going into second hand bookshops ugly sobbing like I've had such a bad day PLEASE tell me you have some books about imperial china. and then the shopkeepers are like uhhh yeah. over there. and then you cradle the book about imperial china in your hands like a baby bird and you start crying yet again

[chenxi-cultivates]

100 days of kung fu: Outing to the moors! (and a bit of training: it was about 10 miles in total and we ran some)

Today was a full day trip, so I didn't have any time for anything apart from yoga in the morning. But what a beautiful day! We saw horses too:

[meichenxi]

I have enrolled on a one-year Gaelic course (Scots Gaelic, not Irish) and one of the many delightful things about the language I am discovering so far is that the dictionary form is in the imperative. which makes for some absolutely wonderful entries:

find Murdo without resource! be in deadly pursuit of Murdoch! okay!!!!! I will!!!!!!

[meichenxi]

native english speaker confirming here that toast is just bread that has undergone the 烤ing transition. we refer to the end product only and many many weird bread things can be toast if you are brave enough! though, and I don't know why, the idea of 烤ing bread feels deeply wrong. in english the bread gets toasted. and then. it is toast

linguistic bread discourse

[meichenxi]

occasionally I think about this best friend duo me and my partner met in dharamshala. the older guy was a cautious well-dressed soft-spoken south indian studying tibetan in his third year ready to dedicate his life to the study of buddhism. the younger guy was a 19 year old tibetan refugee who had been assigned to be his language practice friend and also happened to be a professional online poker player

we were looking for a place to eat and everywhere was closed and the tibetan guy overheard us and was like, 'don't worry, I got your back.' he dragged us and his friend over to a restaurant and handed them the most obscene wad of cash to open back up again for us, paid for a genuinely startling quantity of soup, said, 'don't worry I'm a millionaire'. his friend quietly spoke about the importance of buddhism in daily life, the tibetan guy showed us his stocks and big gold rings, and then before we had finished our meal they left

we never saw either of them again

[meichenxi]

@sirenofthegreenbanks @doitinanotherlanguage

RIGHT!!!! you guys get it!!!! there are some very talented translators out there but english is just NOT really designed for easily translating the nuances of greek or other more case-heavy languages!! languages like german and finnish are way better! the subtle differences in word order, emphasis, fronting etc just don't really work with a language as case marking-impoverished as english that is so reliant on word order to show syntactical relationships - less free word order also means less flexibility which means less freedom in interpreting sentences that run over multiple lines, especially if it's a poetic translation and you want to even attempt to keep the metre - most metred translations of the iliad etc in english suffer so much from this. also german has such a long history of engagement with the classics and I love a lot of the older translations - they feel vast and solemn without being 'bombastic and pompous' as you said. it sounds like such a stuffy opinion to have but genuinely. I feel so vindicated right now.

re chinese, I have read some of the first mdzs book translated into german but otherwise not a terrible amount? it didn't occur to me to do so, to be honest, because the linguistic impetus for wanting to read a case marking-heavy language translated into another case marking-heavy language isn't really there. I can see why that might have an advantage in german - again the flexibility of word order helps - but to be honest classical chinese and german are so far apart that the same motivation for doing it for me isn't there. I'm curious now, so is there anything you recommend in particular @sirenofthegreenbanks ?

I have however read some chinese tang poetry translated into french and I much preferred the english. both german and english have such a rich vocabulary of highly specific germanic root words that don't require any adjectives or adverbs for modification - compare that to french where they often will say someone 'ran quickly' or 'spoke loudly' versus a single word encompassing those meanings. that doesn't mean the poetic expression of french is less, just that it doesn't suit the VERY concise, dense and incredibly meaning-rich, often even polysemous, nature of classical chinese. so I can absolutely see why german would be a good language for translation for chinese in that respect - although I still imagine the best languages to read classical chinese in translation, except for modern chinese, would be vietnamese, thai etc.

[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.

[meichenxi]

life update!!

hello my friends!

as ever, not active - life happened! I probably will continue not being active, so let's count this blog as on semi-hiatus. BUT. I have big news!

I am!!!! going to china!!!! in august!!! for ten months!!! to work as a volunteer interpreter in a martial arts academy!!!! in a buddhist temple!!!!

