2 quick links from a book i am currently reading, it was nice to see i was able to already recognise a good number of them.

400 hanzi:

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo%C3%ABl_Bellassen
(english: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo%C3%ABl_Bellassen)

900 hanzi with tones:

http://www-poleia.lip6.fr/~zucker/Chinese/Les400.html

[Katsuo]

This kanji-related video article is in today's "Guardian".

The guy who developed pinyin is still at work in China, aged 102. Seems to be deliriously happy as well.

I didn't know that Chinese children use roman characters to learn the pronunciation of kanji.

[ファブリス]

Whoah 102, respect!! Thanks for the link, Katsuo.

leosmith Wrote:Here's an excellent forum:
Here's my textbook - nice pictures, big characters, traditional characters, VCD's
http://www.cheng-tsui.com/product.cfm?si...=13424&c=0

Hey, leosmith! What is your textbook called? This link doesn't work anymore.

Thanks!

Actually, a friend of mine is trying to learn Cantonese... anyone have any good suggestions for books on it? He's having a hard time trying to find any.

Serge Wrote:I have stumbled upon a great work designed for bulk-learning Chinese characters. The title is 'Cracking Chinese Puzzles' and it is by T.K.Ann. A limited number of copies is available from Amazon.

I'm interested in this. But I can't tell which volume is which. You have volume 1 right? What is its IBSN?

PrettyKitty Wrote:

Serge Wrote:I have stumbled upon a great work designed for bulk-learning Chinese characters. The title is 'Cracking Chinese Puzzles' and it is by T.K.Ann. A limited number of copies is available from Amazon.

I'm interested in this. But I can't tell which volume is which. You have volume 1 right? What is its IBSN?

I have all the 5 volumes. There is also an abridged one-volume version out there which cuts out all the fun bits.

The books are freely available in several London bookshops: the Foyles and Grant&Cutler.

Ah, if only I lived in London...

Are the characters given in traditional or simplified form? Or both?

Both. The book also explains how both forms are linked and where simplification has actually come from.

I'm sure these stores can deliver by mail if you call them...

[ファブリス]

A question to our chinese learners (I don't remember if I asked this on the forum already..):

Do we have fonts for the simplified and traditional chinese characters ?

Do they map to different Unicode ranges but same order ?

If you have some good links related to traditional vs simplified chinese characters on the computer, please share!

There are technical questions I am wondering :

* Say I have a flashcard for one chinese character and use the character itself as the "key", so the unicode value. But then it may be a different key between traditional and simplified ?

A more general question to Chinese learners :

Do you feel that it's reasonable to learn traditional, and just learn the "shortcuts" of simplified writing ?

Are there still substantial advantages in knowing the traditional form of the characters, even for this generation with electronic dictionaries and such ?

Does anyone here review chinese characters with a SRS ? I might have some questions.

ファブリス Wrote:Do we have fonts for the simplified and traditional chinese characters ?

Do they map to different Unicode ranges but same order ?

If you have some good links related to traditional vs simplified chinese characters on the computer, please share!

There are technical questions I am wondering :

* Say I have a flashcard for one chinese character and use the character itself as the "key", so the unicode value. But then it may be a different key between traditional and simplified ?

A more general question to Chinese learners :

Do you feel that it's reasonable to learn traditional, and just learn the "shortcuts" of simplified writing ?

Are there still substantial advantages in knowing the traditional form of the characters, even for this generation with electronic dictionaries and such ?

Does anyone here review chinese characters with a SRS ? I might have some questions.

No idea about Unicode mapping but when you type a simplified character it stays simplified regardless of the chosen font. The same with traditional. What DOES happen on my Apple Powerbook, though, is that some characters (simplified or traditional) appear to be missing from some font sets, then the text is still readable but the missing characters are shown in a different font (usually, a very ugly basic one).

The only major exception I have come across is the character for zhen1 (truthful) - the computer form seems to differ significanly from the form printed in books. I usually get to the book form by using the Japanese version of it.

On the traditional vs. simplified debate, I believe it is advisable to learn both. It is also the most logical way to approach the structure, etc., and should not be a huge task for Heisig adepts. It might not be appropriate to go into all the details details on how exactly this makes sense now but I have learnt about 6,000 charactes including both forms so I do feel that I know what I am talking about. :-)

And yes - I have done it using a SRS (iFlash) and will be happy to answer your questions.

I don't know Chinese so my opinion doesn't count for much, but from traveling in China I would say learn both. Of course you come across simplified characters the majority of the time, but I saw enough traditional characters that I don't think they should be neglected. But then, the places I went were historic sites and museums so perhaps I saw more traditional characters than you would expect to see in everyday life. But I somehow had the feeling that everyone understood both writing styles... ("This means 'xxxxxx' but we don't use these characters anymore...")

Again, my Chinese skills are very low, so feel free to disregard. My experience is only from traveling in China.

Every China born&raised person that I've asked said that they know both simplified and traditional characters. If you're learning Japanese kanji then you might as well learn traditional as well since it's mostly a freebie for the characters that overlap (although some differences in stroke orders etc).

Personally I dislike the simplified characters since I find them ugly and harder to remember than traditional hanzi or (less simplified) Japanese kanji.

Chinese usually know one form better than the other. In mainland China, they have the simplified. In Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and overseas Chinese (I think it was), they like the traditional. Per Wikipedia "As a result, most native Chinese speakers are able to write in only one of the two systems, though they can usually read both. You are recommended to do the same. It is considered easier for people who learn Traditional to read both sets than people who learn Simplified only, but Simplified characters may be less intimidating for beginners. In this wikibook, all examples and vocabulary are given in both systems, and you are encouraged to choose one system and stick with it throughout." And like Jarvik7 mentioned, since traditional seem a gimme for a Japanese RTK1 graduate, that seems to make sense to me.

Jarvik7 Wrote:Personally I dislike the simplified characters since I find them ugly and harder to remember than traditional hanzi or (less simplified) Japanese kanji.

I started off feeling the same way about the simplified characters but that aesthetic preference disappeared as soon as I started spending time in China and reading texts in simplified characters. I realised it was just as pointless to hate those as to hate the letter 'W' or the letter 'Z' in the Latin alphabet because they are not part of the original set.

Harder to remember - in a way, yes - since any logic that existed in their design is taken away. But in most cases easier to read as the simplified component is usually replaced by a very obvious phonetical one.

ファブリス Wrote:Do we have fonts for the simplified and traditional chinese characters ?
Do they map to different Unicode ranges but same order ?

There is one contiguous Unicode range for Han characters, and inside it the characters are sorted according to radicals and stroke count. The simplified forms are treated as distinct characters, and are sorted in between the traditional ones. This means that it's not possible to create a tool that adds a constant to each codepoint and converts between the two sets - you need external data, e.g. from the Unihan database.

You can look up the mapping using the Character Map tool (in Windows or Gnome - in Gnome it additionally lists rough meanings for each character). In Windows you must change the font to one that supports the Han range e.g. Arial MS Unicode or MS Mincho.

What do you do for typing? I would like to start by learning Traditional characters, but typing using the bo-po-mo-fo system seems to be a nightmare compared to usng pinyin. Recently, with Google pinyin, it looks like you can "cheat" and type Traditional characters using pinyin, but is this a viable way to learn the language?

What do the experienced students think about this?

I see no problem using pinyin to learn traditional charectors, but if you got to Taiwan some day leaning bopomofo will be helpful.