Remembering simplified Hanzi

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1. senkoraOct 2024
   I worked through “Remembering Simplified Hanzi” and my one complaint is that I wish that it were “grouped by frequency” a bit more.

   The way that these books work is that the first one is the most common ~1500 characters grouped by radical / component, and then the second one is the next most common ~1500 characters grouped the same way.

   The problem is that this means that you have to learn 1500 characters before you know all of the most common 1500. I stopped after 1000 characters and was left not knowing many extremely common characters that hadn’t been introduced yet.

   I think that a better organization would have been 500, 1000, 1500 instead of 1500, 1500.

   Other than that, great books that I also recommend.

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2. godelskiApr 2023
   > I studied Chinese for a year on Duolingo and now I can barely recognize a few characters

   That is a terrible learning outcome. I guarentee you that if you spent the same time with Remembering {Traditional,Simplified} Hanzi [0,1] you would be able to read more than a handful of characters. You'd also have intuition for novel (zero-shot) characters.

   But I do agree you should practice writing, though -- as I argued in another comment -- I think the finger tracing is more about learning character shape rather than focused on teaching to write. That part is even important for reading. Though I do think Scritter, which uses fingers, will result in decent writing skills.

   [0] https://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Traditional-Hanzi-Meaning...

   [1] https://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Simplified-Hanzi-Meaning-...

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3. arienJan 2016
   Complex doesn't mean awful. Impractical and slow for our fast-paced life, sure. But the characters are beautiful and the etymology, shape and composition is fascinating.

   I'm currently learning Chinese (using Remembering Simplified Hanzi from Heisig [0] for characters and Iknow [1] for words/pronunciation) and I find it a lot easier than I initially thought it would be. It helps a great deal to know that all these characters that look so complicated are mostly made of the same 200-some radicals [2], suddenly it's a lot less daunting and the characters even make sense most of the time. And sure, one might forget characters with lack of use, but the same can be said about other languages. Grammar is a hot topic on the internet, isn't it?

   [0] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Remembering-Simplified-Hanzi-Meaning...

   [1] http://iknow.jp/ (originally for Japanese, but Chinese course is excellent, too)

   [2] https://sensiblechinese.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Radic...

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4. w1ntermuteAug 2010
   Remembering the Kanji I: http://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Kanji-Complete-Japanese-Ch...

   Remembering Traditional Hanzi: Book 1: http://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Traditional-Hanzi-Meaning-...

   Remembering Simplified Hanzi: Book 1: http://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Simplified-Hanzi-Meaning-C...

   Take your pick.

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