I get to train with the foreign students 8+ hours a day, and translate when needed!!!!

ok that's the announcement, love and peace <3

I will be getting up at stupid o'clock (5:45am), eating in silence, wearing uniform / robes at all times, teach a beginners' chinese class, and also. crucially. do really HUGE amounts of Kung Fu!!!!

on a serious note, I have been trying SO hard for SO long during and after covid to get back to china. but now I actually HAVE THE VISA, as of today, the ticket is booked, all - praise be - will be well. I am so afraid to jinx it further, and so very happy :)

I would never have thought when I started this blog back in 2020 that I'd be able to use what I've learnt, all the 'useless' martial arts knowledge from copious amounts of trash wuxia, in an actually useful context. more long term, I also get to see if interpreting is right for me, improve my chinese, and get very fit - all for free :D

hope everyone is well! - meichenxi

[meichenxi]

ATTENTION: MXTX BOOKS ACQUIRED!!!!!

!!!! yes!!!!! you heard that correctly!!!!!  I now have copies of TGCF and MDZS in traditional chinese, vertically laid out, plus a whole bunch of other books!!

(I have just returned from taiwan; it was by far not my only purpose in going, but I also decided to stay four days extra at the end after my friend had left just so I could go a-hunting.)

I am. so unbelievably excited. and especially because, with never having a) looked at these books in chinese, b) never having read anything beyond a few lines in traditional, and c) never having read vertical formatting, they are....readable? not with a dictionary on kindle or pleco like I’ve done before to make sense of things, but readable cover-to-cover without a dictionary at all. 

that is a HUGE step for me. reading has always been a bit of a mental block and with the traditional especially and the formatting I was very much expecting it to be a strugglebus situation and don’t get me wrong, it requires a good fucking deal of mental concentration and yes, I do occasionally run my finger down the page to not lose my place like an old person, but...I’m reading them

in the last four? three? days, I’ve read, as of right now, 68 pages of tgcf volume one consecutively (as in, just from the beginning) and over 90 pages in total (+ the pages I read for the scenes I like and skipped to). and it’s so FUNNY!!! I had honestly forgotten. I’m laughing out loud at points!! I read extremely quickly in english, and also have a terrible memory, which combines into flying through books and never having any idea what happened in them - reading more slowly I feel like I can enjoy what is going on more, and appreciate just honestly how funny the writing is. it’s hilarious. xie lian is such a moron (affectionate). ‘next time, if you have to throw something, throw me and not the food, ok?’ what a loser!!!! what a guy!!!!! 

so, 68 pages in, now for an honest appraisal of where I’m at.

first, formatting. 

 the vertical layout - look, going to be honest, I kind of hate it. I’m not used to looking up and down and feel like I’m bobbing my head, and it makes scanning a line more time-consuming. on the other hand, I can feel a massive increase in speed and comfort from even when I started three or four days ago, so I think it’s a matter of practice. I noticed also that when I went to the bookstore I still have the completely hilarious and useless habit of tilting my head to look at the books. the titles of which are written vertically. 

second, traditional. 

I am reading a lot slower than I do in simplified and horizontal laid-out texts, which is not surprising. the traditional is the biggest stumbling block definitely - but it’s not as big actually as I would have thought. I’ve been picking up frequent very different characters with two or three repetitions; not enough to internalise them and read them as seamlessly as in simplified chinese, but enough to look at them, even when it’s a little jarring, and go ‘oh, that means this’ in my head. I have found that I tend to subvocalise more with a) the increase in very different traditional characters, and b) the difficulty of the text. when there are simple conversations or directions I don’t subvocalise at all, which I consider generally speaking to be a good thing as it improves your speed of reading. when there’s a lot of mid-frequency fairly different characters (i.e. ones that I have picked up in these few days but aren’t common enough to be every two lines, and that I still very much have to think about), I subvocalise a LOT. when the characters are ones that I think I probably don’t know in either traditional or simplified, or there are a lot of very confusing descriptions, I don’t subvocalise at all, even if I could by phonetic components. I just - vibe. which brings me onto the next part. 

reading traditional - the brain feeling. 

I CANNOT describe how strange it is to read traditional and how wonderful an organ the brain is. it honestly feels like magic. if you’re still reading at this point and I’m not just shouting into the void, you probably know that I can’t handwrite in chinese to save my life - what that means practically for character recognition is that you could ask me to name the components of a character I see 100000 times a day and I couldn’t do it. it’s all subconscious. I have NO memory or understanding of what radicals are used where at the best of times in simplified chinese, and it’s all done via The Vibe. 

this is EVEN stronger in traditional chinese. I have not really ever deliberately learnt or consumed any media in traditional apart from a few characters you commonly see written or appeared when I have done a little bit of Classical chinese, like 馬，為，無 etc. I also got up to about halfway through the hsk1 course on skritter for a while on one of my endless attempts to learn how to write - so that gave me characters like 歡，對，甚麼 and so forth. in total that’s....still not that much. the VIBES I get when reading, though - incredible!!!!! I see these characters (not just ones with components that are predictable in traditional forms, but fairly or very different ones) that I have no memory of ever seeing before in my life and go, oh, that feels vaguely like this one. and then I look it up and I’m right. 

some of these are things of course are not objectively difficult - if you know the two components, you can go, oh, those are the two traditional versions of the components and so stuck together is the traditional character. but since I don’t consciously know the component parts off the top of my head of more than about 12 simplified characters (rip), this feels like utter magic. I have also been guessing quite a lot based on context and radicals.

