Think how different it must be to teach Chinese students to write. Is there such a thing as phonics? Does the need to remember hundreds of characters contribute to the ability to memorize "math facts"? I constantly look up stuff like this and obviously love to discuss it.
Chinese characters are hard to learn but they actually aren't quite as hard as it looks. It's still hard.
Anyway, one conceptual aspect is that many characters have two parts: one part signalling pronunciation and another part signalling meaning. For instance:
请,清,青 are all pronounced "qing".
The left part of the first one basically means the word has something to do with language, or communication maybe? Anyway the character means "please", or "invite", and you can see how the word is "the word pronounced "qing" that has something to do with language".
The left part of the second one is water, and the word means "clear", as in 清楚. The third has no "left part", and it's the basic character which is pronounced "qing" and which is put into those other characters to signify meaning. It means "green", but it's not used the way 绿 is. I think it's got to do with the green in living things, like 青菜, which is a green vegetable. As you can see my chinese still needs a lot of work.
Anyway, when I was first learning chinese I had a teacher who would break down every character we learned in this way and I found it really helped me to learn to distinguish between characters that look pretty similar and also to remember how to write a character "it's the 'qing' that has something to do with water...".
Mind you, I stopped studying writing many years ago. I can read and type much better than I used to be able to, but I can't even really write anymore.
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Posted By: zooterkin
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