How to Memorize Chinese Characters

Did you know that there are more than 50 thousand characters in Chinese?  How crazy is that? Out of that, 50 thousand how many characters are language students expected to learn?
 

Most Chinese dictionaries only list about 20 a thousand characters, and just like in English, no one imagines you to understand every single word in the dictionary. Experts believe that an educated Chinese person would know around eight thousand characters.

However, to read a newspaper, you only need to identify about two to three thousand characters. Compared to the 50 thousand that are currently in existence, 3,000 is not so bad. Still, 3,000? That is still quite a lot, considering how incredibly complex each character appears to be.

But memorizing them does not have to be all that difficult. The key is not to freak out, breathe, and be smart about the way you study.  After all, it is not necessarily about putting in the hours—it is more about how you spend your time, make sure that every stroke is deep-seated in your memory.

To do that, you will need to mix things up. Sure, traditional methods are the common ways to get characters in your head.  But integrating unconventional plans will test your brain in unexpected ways, adding more importance to the characters you are studying.

Break Down Chinese Characters

You may already know that characters are made up of components and radicals. Radicals are elements that represent a broad category. 

For instance, any word related to grass or plants has a specific radical, located at the top of a character, made of one horizontal stroke and two small vertical strokes. Therefore, knowing the radicals and the meaning behind them will give you an element of a character when memorizing it.

Let’s look at an example of a group of characters with the radical 口 kǒu, which means mouth. When characters contain this radical generally on the left side, you will know that the said characters are connected to the mouth somehow, either in terms of activities like eating, or part of speech, as an exclamation.

Components are the parts of characters, and there are two types of components: phonetic and semantic components. The whole list of components is extensive, and as a result, most people focus on studying just the radicals in its place.

Although if you are curious and have the time, the list is worth checking out, as you will be able to see semantic or phonetic similarities within the character groups.

Moreover, recognizing components is useful for reading new texts and identifying new words.

The reason behind Stroke Order: Writing out characters appears random at best when you do not understand the reason behind stroke order.

Sure, you can senselessly follow the order showed in your writing books and apps, but would not it just be easier to remember the rules for strokes instead.  From left to right, top to bottom, inside than out—the rules are logical. Learning them will make it easier when tackling new characters.

Go Back in Time

After even understanding the components, characters can still appear like gibberish. To make the picture a little less fuzzy, one thing you can do is conduct research on Chinese character evolution.

The Chinese writing system is the oldest in the world, and to see the language develop from figures to the characters they are now is surprising. Plus, it offers insight into cultural and historical depictions of everyday objects, like the sun and rain.

Understanding the origins of characters will encourage you to start looking at characters as pictures. If you are a creative thinker, having those images in your mind will help jog your memory during writing practice or written exams. Obviously, you would not have time to research every single character you come across.

However, if you look up common components and radicals, it will give you a well-rounded understanding of meanings. This will help you memorize characters in the long run, as well as future characters that share the same parts of the character.

Along with the YouTube videos of character development, many Chinese cultural websites share lists of radicals with their original pictograms for comparison.

Write again and again

Sadly, there is no way around it. You have to write with a pen and paper to feel the flow of a character, and the more you write, the process becomes more natural.

Most of the time, your Chinese tutor or teacher will create worksheets based on the lesson, but if you are learning on your own, you will have to make the worksheets yourself. Hanzi Grids is an online resource for that.

Even if you have a teacher, you should use it to customize your own writing practice. After all, you know better which characters you have a problem memorizing. Those worksheets are not the only way to practice writing characters.

To switch things up, consider downloading apps such as Chinese writer to include games into your writing practice, which track your progress and arrange your common mistakes in the next level of activity. Besides, it is more productive than all those hours spent on social media or other games, like Candy Crush.

Read Parallel Texts

Writing is not the only way to lock those characters in. Reading goes along with writing, so if you need to remember words, then you have to see them being used in everyday settings.

Obviously, identifying a character is only a small part of memorizing it, but the more you see it, the better equipped you will be for future writing assessments.