I also know I probably HAVE seen some of these characters before at some point, I just don’t remember. nevertheless. it feels amazing, especially with the ones that are not predictable and are totally different. it’s a very bizarre experience. the coolest part though is the ability to remember new characters without looking them up or ‘learning’ them - a large majority of the traditional characters I can know recognise have genuinely been learnt over the last three days. if I see them for a second or third time - they’re mine now. and that is very cool and comes with practice and NOT anything innate blah blah because when I first started, I remember looking at characters over 20 times and still not being able to remember if I had even SEEN them before, let alone what they mean. so that ability has improved a huge amount, and I think reading and learning new words within the context of that book is mostly to thank for that. 

(not really relevant to any of the above, but reading in a foreign language is so interesting, because you really notice the vocabulary the author uses again and again and again more than in your native language. for instance, mxtx is constantly saying 这下. also 莞尔 as a word for smile - xie lian is CONSTANTly 莞尔一笑 . those are the two I’ve noticed a lot so far.)

overall then:

there are plenty of individual words I don’t know, but it’s usually clear what they mean in context, and when I know I’m reading a description of someone’s elegant fingers that's all you really need to know. none of it has affected my reading experience enough to make me physically put down the book and open pleco. 

I haven’t needed the dictionary for anything so far that I can’t get from context or memory of what happens. this means that I am Reading It Reading It, as opposed to Pleco Reading It or Kindle Reading It. which feels like a huuuuuuuuge milestone and difference and you know,,,honestly tearing up a little bit!!!!! because it’s so cool and I never thought I’d get here!!!!!! 

----

with all of that in mind, my plan for reading these is just...go from cover to cover with the first volume of tgcf, but let myself - since I know the story - jump around to read and re-read the bits I like reading. I want to get at least through the first two books of tgcf before I try to tackle any of the other books that I have bought. I’m not stopping to learn vocab really without the dictionary as most of it hasn’t been necessary so far and would interrupt the reading flow, but sometimes if there is a word I have seen 238290 times I will. I have only done this a few times, however, so I think for pulling vocab from this book I will have to do it separately - i.e. choose a passage I like and write down all the vaguely useful / fun words I don’t know. 

I have also got mdzs. now. the thing here is that...I love tgcf, but I’m not as precious about it as I am about mdzs. I have also NEVER read mdzs in translation because I have hated all of them so much, so I want the first time I read it to be as smooth as I possibly can, and to get as much impact and beauty and *shakes fist* as I possibly can. so...I might put it off for a while, maybe another 6 months or so whilst I improve my reading and traditional recognition skills. we’ll see. I don’t want to dip into it in the same way, and I feel like I want to use tgcf as training wheels first. we will see!

updates soon!!! big excite!!!!!!

[meichenxi]

Hello everyone!! For all those who replied to the post or contacted me asking about the UK and Ireland languages project - thank you so much for your interest! I apologise for the radio silence - my job has started up again, and I should be able to reply to you with more information later this week :)

Hope everyone is well!

- meichenxi

[meichenxi]

Not so many for Chinese!!

I made a fun little langblr post! I love studying my target language and I thought this would be a fun break.

[meichenxi]

I don’t want to be told, ‘You’re going to be brilliant!’. I want to be told that it’s ok if I’m not. 

I don’t want to be told, ‘There’s nothing to worry about!’. I want to be told that it might be scary, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing.

I don’t want to be told, ‘You won’t make a mistake!’. I want to be told that it’s ok to make mistakes, because it shows you are learning, and because you can always try again. 

I don’t want to be told, ‘I’m sure you’ll pick it up quickly!’. I want to be told that how quickly you learn something and whether you learn it at all isn’t a part of your personality, and doesn’t reflect on your worth as a human being. 

I don’t want to be told, ‘Everybody’s in the same boat!’ I want to be told that even if I struggle with things they don’t, my learning process is just as important as theirs, and I am just as deserving of help. 

