Unfadeable Wrote:I had a look around but couldn't seem to find much on strategies from going from simplified to traditional (or viceversa) using Heisig's method. Anyone have any thoughts/advice? I'm kind of going by brute force right now, embroidering with stories where I can, but it's certainly less systematized than my progress through RTH.
Just an observation, that table I made only deals partially with the Heisig's books, so it's not exhaustive; if you're already at a point where it makes sense to learn both sets, you might need something else to supplement (or replace) it. Anyway, I'll give you an outline of a step-by-step plan I've been thinking about that may or may not help you in the process; remember that's just an idea, as I'm still focusing on the simplified characters myself. Here it is:
1. Read about the simplification process, how and what was done and such, so you can understand it better and not just brute-force it haphazardly; knowing this is very important if you want to do it more efficiently:
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Simplified Chinese characters: Method of simplification
Note that there are charts linked in that article that will help you on the later steps. Actually, you might only need this to get you started. Nevertheless, I'll offer some other steps, now concerning how to learn* them:
2. Start learning all the radicals that were simplified, which will give you the most 'bang for the buck'. They are ~23 in total, and you can see them in here:
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List of Kangxi radicals: Table of radicals
3. Learn the components that are not radicals but were also simplified, e.g., 䜌 → 亦 | 區 → 区 | 僉 → 佥;
With the steps 2 and 3 you'll be able to infer many (thousands of) simplified ↔ traditional characters, being able to go to and from them with much more ease. Now continuing, dealing with the "exceptions"...
4. Learn the characters that had parts removed when simplified, e.g., 雖 → 虽 | 準 → 准 | 諮 → 咨 | 獨 → 独;
5. Learn the characters that have completely different traditional and simplified forms (structural simplification); things like 隻 → 只 |專 → 专 | 護 → 护 and so on.
6. Learn the characters that have multiple traditional forms but only a single simplified one (many of them, but not all, you'll may have learned in the previous steps.) This list will guide you:
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Ambiguities in Chinese character simplification.
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But how to learn them?
Perhaps you can use roughly the same process you used to learn the other form, such as Heisig's primitives, keywords and stories where it makes sense, and use additional things such as having a model with the traditional component/character as a question and the simplified version as the answer or vice versa (T→S is straightforward, but when doing S→T don't forget you'll have to deal with ambiguities, maybe by using a different question format.) In case of T↔S reviews, if the keywords are different and don't clash with others in the same set, you can relate them with a story.
Maybe you can also add an additional mnemonic to differentiate T and S, but that needs to be well thought out.
Also, one thing I do differently than many others, and which can help so much while studying and reviewing multiple sets, is that I put the story on the
front of my cards, together with the keyword and additional primitive meaning. That's because my goal with the reviews is not to memorize the keywords nor to be able to produce the characters from often loosely-related keywords, but to develop a deeper relationship with the characters and primitives, writing them all carefully by hand and such (the real production and meanings I derive from other places.) And I was annoyed at making so many mistakes because of similar keywords and synonyms; now things are much more fun.
That's all I can say for now; now I pass the ball.
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