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+--- Thread: Rarest RTH 1 + 2 character? (/thread-13335.html)
Rarest RTH 1 + 2 character? - KBurchfiel - 2013-03-20
At the beginning of Postscript 1 in RTH Part II, Heisig and Richardson acknowledge that some of the characters (35 perhaps?) you learn in these two books fall outside the top 3,000 characters by frequency. Any guesses on what the rarest ones might be?
For example, 'chlorine' ranks as the 3,854th most frequent 字 (character) on this handy frequency list: http://technology.chtsai.org/charfreq/94charfreq.html
This isn't that consequential, but it would be interesting to know what the very rarest Hanzi you learn in these books is.
Rarest RTH 1 + 2 character? - gdaxeman - 2013-04-04
According to that frequency list you linked, the rarest is 鍬 (RTH#: 1964, keyword: shovel, freq: 5612), and this one doesn't appear on the list: 啓 (RTH#: 2097, keyword: enlighten, freq: N/A).
For curiosity's sake, here's the "rarest 50 characters" that appear on RTH, according to that frequency list; the latest column is the frequency order:
TH RTH# RTH-Keyword TradFreq
鍬 1964 shovel 5612
侄 2026 nephew 5306
騾 2859 mule 5121
糠 2159 chaff 4897
雹 1716 hail 4869
叼 2750 hold in the mouth 4672
勺 0065 ladle 4618
槐 2899 scholar tree 4607
拴 1810 tether 4596
饞 2842 gluttonous 4510
犁 1967 plow 4475
緞 2748 satin 4473
稼 1956 crops 4437
猾 2270 cunning 4416
舶 2759 liner 4409
軋 1598 flatten 4402
鐮 2150 sickle 4384
嬸 2793 auntie 4375
栓 1585 plug 4342
捆 1822 lash together 4333
乓 3000 pong 4325
鋤 2687 hoe 4303
乒 2999 ping 4298
籮 2336 bamboo basket 4285
蝗 1710 locust 4277
畝 0779 Chinese acre 4241
菠 1907 spinach 4212
餡 2931 filling 4210
筐 2617 rectangular basket 4204
貯 0190 store up 4194
痰 2594 phlegm 4187
沃 1669 fertile 4164
閘 2556 floodgate 4159
寨 2504 stockade 4113
榆 1602 elm 4110
綢 2306 silk fabric 4090
柿 1662 persimmon 4089
棗 1665 jujube 4075
琢 1723 chisel 4048
錘 1184 hammer 4047
濺 1639 splatter 4036
稠 1952 dense 3985
叨 1508 talkative 3983
寅 1434 sign of the tiger 3953
嗅 1570 sniff 3945
棕 2108 palm tree 3926
筍 1984 bamboo shoot 3905
簇 2208 cluster 3903
鵲 2814 magpie 3893
穀 1963 cereal 3876
Note for some: "The corpus consists of all the BIG-5 Chinese characters appeared on Usenet newsgroups during 1993-1994."
Rarest RTH 1 + 2 character? - bflatnine - 2013-04-04
"Rare" is fairly relative here, I guess. I know a good portion of those 50 characters and have seen them used often enough.
Also, 啓 is simply a variant of 啟 and pops up pretty frequently.
Rarest RTH 1 + 2 character? - KBurchfiel - 2013-04-05
Thanks gdaxeman! That's just what I needed. Hope it didn't take you too much time to put that together.
Curious how ladle, while rare in itself, is part of the most common Chinese character (的).
Rarest RTH 1 + 2 character? - gdaxeman - 2013-04-15
No problem, it didn't take much time; I just had to use Excel to cross-reference the frequency list with the list of Heisig's characters, which I have from that big spreadsheet I made some time ago.
And bflatnine, yes it's relative, but remember that the idea here was to check which characters from the Heisig's books, which were mostly selected by frequency (so they are not unreasonably uncommon), are the less common compared to that frequency list, which counts the characters that appeared on the Usenet during 1993–1994. If a different corpus were used, the results would likely be different.
Rarest RTH 1 + 2 character? - bflatnine - 2013-04-17
Yes, but what I meant was that I don't see the point of doing so. Does it help you learn the language any better?
Rarest RTH 1 + 2 character? - KBurchfiel - 2013-04-17
It's 10% to evaluate Heisig's statement that he teaches you the top 3,000, but 90% for personal interest -- learning a really rare character is fun. :-)
Rarest RTH 1 + 2 character? - bflatnine - 2013-04-17
Well, aside from me not understanding why learning a "rare" character would possibly be "fun" (what's fun for me is being able to actually use the language), none of them are actually "really rare." You'll probably find each one of them in your average Taiwanese high school kid's textbooks.
There are plenty of characters that have only been used once, in one particular text back in somesuch dynasty. I don't know why you'd possibly want to learn them though, unless you're working with that particular text academically.
So yeah, I really don't get it. But that's just me. Carry on if it makes you happy.