You don’t know why somebody is nervous. You don’t know their history with this particular struggle or environment.  You don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes. Telling someone ‘You’ll be great!’ isn't the reassurance you think it is.

If you want to encourage learning and growth, you need to establish that it’s safe to fail. 

[meichenxi]

assorted ramblings之最

absolutely entranced and delighted by the use of 最 as a noun meaning ‘utmost, best, greatest’

you have some very normal and expected sentences like 世界之最 ‘number one / the best in the world’, 中华之最 ‘number one / best in China’， 历史之最 ‘the utmost / best in history’

but then you have some absolutely wonderful usages like 

ok but. there is no word for scenery here. this just says ‘blah blah out country’s Most nature’. just. the most nature

but there’s no interesting! or aspects!!!!! the Most diamond

yes, before anyone yells at me, I am very aware that it is possible to translate these idiomatically and it all makes sense 

however.  

this construction is FASCINATING. because this last one - 世界钻石之最 could be translated (I would translate, if I hadn’t seen it?) to ‘the greatest among the diamonds of the world’, where the 最 automatically references a) the noun previously mentioned, and b) the scope previously mentioned (i.e. the diamonds In the world)

pleco actually has a similar sentences 钻石之最 which it does translate as ‘the best (or biggest) of all the diamonds’, so 最 here roughly functions like the adjective ‘utmost’ in english. you can’t say ‘the most diamond’ in non-meme language, but you CAN say ‘the utmost diamond’, though it’s still marginal (native english speakers below: tell me whether these reads naturally to you or not). 

but in the sentences above, 世界钻石之最, it’s almost like a classical construction in that we’ve got an implied missing noun here. the MOST [...] [...] of the world’s diamonds. the most what?? fill it in yourself, you bastard. this could also be translated I think as ‘the most interesting aspects’ (keeping their translation) of the world’s diamonds. that means something slightly different to ‘the most interesting aspect in the world’ (which happens to be about diamonds). 

this is a question about scope!! and the relationship between the three ‘nouns’(used loosely because 最 is a noun-y kind of quantifier or a quantifier-y kind of noun? pushing the boundaries of nounhood either way) in this sentences: the world, the diamonds, and the Most. this is Fine.

this is a great example of how funky compounding can get in mandarin, and how it can be very...ambiguous is not the right word, because that implies that there is one correct answer and with access to context it would be clear. but how there can be multiple possible readings available at one time, which context may in fact not clear up at all. a topic for another day, and one I’ve talked about vaaaaaaguely before

(side note: it’s kind of annoying searching for this construction since it mostly appears just as a little more formal version of 最. for example 患难困苦，是磨炼人格之最高学校. here you could just substitute 之最高学校 with 最高学校 and it would mean exactly the same thing)

anyway. there are plenty of vague ones like 人生之最.  the most What in life? just the most????? the best thing? or perhaps if there was another sneaky noun somewhere before it (like the diamond and world example) the best That Thing in life? I honestly don’t know. this is not an informative post. this is a thought, out loud, in real time. expect questions, not answers!!

and then you have other ones which are soooooooo topic-comment that they are just BEGGING for me to put a 也 at the end and whack them in a textbook. for example: 参军当兵光荣之最 ‘participate-army serve-as-soldier honour-之最’ > where is my ‘is’??? where is my verb??? you fool. you coward. in this house we need neither. remember that the A = B, the copula, the most basic relationship between the subject and the predicate can be expressed in chinese by just AB. for example: 宋，小国. song = a small country. this is usually marked with commas in anything from ye olden times when put in textbooks to make it easier to parse. but it could also be 宋小国 and that would mean the same thing. (this is very visible when we look at the way that adjectives work: 山高 or more helpfully punctuated 山, 高 is ‘as for the mountain, it is tall’ or ‘it tall-s’ as 高 is an adjective and technically therefore a stative verb.)

so this sentence could be rephrased 参军当兵, 光荣之最. to translate it with the clunky way japanese-english translators often do when being literal: ‘as for participating in the army and serving as a soldier, it is the greatest honour’ / ‘..., it is the greatest part of the honour’ depending on how you parse the 之最. let’s add the affirmative particle / comment marking particle 也 (no it doesn’t mean also here; remember lwj’s 非也！when defending wwx on the steps of jinlintai) which it is BEGGING for and we get:

参军当兵, 光荣之最也. 

how very classical!!!! how very nice!!!

we could also go one step farther and add a topic-marking particle 者 (yes, you most likely know this as a nominaliser but it has a far greater range of usage than that): 

参军当兵者, 光荣之最也

woweeee. such vibes. truly the Most sentence.

