After typing up Heisig's list of 1500 Traditional and Simplified Hanzi, I have come up with a Chinese Compound approach towards learning Traditional Hanzi.

This is best illustrated with examples. For these set of Hanzi,

11 口 mouth
12 日 day
13 月 month
14 田 rice field
15 目 eye
16 古 ancient

instead of looking at the keyword mouth and writing the Hanzi, I will take the following list:

11 口袋 koǔ da? pocket
12 日報 r? ba? daily newspaper
13 月亮 yu? li?ng moon
14 田地 ti?n d? field, farmland cropland
15 目標 m? biāo target, goal, objective
16 古典 gǔ diǎn classical

and generate SRS cards that go from compound-keyword to Hanzi-compound and reading. I am using cojak to look up compounds for each Hanzi:

http://www.cojak.org/index.php?term=口&fu...ter_lookup

and picking out the compound that I think is most common and easiest to remember. I don't care about the hard ones for now; the objective is to get as close to i+1 as possible.

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IMPORTANT: If I find a certain Hanzi compound gives me too much trouble, I will replace it with an easier one.
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This works for me because:
1. I get to learn "real vocabulary" with proper readings
2. I can fall back on the keyword->Hanzi to nail down the hard/new Hanzi that were not in RTK1
3. Mandarin essentially only has one reading per Hanzi
4. Remembering two-syllable Hanzi compounds is easier for me than remember one-syllable individual Hanzi
5. Heisig keywords become secondary: they are only used as a temporary crutch to pick up the writing of new Hanzi
6. After the 1500, I won't have that ugly RTK1 monkey on my back where I can go from keyword to Kanji, but can't read the Kanji or use it in a common way
7. This method is closer to learning in context (ie Hanzi compound is better than singular Hanzi for learning pronunciation and meaning)
8. There are only 1500 - 878 = 622 new Hanzi (in the case of simplified)

However, my situation is a little special:
1. I have finished RTK1
2. I am familiar with Mandarin pronunciations and pinyin
3. There are many vocabulary that sound familiar to me because I have heard them before

So my current step is: I am going through the list of 1500 Traditional and picking out vocabulary.

I am posting these notes, not necessarily in recommendation that others do what I am doing - rather, it's to give people ideas on how they could construct their own study methods for Chinese. I think if you have already completed RTK1, there are probably more efficient ways than to go through RTH or RSH by the rote-SRS, Heisig keyword to Hanzi method.

Keep us updated on the progress

How long does it take?

Feels like you'll hit a snag when you reach the hanzi you've already used in compounds... you can't use the same compound for both.

Alyks Wrote:How long does it take?

Dunno yet - have to pick out compounds for all 1,500 first. But I suspect my speed for going through all 1,500 may be vastly different from others. My guesstimate for now, once I have all the compounds, is that it will take 2-3 months for me to complete. I need to learn about 600-700 new Hanzi and 1,500 new compound vocabulary + readings.

Tobberoth Wrote:Feels like you'll hit a snag when you reach the hanzi you've already used in compounds... you can't use the same compound for both.

No snag at all - it would be up to you if you want to use the same compound or not.

For example, 田地 may be used for both 田 and 地. But since my ultimate objective is to learn vocabulary and to develop more and more relationships between bits of knowledge, I will probably pick two different compounds. My general rule would probably be if I want to learn 田, I will pick a compound that starts with 田. But it doesn't matter very much because there is usually only one reading anyways...

You make up the rules that work for you - depending on your objective and your interests... ...do what works best for you.

kfmfe04 Wrote:

Alyks Wrote:How long does it take?

Dunno yet - have to pick out compounds for all 1,500 first. But I suspect my speed for going through all 1,500 may be vastly different from others. My guesstimate for now, once I have all the compounds, is that it will take 2-3 months for me to complete. I need to learn about 600-700 new Hanzi and 1,500 new compound vocabulary + readings.

