In the near future I want to learn Mandarin. I was wondering if anyone here has any advice from switching from Japanese kanji to symplified hanzi. Is it harder than it appears? And is there going to be a Chinese version of "Remembering the Kanji"?

Thank you in advance! どうもありがとうございます！xie4xie4ni3!

(If this post doesn't belong here be free to move it)

Check out "Remembering the Hanzi."

http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publ...zi%201.htm

Try searching this forum for 'Hanzi' or something, I'm pretty sure there's several threads on the topic.

I checked both the link and search. I was wondering if I should learn traditional first and then move to symplified. Wouldn't it be easier to reconize the symplified characters if you can read the traditional? Would it be easier to learn both together, side by side? I don't know, thats why I am asking. I have know clue where to start. >.<

If you ever want to be able to read traditional characters, you should start with them and move on to simplified characters later. The way I heard it, it's a lot easier than the other way around.

You might want to see the Japanese Wikipedia article on Chinese simplified characters. It has some charts with side-by-side comparisons of traditional and simplified Chinese characters. The first chart shows traditional, simplified and Japanese simplified versions of a few sample characters:

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%B0%A1%E...3%E5%AD%97

If you use Firefox, you can download Perapera-kun for Japanese and Chinese Pera-kun to show character readings. The only trouble is that you can only use one at a time.

I don't know if it would be worth it to do RTH on top of RTK -- some of the differences are in primitives that repeat . . . wouldn't it be confusing to have two different keywords for the same character? I haven't learned the simplified characters, so I don't know from personal experience.

KristinHolly Wrote:I don't know if it would be worth it to do RTH on top of RTK -- some of the differences are in primitives that repeat . . . wouldn't it be confusing to have two different keywords for the same character? I haven't learned the simplified characters, so I don't know from personal experience.

In that case it would be probably a good idea to substitute the keyword with the one from the Kanji edition. From what I learned during my Japanese studies up until now, Heisig's Keywords are more of a guideline and do not actually have to represent the actual meaning. That's probably because it is always hard to directly translate many things and subtle differences and because one Kanji might have several meanings that slightly or sometimes completely differ.
For that reason I take the keywords as a helpful tool for writing out Kanji, but not more. By aquiring lots and lots of Kanji compound vocab and becoming more and more fluent in Japanese, the "actual" meaning will slowly come into view. Keywords are really great for reviewing stuff, but I would not take them too seriously otherwise.

You'll find that many simplified forms have a 'traditional' counter part.
E.g
仏 => 佛
払=> 拂

読=>讀
続=>續
売=>賣 [afaik although the last one is net and the others are human legs in mouth they both have the same ancient form]

If I learn traditional characters while learning Manarin will people still understand me? Do they have the same pronunciatiation? Do people write Mandarin in Traditional characters?

Try looking at the English language Wikipedia article "Chinese character": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character

I'm sorry I didn't suggest that earlier -- I didn't realize it was so detailed. There's a nice chart comparing the characters.

Whether or not people will understand your traditional characters . . . Mandarin is spoken in both Taiwan and mainland China. Taiwan uses traditional characters, and mainland China uses simplified characters. Japanese characters are simplified too, but in general, China made more drastic simplifications to the characters than did Japan.

I think it would be easier for someone who knows the Japanese characters to recognize their traditional Chinese counterparts than for someone who knows PRC simplified characters to recognize the traditional characters. But I don't know how much the traditional characters are used and recognized in China.

I imagine the way the characters are pronounced has more to do with dialect and spoken language than it does with whether or not the character is simplified. It might be helpful to find a forum for learners of Chinese.

@gyuujuice:

Traditional and simplified are two ways of writing a character. The language, Mandarin, is the same no matter which set it is written with, thus pronounced the same. People write it with both sets.

I was actually going to start a thread similar to this. I am curious about Hanzi. Not so much the writing, but the sounds. I have tried to look this up have have not found the answer.

How does Hanzi work? Is it one character, one sound, one syllable, and at least 2 characters make up a word? Or does it get complicated like Japanense where you get multiple pronunciations based on the context?

For some reason, I have not been able to find this seemingly simple answer.

If that is the case, It seems like jumping to Chinese after going through the tuttulage of learning Japanese would be easier.

