Friday, December 29, 2006
333 Hanzi-in-a-Day
For a few moments I liked to be naïve by hoping after having finished 333 Kanji-in-a-Day all I need to do is replacing the Japanese readings with Mandarin readings (PinYin) to get the Chinese version of the course 333 Hanzi-in-a-Day accomplished. Fool I am - no way!:-)
The simplified Chinese characters (Hanzi) as used in China & Singapore not only have more meanings (and slightly other ones) than the Chinese characters (Kanji) used in the Japanese language. They also allow forming other groups of similar characters, which is the fundamental method of this language course.
So after evaluating about 2000 Hanzi (all of them part of the Chinese Language Proficiency Test - HSK) the good news are: about 1000 Hanzi can easily be arranged in small groups similar by shape. Yet, instead of choosing one ore two main meanings - as with the Kanji course - I switched to offer more details for the Hanzi.
Now all given meanings should be seen as a description of a picture (which Chinese characters actually are - talking about ideograms or ideographs, pictograms or pictographs - choose the term you like :-)
No need to learn a picture's discription by heart, just look at a Chinese character and sense the "inner values" of each Hanzi - anyway, in most cases you won't be able to fix a Chinese character to exact one meaning only ...
Bad news: it took much more time than considered, so all that is published so far is the free excerpt with 90 Chinese characters of the course 333 Hanzi-in-a-Day (as usual as an eBook). So please feel free to get yourself ready for the Asian Century and start to learn some Hanzi or Kanji (depending on your mood or whatever your needs might be :-)
Bad news: it took much more time than considered, so all that is published so far is the free excerpt with 90 Chinese characters of the course 333 Hanzi-in-a-Day (as usual as an eBook). So please feel free to get yourself ready for the Asian Century and start to learn some Hanzi or Kanji (depending on your mood or whatever your needs might be :-)
Labels: Chinese, eBook, Hanzi, Kanji, language, learning, Mandarin, PinYin, writing
