I bought 3 of the 4 boxes of these before realizing the error of my ways. I’m going to list some of the problems I found with them below and hopeful people can give me feeback. I bought these cards because basically they had both simplified AND traditional characters on and they were much more up to date that the awful Japanese ones I once bought.
The problems are grouped into 3 types 1) design flaws, 2) problems with pinyin 3) problems for non PRC learners.
design flaws
-old cards (pre 2006) flip left to right, and post 2006 flip top to bottom. So make sure you buy the same sets of prepare to be irritated.
-only post 2006 cards actually have the stroke order and then it’s only for the simp. version.
-some of the actual examples are phrases that are ridiculous and are rarely used:
‘over here silence reigns, you can’t hear a crow or a sparrow.’ [1222]
pinyin flaws
I’m no pinyin expert, I can’t really read it but there seems to be some huge flaws here. These might be the cards or it might just be pinyin.
-no differentiation between certain sounds that look the same in pinyin:
yu and ru
ㄩ ㄖㄨ
zhi and ni
ㄓ ㄋㄧ
yong and gong
ㄩㄥ ㄍㄨㄥ
the pinyin makes it look like these sounds would belong in the same group whereas the bopomofo clearly shows them to be completely different sounds.
problems for non ROC learners
-despite having both simp and trad characters, the compounds are only
-oddly the card for ‘island’ says ‘Taiwan is the biggest island in China’ Why on earth they would go and write this on a card is beyond me.
-bopomofo is not included
-some of the tones are actually incorrect for Taiwanese mandarin
-some of the characters are just incorrectly written [1094]
-some the examples of simp/trad are actually characters that are used for two different things in Taiwanese mandarin [sorry no example to hand]
[quote=“yamato”]Pinyin flaws
I’m no Pinyin expert, I can’t really read it but there seems to be some huge flaws here. These might be the cards or it might just be Pinyin.
-no differentiation between certain sounds that look the same in Pinyin:
yu and ru
ㄩ ㄖㄨ
zhi and ni
ㄓ ㄋㄧ
yong and gong
ㄩㄥ ㄍㄨㄥ
the Pinyin makes it look like these sounds would belong in the same group whereas the bopomofo clearly shows them to be completely different sounds.[/quote]
These are correct Hanyu Pinyin.
In the first two examples, the pronunciation of the vowel depends on the letters that precede it. In the third example, it’s actually the bopomofo that’s inconsistent: the Hanyu Pinyin correctly reflects the fact that “yong” rhymes with “gong”.
[quote] problems for non ROC learners
-bopomofo is not included[/quote]
This wouldn’t be a problem for non-ROC learners, since bopomofo is not taught outside of Taiwan.
[quote=“yamato”] problems for non ROC learners
-despite having both simp and trad characters, the compounds are only[/quote]
Only what?
That’s going to happen whenever you buy PRC-made materials. If you’re learning the Taiwan tones, you’ll just have to get a marker pen out and modify them. There’s probably already a list somewhere online, perhaps even here, of the common variants – and if not we should put one together.
I’d like to see scans of the ones you think are incorrectly written. You might be right, or they might be variant forms, and perhaps we can let you know the difference. Often, when people learn Chinese, whether in the PRC or here, they are left with the misperception that there is exactly one ‘correct’ way to write a given character in the modern kai3shu1 script, but the truth is that there is always variation in languages, and Chinese writing is not spared from this. There are many cases where one needs to be aware of two or even three common ways to write or print a graph, and if we look only at the historical kaishu period, we may even find a dozen or more variants. Sometimes one or two of these are preserved here in Taiwan, while a third may have been preserved in China.
Again, that’s par for the course with PRC materials – 复 fu4 for both 復 and 複 is a good example. Get yourself books and dictionaries that differentiate properly, like the Far East CED and the excellent ABC Comprehensive (DeFrancis) and you’ll be able to straighten yourself out on those. I’d even hand-make replacement cards for those if I were you.