If you wish to explore beyond classroom literature, then make sure you look for parallel texts, which are books with pinyin and English. Having English translation is super convenient because of it helps you to read the passage without a dictionary or your phone’s translation app.

Just search parallel texts, and you will find that you have a wide range of literature to select from, such as collections of short stories and compilations of poems. Also, Penguin Random House has a parallel text series, with short stories by both emerging and well-known authors.

Sign up for Calligraphy classes

Although writing practice is crucial for character memorizing, it can get dull and tedious. How can you add fun to a rather tiring study method?

By signing up for a calligraphy course. By using a paintbrush, you get to see the strokes in action, make sense of the order, and gain a better understanding of character structure.

Calligraphy classes are an excellent way to be creative with a repetitive study method. You may get to incorporate diverse colors in your paintings. Chinese characters are beautiful with all the paint strokes, and your final products will look amazing as wall hangings in your apartment.

Watch Chinese Movies, TV shows, and Videos

Who does not love watching TV shows and movies as part of their study session?

While Chinese TV shows and films are more commonly utilized to increase your skills of listening and reading, reading subtitles is also a great way to memorize characters you have studied or will study in the future. It would not have the same effect that writing practice has on character memorization, but at least you are laying the foundation of what the character looks like.

Because of you will be watching these TV shows and movies with an aim and not only for fun, feel free to break the videos into parts. It is pretty intimidating going through an entire film in one go, especially if you are not familiar with a lot of characters.

I suggest starting off with a half-hour TV show, pausing at any moment to write down a character or term you do not recognize and write their definitions. From YouTube to Youku, you have countless options at your disposal. I suggest you expand into other online resources to find videos that truly fit your needs and interests.

For instance, FluentU takes real-world videos such as movie trailers, music videos, news, and inspiring talks and turn them into personalized language learning lessons.

Videos are suitably organized into lessons, so you can proficiently work towards a particular topic, objective, or skill. Use FluentU’s annotated subtitles, flashcards, interactive vocabulary lists, and more to kick your Chinese skills up a notch.

FluentU is a useful resource for watching Chinese videos for two reasons: It provides a range of videos, and you have methods at your disposal to memorize the characters you will see in each video.

Access FluentU on your web browser or take it with you when you download the application at the Google Play Store or iTunes. 

Embrace the Wonders of Karaoke

You might not be the biggest KTV fan, but if there is one thing that makes everything easier to memorize, it is music.

Music works wonders on people, whether it is used as speech therapy, to teach children about manners, or to teach grammar to language students.

Not to mention, it is the best way to help someone with character pronunciation and memorization, considering how relaxed it is to get a song stuck in your mind, regardless if you like the song or not.

Do not know any Chinese songs, or have not mustered up the courage to sing them in front of many people yet?

There are lots of Chinese KTV channels on YouTube, full of modern tunes with both Mandarin and pinyin subtitles. You can also lookup for Chinese versions of English songs if you want to practice with a familiar melody.

Use a notebook, with large squares 

Each character, irrespective of the number of strokes, has to occupy a precise physical space on a sheet of paper.

If the character has many or few strokes, then it does not matter; they all have to be of the same size. It must be borne in mind that the characters, in addition to a sound and a meaning, also have a strong aesthetic component that manifests itself in the art of calligraphy. 

With the characters, you always write the meaning and the pinyin with the tones; this will help you to memorize the four elements of each character, necessary to be able to read, write and understand the meaning of the characters that you learn. In this way, you avoid the frustration of recognizing a character and not knowing how to read it or what it means.

Rewrite the characters already learned at a distance of time

Writing a hundred times in a row, the same character is a method that helps to memorize the character, but it is certainly not the most effective system. The repetition of a character disseminated over time is a much more effective method to remember a character for a long time. 

Instead of writing a character again and again in a single day and then not using it for a long time, what you have to do is write the same character a few times (about ten times) and repeat the exercise for many days.

Learning Chinese characters is a long-term process because there are thousands of characters with 100 radicals and strokes. A lot of practice, flashcard a method, accurate tonality, analyzing radicals, and the Chinese way can help you to memorize Chinese characters efficiently.

Last one: finding a professional teacher in cchatty to help you practice writing skills.