I think the time taken to pick out the compounds should count too. I want to know how long it takes for everything. This is, after all, time taken from actually learning the hanzi.

alyks Wrote:

kfmfe04 Wrote:

Alyks Wrote:How long does it take?

Dunno yet - have to pick out compounds for all 1,500 first. But I suspect my speed for going through all 1,500 may be vastly different from others. My guesstimate for now, once I have all the compounds, is that it will take 2-3 months for me to complete. I need to learn about 600-700 new Hanzi and 1,500 new compound vocabulary + readings.

I think the time taken to pick out the compounds should count too. I want to know how long it takes for everything. This is, after all, time taken from actually learning the hanzi.

Yeah - I can count that, but it's somewhat irrelevant for many reasons:

1. This approach is highly depend on your familiarity with readings and vocab (impacts which compounds you pick and how easily you can learn them.)
2. I get constant exposure to Hanzi from frequent trips to Taiwan - should I count this, too?
3. This is NOT a race to see who can get there faster or to decisively decide which technique is better or faster than another - rather, I am just showing one technique which you may want to consider for your own studies... ...but I suspect it will not work unless you become quite familiar with the pronunciation first.

Japanese pronunciation is actually quite easy compared to Mandarin... ...and Mandarin is easier than some dialects like Cantonese or Taiwanese.

In fact, Mandarin pronunciation is hard enough that I find that I need to spend some time nailing it down. One good exercise may be to assign one Hanzi to every single possible pronounciation, so one can always assign any new Hanzi to the pronunciation to a known word. I will have to go through this exercise - will probably post the results in a different thread.

All this is extra time required. Ultimately, how long does it take to pronounce Mandarin well enough that people understand you? I find that people understand me better when I speak in full sentences - presumely because my intonation is off for some words, but natives can guess what I am trying to say in the context of a sentence.

This is unacceptable. I don't want to learn how to say the vocabulary unless I can get the pronunciation relatively close. For others, this may not be a requirement.

kfmfe04 Wrote:My general rule would probably be if I want to learn 田, I will pick a compound that starts with 田.

In japanes, kanjis change the meaning depending on the position they are in the compound. Does the same ocurs in chinese?

mentat_kgs Wrote:

kfmfe04 Wrote:My general rule would probably be if I want to learn 田, I will pick a compound that starts with 田.

In japanes, kanjis change the meaning depending on the position they are in the compound. Does the same ocurs in chinese?

For Japanese and Chinese, even if the Kanji/Hanzi is in the same position, the meaning of the compound could be drastically different! So there is not much to be gained by "simplifying" the study of Kanji by assigning meanings through Kanji position.

The general rule for picking a compound with the Hanzi in first position actually isn't very important. Ultimately, to become more fluent, in either Japanese or Chinese, you have to learn all the compounds one by one. The difference between the two is, Chinese compounds tend to be easier to learn in the sense that there is no guessing around for the equivalent of kunyomi or onyomi - there is usually just one reading, regardless of hanzi position.

What is more important in this approach is to pick a compound that you think would be the easiest to learn/memorize. You want the lowest hanging fruit. The main goal is to learn a compound with that Hanzi in it so:

1. You learn the reading in real vocabulary, rather than for a single Hanzi, which may or may not be a usable word
2. You can go from compound keyword to hanzi compound, instead of English keyword to single Hanzi

At first, when I didn't know many Kanji, I thought it was nice that Japanese readings had hiragana between Kanji - it seemed like "getting a break" from doing the hard stuff. After doing RtK1, understanding Mandarin is actually easier: there is no switching between Katakana/Hiragana/Kanji mode - there is only Hanzi. However, you still have to mentally process where compounds begin and end. The amazing thing is, after doing RtK1, if you visit a city like HK or Taipei, you will be able to understand many of the signs and you could scan some texts with 30%+ understanding. There appear to be many shared compounds between Japanese and Mandarin.