....this got wildly off track. anyway. my point is that in-depth linguistic speculation about how it actually works and musings on translation practices aside, I am going to enjoy thinking about ‘he is truly the Most character’ every time I see this construction

[meichenxi]

short update / hello / not dead etc

she lives!

...the reason I have not been very active here is quite simply Shame. I have been living in korea for 9 months and have not learnt ANY korean, and then I felt too embarrassed about that fact to come back to langblr. this is unfortunately proof of something I have known for a while: that my reasons and motivations for learning languages are 100% intrinsic. I can’t force it. 

not speaking korean has made my life about 90% worse. I am very capable of learning languages quickly. there are many resources available for learning korean VERSUS

‘but it’s not my special interest :((((((((’

...apparently the latter wins. so what have I been doing instead? I’ve nearly finished a 4-month daily intensive chinese course from east china normal university. haven’t done much self-studying. I put off chinese for a few months because I felt so indescribably bad about not doing korean that I ended up just doing nothing at all. 

anyway. I’m now thinking a lot about next year and yes I am planning to maybe go to taiwan and I AM applying for A Thing. (more details later if Thing happens; I know now not to jinx anything and talk about it on the blog)

but I’m also so very lonely / in need of friends so I might??? stay in the uk for a year instead??? what I want to do really changes daily. which is stupid. but I miss my family and friends, it feels like I haven’t seen anyone since the beginning of covid, which as people REMIND me is 3 years ago almost. I also very much need help for mental health stuff because in this house we spiral and I need an ahdhdhdhdhdhdhdhdhd diagnosis otherwise I will never ever get anything done ever for the rest of my life, ze self hatred etc etc

so

to wit

I may be spending much more time doing german (and possibly french OR spanish) in the next year. why? because my chinese sadly is not good enough to bag me a job yet - another year of study at least - and I want to do something that involves languages SOMEHOW. which is kind of exciting and kind of fun and will be SUCH a different way of studying to the way I study chinese, which is all media-centric. 

german is definitely my best foreign language passively - though it’s been a while since I’ve spoken it actively - and I also hugely enjoy it. no big problems there. 

choosing between french and spanish however is proving difficult. pros and cons of each:

FRENCH: - passive understanding higher than spanish - better foundation - my partner speaks it very well so could practice with her - my father ALSO speaks it very well so could practice with him - ....and my friend (you get the picture) - am more likely to get to an employable level within 6 months - I Do Not Actually Like French. crucially though since I already can understand it to a passive c1 level however, it would mostly just include reactivating prior knowledge and learning new vocab, which would be Fine and would not hurt me as much as learning korean

SPANISH: - I prefer it objectively speaking over French. this is the BIGGIE. I like spanish more - my foundation is much worse, and I have spent less time with the language / generally feel more uncertain - my passive comprehension is not as high (maybe b2 if people speak at a reasonable speed?) - potential for more media - mouth feel speaking spanish good - would need to actually relearn a load of grammar things - less likely to get to an employable level in six months. 

hmm. will continue to think.

[meichenxi]

Radicals! But also - components! Because they are not the same thing!! Components = real parts of a character, phonetic or semantic. Radicals = arbitrary parts designed to help you look things up in a dictionary. Every radical is a component, but not every component is a radical. This is a mistake many learners, including myself, made/make! 

I would recommend learning the most common components first, if you have time, and only moving onto characters once you a) understand how characters work, and b) have learnt the most common components.

THIS IS CONFUSING, BUT FEAR NOT: I HAVE WRITTEN LOTS OF POSTS ON THIS SO LET ME BESTOW THEM UNTO YOU:

(apologies because I’m not just illiterate in Chinese but also Computer and I don’t know how to shorten the URLs)

 1) https://meichenxi.tumblr.com/post/634502844540764160/learning-characters-for-beginners-a-very - a very in-depth guide to what phonetic components are, and why you need them 

2) https://meichenxi.tumblr.com/post/634799429070831616/so-this-is-an-incredibly-embarrassing-error-to - an example of an error and ‘mistake’ that happens when you know phonetic components

3) https://meichenxi.tumblr.com/post/635213129420308480/functional-vs-non-functional-components-in-chinese?is_related_post=1 - an example sound series of a phonetic component - so basically what the two above posts look like in real life!

Hope this helps!

which one should i memorize first; the 100 most common characters or the 100 most common radicals?

[meichenxi]

screw exams. screw ‘how many characters do you recognise’. yesterday I correctly guessed that jie3wei2 meant ‘to make someone lift a siege / to rescue those under siege’  from a podcast and��that is the only progress that matters to me