Wisher

Wisher Wrote:How does Hanzi work? Is it one character, one sound, one syllable, and at least 2 characters make up a word? Or does it get complicated like Japanense where you get multiple pronunciations based on the context?

For some reason, I have not been able to find this seemingly simple answer.

Most hanzi have one pronouciation (one syllable), sometimes they have several possible tones for that pronounciation though.

The tone is of course based on context, but the syllable seems to be more or less set in stone. I don't think there must be two characters to make up a word in Chinese, I think just one is fine in some cases.

Wisher Wrote:...
If that is the case, It seems like jumping to Chinese after going through the tuttulage of learning Japanese would be easier.

Almost - it is easier to learn Chinese after you know Kanji (the rest of Japanese wouldn't help you). It is basically a matter of learning one reading+pitch per Hanzi and picking up some sentence patterns for grammar.

Wisher Wrote:How does Hanzi work? Is it one character, one sound, one syllable, and at least 2 characters make up a word? Or does it get complicated like Japanense where you get multiple pronunciations based on the context?

A hanzi is one character. In Mandarin Chinese, each hanzi is read with one syllable, no exceptions. Even if there are multiple readings, they are all one-syllable readings.

As for "at least 2 characters make up a word", it is not true. Many words (eg 我, 书) need only one character. Some need three. It is true that most nouns need two characters (eg 笑话, 书包, 学生). As such they are more commonly called "compounds" (词) rather than "words" to avoid ambiguity.

Here's a few questions that have nagging me for months which I therefore direct to anybody with experience in both Japanese and Mandarin.

In terms of a rough percentage guess, does anybody know the overlap of pronunciation between kanji and hanzi (as spoken in Mandarin). For example, how likely is it that a randomly picked Japanese ON pronunciation can be traced back to an actual Chinese pronunciation? I know that Chinese has a tonal system, but I have always assumed that the Japanese ON readings are approximations of Chinese pronunciations within the non-tonal confines and other spoken limitations of the Japanese language. Is this a correct assumption? Sometimes I think it is incorrect because there are often multiple ON readings in Japanese, but apparently usually one per character in Chinese. Also, if most or all Japanese ON readings are Chinese in origin, why isn't the signal primitive method more reliable when trying to guess pronunciations?

Dragg Wrote:Here's a few questions that have nagging me for months which I therefore direct to anybody with experience in both Japanese and Mandarin.

In terms of a rough percentage guess, does anybody know the overlap of pronunciation between kanji and hanzi (as spoken in Mandarin). For example, how likely is it that a randomly picked Japanese ON pronunciation can be traced back to an actual Chinese pronunciation? I know that Chinese has a tonal system, but I have always assumed that the Japanese ON readings are approximations of Chinese pronunciations within the non-tonal confines and other spoken limitations of the Japanese language. Is this a correct assumption? Sometimes I think it is incorrect because there are often multiple ON readings in Japanese, but apparently usually one per character in Chinese. Also, if most or all Japanese ON readings are Chinese in origin, why isn't the signal primitive method more reliable when trying to guess pronunciations?

Actually, I'm pretty sure all ON yomi are straight from Chinese. The problem is, they are from very different eras. For example, 明 can be read めい from one era and みょ from another. So the overlap seems to have more to do with time than anything else. Of course, which area of China it came from matters as well.

Signal primitives are more useful than ON-readings for the purpose of learning Mandarin readings.

The problem with ON-readings is, it's a very rough approximation of Mandarin, kind of like katakana is a very rough approximation of foreign words. I mean, the first time you here アース, you may think, what? Is he saying "ass"? But no, it turns out to be "earth".

It's much worse than that for ON-readings to Mandarin mappings - not to mention that if you lean on that too much, you will have very bad Mandarin pronunciation.

Tobberoth Wrote:Actually, I'm pretty sure all ON yomi are straight from Chinese. The problem is, they are from very different eras. For example, 明 can be read めい from one era and みょ from another. So the overlap seems to have more to do with time than anything else. Of course, which area of China it came from matters as well.

This is a case where On-Yomi doesn't help you at all because 明 is pronounced "ming".

Bottom line: don't bother - there's only one reading per Hanzi and it's only one syllable, to boot... ...if you can get the tongue-curling right and the right pitch, it's a piece of cake compared to Japanese.

