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I Hate Hanzi
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sthubbar -

As Gato mentioned here I'm a little stressed out lately.

First let me answer the obvious question: "If I hate them so much, why am I studying them?" Well,
it turns out that I really enjoy speaking Mandarin and I am convinced that if I want to progress
beyond the advanced-intermediate level than I am forced to learn to read so I have no other choice
than to endure the torture of learning this ridiculous writing system.

Here is why I hate Hanzi.

They are not beautiful and if they are that's a bad thing.

The purpose of a written language is to convey a specific meaning to the reader, they are not
paintings. If ten people look at a beautiful painting it is likely that there will be ten
different meanings that will be ascribed to the painting. If I write an email to 10 friends and
say "Let's meet at 8pm Friday, outside the movie theater." I sure as heck hope there are not 10
different interpretations.

Furthermore, the more intricate or beautiful a script the harder it is to get the meaning. Look at
this text you are currently reading. Is it in an intricate calligraphic, brushed beautiful script
or is it in some more utilitarian script? I would bet that about 98% or more of the people reading
this are using a utilitarian script. The fancy scripts are only used for short passages where
there is little meaning being conveyed and it is more of a painting.

Hieroglyphics are beautiful because I'm not trying to understand their meaning, I just enjoy their
beauty.

Learning them is a painful processes of rote memorization

I have seen no evidence that there is a logical basis to the formation of the characters. Of
course there is some logic in trying to guess the meaning of some of the characters, but I would
say at best that is limited to 60% of the characters.

Furthermore, I see there are four facets to learning a character: Meaning, writing, pronunciation,
and tone. For me, the two most important are the pronunciation and the tone. I know of no system
that can make it systematic to learn the pronunciation and tones of 3000 characters. As far as my
understanding, Remembering the Kanji (RTK), is only concerned with using mnemonics to learn the
meaning and how to write the characters and I consider those the two least important aspects of
characters.

The more one learns the harder it becomes.

Unlike many other areas of learning where the more one learns the easier it becomes, with
characters it is just the opposite. As more and more characters are learned they start to appear
similar to previously learned characters. Some of the time they have a component or radical that
is the same, some of the times they look very similar but have a subtle difference.

With this newly learned character that looks like a previous character, there are six possible
pronunciations for this characters and there is no method to remember what it is without rote
memorization. Here are the possibilities of how to pronounce a new character that looks like a
previous character, from easiest to remember to hardest:

Same pronunciation, same tone
Same pronunciation, different tone
Similar pronunciation, same tone
Similar pronunciation, different tone
New pronunciation, same tone
New pronunciation, different tone.

My head is about to explode from all this!



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imron -

To me, the most difficult part about learning characters is the diminishing returns associated
with learning characters as the number of characters you learn increases. It gets harder and
harder to find the motivation to learn an extra 1000 characters when you know it will only
increase the amount of material you can read by a small margin.

As far as learning the characters go, I also consider there to be 4 facets, although they are
slightly different from yours. In order of importance to me, they are: meaning, pronunciation
(note I don't make a distinction between tones and pronunciation as I include tones as part of the
pronunciation, so different tones == different pronunciation), usage, and writing.

Personally, I don't think I'd find Chinese as interesting to learn if it wasn't for the characters.










atitarev -

I have to do more writing by hand in Chinese in order to succeed with my course and I am scared
despite the fact I like Chinese characters, no I don't hate Hanzi. They just disappear from my
head, if I don't write them. Complaining doesn't help, so I have to work harder. Passively,
perhaps I know between 1,500 and 2,000 characters but when it comes to writing I am able to
confidently remember maximum 300.










Lu -

I don't really get your point about how writing is not supposed to be beautiful. Sure, art can be
interpreted in different ways. But art is not the only thing that can be beautiful. A landscape
doesn't have any meaning, but it can be beautiful. A building can be good to live in and yet
beautiful. Different people have different handwriting, and some handwriting looks more beautiful
than others, but writing something in nicer handwriting, or even calligraphy, doesn't mean the
meaning is lost.

And hieroglyphs are written language just as much as Chinese characters are. You can't read them
and feel no need to learn to, but a lot of people could and can read them, and they aren't
hindered in that by the perceived beauty of the glyphs.

All that being said, I wish you good luck and much perseverance in learning the characters.
Learning them can be a pest, that's for sure, but they can also be very useful. (And there are
some gems. Check the last pages of the thread on 你 and 妳.)










susansun -

Hi,

I can understand your anger at learnig Chinese although I am a Chinese speaking standard mandarin.
It is said that Chinese is one of those most difficult languages to learn all over the world. I
dont know whether or not it is right but i do believe that 'cause I can speak english (or
chinglish) and a little Japanese. What I want to say is learning languages is always not
interesting as you just began when you step into a higher level. Just endure it. Good luck.

Regards,
Susan










magores -

For me, it's not the characters that cause problems. It's the multiple meanings, and the way words
are constructed.

I know the rules of stroke order. And the way my brain works, I remember that. I can see a new
character, and tell you how to write it properly.

And, I know the meaning of a fair number of characters.

But, its when you use a character, combined with other characters, to make a word, that I get
confused.

Without space between words, I can't always figure out where one ends, and another begins. Without
that visual clue, I can't always figure out what I'm looking at. If there was a space between
words, I'd be able to figure it out much easier.

Anyway... That's my contribution to the rant










IndhuRen -

I completely agree with the part about getting more confused as you learn more hanzi. I learned to
write around 300 hanzi in about 1 months time, I was following the book Rapid Literacy in Chinese
(Zhang PengPeng). Then I learned another 300 which took me 3 weeks and now I have realized that I
am totally confused and I absolutely dread learning the remaining 2400 hanzi which is supposed to
make me literate.

The amount of time, money and energy needed for an average learner to learn Mandarin is simply
astounding and infact I am wondering if all the effort is even worth it.










adrianlondon -



Quote:

I am wondering if all the effort is even worth it

That'll depend on why you're learning the language. If you're not finding it fun, and you don't
need to learn it in order to not starve, or something else equally fundamental, then stop learning.

You should be finding it fun! If you really hate learning the characters, concentrate on something
else (just speaking and listening; or reading if it's only writing you hate). Or pick a different
language, such as French or Spanish!










DrZero -



Quote:

I am convinced that if I want to progress beyond the advanced-intermediate level than I am forced
to learn to read

Why are you convinced of that?



Quote:

Then I learned another 300 which took me 3 weeks and now I have realized that I am totally
confused and I absolutely dread learning the remaining 2400 hanzi which is supposed to make me
literate.

Curious, how is it that you are confused? Do you remember all 600 that you learned?










gato -



Quote:



Quote:

I am convinced that if I want to progress beyond the advanced-intermediate level than I am forced
to learn to read

Why are you convinced of that?

Because learning the sophisticated sentence structure and vocabulary needed for that level
requires knowing how to read (assuming by "advanced" we mean being able to communicate effectively
at a professional level). That's true in English and other European language. It's even more true
in Chinese because of the bigger gap between the Chinese written language and spoken, which makes
it harder to learn grammar and vocabulary entirely by listening.












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