I liked those cards. I still dip into them when I’m shocked by my crapness at Chinese and want to review my characters.
However, the best cards were the entire set of PAV Chinese that I handwrote myself. The act of actually making them helped to visualise and memorise the characters.
I have to chime in with my experience, that is to say flash-card based learning is for me (and I have to imagine for most) the slowest way to pick up anything, let alone Chinese characters. Having context for learned characters gives your brain something to wrap around them and makes things sooo much easier. I suggest finding stories at your level and start working towards the first 2000 characters.
The above assumes you are just trying to learn characters using random flash cards and rote memorization. If you’re already using flashcards to practice words learned in actual material I suggest instead testing yourself by forcing writing each character (i.e. use flashcards with pinyin and the character/word description on one side and the written character on the back). If you can write the character, you know it. There are, however, plenty of your ways for your brain to cheat itself into thinking you know a character when in fact you just recognize the flashcard. You’ll waste a lot of time reciting words learned in your short term memory when in fact, even after perhaps 100 times getting the word right, it’s still not solidly built into your lexicon.
I suggest instead testing yourself by forcing writing each character (i.e. use flashcards with Pinyin and the character/word description on one side and the written character on the back). If you can write the character, you know it. [/quote]
IF you want to write.
Personally, I’m working on developing a small-sized, laminated card that has 500 or 750 most common single characters arranged by Pinyin syllables. This could then stand in as a “portable computer input system” for those who do not wish to memorize how to write each character. Just as on a computer, you would only have to recognize which character you want (and you wouldn’t get the level of support a computer can give in picking the right characters to go together for a compound, either, so it’s more “rigorous” in that regard). The student would have to understand stroke order and how to copy the characters, but would not have to remember how to write them.
I wish I’d thought of this ten years ago, for my own use. I will happily admit I’m crap at writing characters by hand. But then again, my tax returns are fairly healthy, and all that income came from getting paid for my Chinese. So go figure. Everyone’s mileage may vary.
I have no desire to write Chinese, but in my experience, having the knowledge to write a character when tested in the short-term improves long-term recognition much better than simple character recognition testing. Because you may recognize a character in a stack of 20 cards but not recognize it at all in a different stack - your brain in effect cheats (as it should) by only looking for the bare minimum in differences between the characters you are learning in a flashcard stack.
For example, it’s much easier to recognize 皮 in a stack of flash cards that include 是, 飛, 不, 要, and 胖 than if it were 至, 先, 支, and 及, simply because your brain doesn’t have to work nearly as hard to see (and remember) the differences. Without writing the character, your brain can pass these recognition tests by recognizing the bare minimum differential between the characters you’re testing - which is great for the time being but when reading a book it’s really of no use. If you can write the character, however, you ostensibly “understand” every stroke, and again in my experience, that is 10x more powerful in terms of recognizing that character down the road, even if you aren’t writing regularly.
Of course. It involves a deeper level of processing, which has been proven to improve memory. Even if you are not really interested in the ability to write characters, learning them to that level will greatly improve your memory for reading them in the long run, which is one of the reasons why learning to write them is highly recommended.
It takes hours of practice every week to learn to write characters, and in my case, I forget after a few weeks of no practice. For those with little time, flashcards are a good method, IMO.
In the time it takes to write and write and write, over and over, you could be reading a lot of material at your level, which would not only reinforce character recognition (it is supposed to be about text processing, not recognition of individual characters, although that’s necessary – but contextual clues are very important and should be taught) but also strengthen your Chinese syntax and usage. A far better bargain IMHO than writing for the sake of “recognizing better”.
Couldn’t agree more. I’ve found that spending about an hour (wouldn’t want to do much more than this) going through flashcards on supermemo or fullrecall and then spending the rest of my study time reading childrens novels works great. I tried writing characters for a while, but it’s just far too much like rigid study. Get reading as much as you can at the right level. It’s enjoyable. Writing characters over and over makes me want to drill my eyesockets out and…
Why on earth they would go and write this on a card is beyond me.