Having said that, similarities can help you remember pronunciations. For example, 説明 in Japanese is せつめい and in Mandarin (same Hanzi) is "shuo ming" so knowing the Japanese jukugo could help you remember the Mandarin. But the best thing is, once you know 明 is "ming", even from a compound, you are done!

It's not like Japanese where you have to know readings for 明るい, 明日 (multiple pronunciations), 明治、 and probably 4 or 5 other examples I can't even think of right now...

Well, I'm 2 weeks into my resumed Chinese study. If you already know the hanzi, Chinese is possibly the world's easiest language to understand. I watched a bit of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon today and picked up a fair bit despite it being about 4 years since I put Mandarin on hold.

I picked up a copy of Remembering the Hanzi (simplified) but I might end up returning it. I was hoping for some tips on remembering tones.

kfmfe04 Wrote:Almost - it is easier to learn Chinese after you know Kanji (the rest of Japanese wouldn't help you). It is basically a matter of learning one reading+pitch per Hanzi and picking up some sentence patterns for grammar.

Knowledge of 熟語 also helps you. Many are borrowed directly from Chinese so if you just adjust the readings from kanji->hanzi you get a lot of vocabulary with little effort as well. Methods of expression are also similar to Japanese. Basically the only thing that knowledge of Japanese WON'T help you with is grammar, but Chinese grammar is dead simple anyways (to the point that most Chinese people think that Chinese doesn't even have grammar).

Tobberoth Wrote:Actually, I'm pretty sure all ON yomi are straight from Chinese. The problem is, they are from very different eras. For example, 明 can be read めい from one era and みょ from another. So the overlap seems to have more to do with time than anything else. Of course, which area of China it came from matters as well.

There are some made in Japan onyomi, such as 国字 that have onyomi. For example, "働" has onyomi ドウ、リュク、リキ、ロク、リョク, despite being a made-in-Japan kanji (that was later exported to China). The onyomi are taken from the phonetic element(s) (動=どう,力=りき etc), so they are still Chinese readings, but what else would an onyomi be?

Dragg Wrote:Also, if most or all Japanese ON readings are Chinese in origin, why isn't the signal primitive method more reliable when trying to guess pronunciations?

To put it simply, the Chinese writing system is thousands of years old, things drift and become irregular over time.

I also started to learn some Mandarin a few days ago (I had planned to learn Japanese to fluent level and Korean to decent level before even looking into Mandarin, but my friend who lives in Peking came home to Sweden and I was greatly motivated). I have to agree, if you have a good sense of kanji/hanzi, it's an extremely easy language to understand except for the tones.

My only real study method so far has been chinesepod.com. I listen to the podcast then just shadow the dialogue over and over. I've been doing it for 3-4 days now and my sense of tones is still way off though

I'm not using any help for kanji (RtH), I just actively split the hanzi into primitives once and that is usually enough to learn it.

(off topic)

Chinese New Year is coming up Jan. 26, this year is year of the Ox. Everyone celebrate!

恭喜发财!

@tobby: don't sweat the tones, bro! Chinese babies NEVER, EVER have any sense about tones on the 3rd or 4th day! Silly!

igordesu Wrote:@tobby: don't sweat the tones, bro! Chinese babies NEVER, EVER have any sense about tones on the 3rd or 4th day! Silly!

Yeah, but I'm not a baby

But sure, I certainly see your point, I'm hoping that enough audio will make it natural (though I doubt it, my friend who lives in China says he uses the wrong tones constantly, though the "vital tones" to get understood are hard to miss). I also think a greater vocabulary would help, at the moment I only know syllable-tone pairs. For example, I know ni3, but I don't know any ni1, ni2 or ni4, so I really don't have any basis to realize the differences semantically yet.

All I need is time, for sure

Well, I know next to nothing about chinese. Seriously. So take my advice with a grain of salt. But, it sounds like your if your friend is using the wrong tones constantly, he must be speaking constantly. I'm not sure if you completely agree with khatz or the input hypothesis or anything like that all that much, but I think your friend's example is a perfect example. He might make mistakes with tones when speaking, but before you figure out which ones to use when speaking, it would sound logical to be able to identify tones when other people are speaking. You know? Like, if I were to tackle chinese, that's how I would do it. I would focus on input. And, as a part of that, I would focus on identifying the tones in context when people speak. But, whatev. I don't even know if that would work because I REALLY don't know anything about chinese, lol...