Advice On Remembering Chinese Characters

by hanamigo

posted on 10/09/2009

Whether you're studying Chinese or Japanese, you're going to have to learn Chinese characters, thousands of them. Many Chinese characters look alike because of the similar elements that they share. There's no way around learning these thousands of characters, but there are several ways to help you remember them.

By Radical
A single Chinese character can be broken down into smaller parts, or radicals, that each has its own meaning. If you start off your study by learning simpler characters first, you will be able to identify the meaning of each radical.

After you have learned several different radicals, you can change your approach to learning the different characters. Even without knowing exactly what a whole character means, you can break the Chinese character down into its radicals and guess what the character may mean.

Once you know these radicals and how to write them, learning other characters that share the same radicals will become much easier. It'll be like you already know a part of the character. Just memorize the placement of the other radicals, and you will have mastered the whole Chinese character.

With Flashcards
Flashcards often help when you need to learn something. This method is probably best to help you with connecting the character's meaning to the Chinese character itself. Knowing what something means helps to deepen your understanding of it.

When using your flashcards, repetition is very important. Repeat as often as you feel is necessary. If you're serious about your study of Chinese or Japanese, you will need to review your flashcards every day. Language study is a long process, and something that must be done often.

To help these Chinese characters stay in your memory, change the order of the flashcards. You won't truly be able to memorize these characters unless you change up the order. This way, your memory won't be dependent on the order, but rather the actual character. Mix them up and make sure that you know the characters no matter what order they appear in.

Everyday Usage
You should keep in mind that learning Chinese characters, either for your Chinese or Japanese language study, shouldn't just be stale learning. Over one billion people use these characters everyday for written communication.

When they had to learn these characters in school, they were able to learn them because they used them every day. They had to. To truly learn them as if they were the written characters of your native language's alphabet, you must also use these characters every day. Once you can recall these characters naturally as you write, you will be on your way to mastering the written language.

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