Learn Chinese Characters
Although Koreans had to learn Classical Chinese to be properly literate for the most part, some additional systems were developed which used simplified forms of Chinese characters that phonetically transcribe Korean, including hyangchal (향찰; 鄕札), gugyeol (구결; 口訣), and idu (이두; 吏讀). citation needed.
So what are you supposed to do if you're interested in diving into the culture and language spoken by 15% of the world's population? You could start by learning to read Chinese first--a more attainable goal. But how? There are some 10,000 Chinese characters in common use. Basic literacy, according to the Chinese government, starts at two thousand characters. A solid grasp of a daily Beijing newspaper requires knowing around three thousand. An erudite Chinese reader should recognize five to seven thousand characters.
How about eight? ShaoLan Hsueh, a Taiwanese entrepreneur and venture investor living in London, has developed a visual system for learning to read Chinese, called Chineasy, that transforms cornerstone Chinese characters known as radicals into clever illustrations and stories to teach people a basic vocabulary.
ShaoLan introduced her system in a rousingly well-received TED talk in February in Long Beach, Calif., the video of which should go live in May. She says she's gotten more than a thousand emails and LinkedIn invites since then from people who want to get started. In the meantime, she has published a Facebook page introducing her concept. (If you go to the Facebook page, you have to start from the bottom of the timeline and work up, because the lesson follows a particular order.) She's also published a charming placeholder of a Web site here.
'I grew up in Taiwan as the daughter of a calligrapher. Some of my earliest and most treasured memories are of my mother showing me the beauty, shape and form of Chinese characters. Ever since then I have been deeply fascinated by the structure of this incredible language,' says ShaoLan. 'Twelve years ago I moved to England and enrolled at Cambridge University. Two years later, I had one degree and two children. As I settled into my new life, I observed how in vogue China was and how eagerly people wanted to embrace the culture – yet they struggled with the language. Even my own children found it daunting. That’s when I started to think about how a new, simpler method for reading Chinese might be useful. By day I worked as an Internet entrepreneur and venture capitalist and by night I was consumed with creating a system to make learning Chinese easy.'
ShaoLan worked with London design firm Brave New World and Israeli illustrator Noma Bar to breathe a little life into eight basic radicals, and then expanded on those by working them into pictographic stories.
Take a look. Here's 'ren,' the radical for person, illustrated with head and feet:
The Prisoner Of Azkaban. Can you spot the character for prisoner?
In an example of weaving in a little history, here's the character for mountain, with Chineasy illustration on top.
read Chinese first--a more attainable goal. But how? There are some 10,000 Chinese characters in common use. Basic literacy, according to the Chinese government, starts at two thousand characters. A solid grasp of a daily Beijing newspaper requires knowing around three thousand. An erudite Chinese reader should recognize five to seven thousand characters.
How about eight? ShaoLan Hsueh, a Taiwanese entrepreneur and venture investor living in London, has developed a visual system for learning to read Chinese, called Chineasy, that transforms cornerstone Chinese characters known as radicals into clever illustrations and stories to teach people a basic vocabulary.
ShaoLan introduced her system in a rousingly well-received TED talk in February in Long Beach, Calif., the video of which should go live in May. She says she's gotten more than a thousand emails and LinkedIn invites since then from people who want to get started. In the meantime, she has published a Facebook page introducing her concept. (If you go to the Facebook page, you have to start from the bottom of the timeline and work up, because the lesson follows a particular order.) She's also published a charming placeholder of a Web site here.
'I grew up in Taiwan as the daughter of a calligrapher. Some of my earliest and most treasured memories are of my mother showing me the beauty, shape and form of Chinese characters. Ever since then I have been deeply fascinated by the structure of this incredible language,' says ShaoLan. 'Twelve years ago I moved to England and enrolled at Cambridge University. Two years later, I had one degree and two children. As I settled into my new life, I observed how in vogue China was and how eagerly people wanted to embrace the culture – yet they struggled with the language. Even my own children found it daunting. That’s when I started to think about how a new, simpler method for reading Chinese might be useful. By day I worked as an Internet entrepreneur and venture capitalist and by night I was consumed with creating a system to make learning Chinese easy.'
ShaoLan worked with London design firm Brave New World and Israeli illustrator Noma Bar to breathe a little life into eight basic radicals, and then expanded on those by working them into pictographic stories.
Take a look. Here's 'ren,' the radical for person, illustrated with head and feet:
Here's the character and word for mouth. It's harder to forget with teeth, tongue and uvula:
Two people make the word follow. Three is a crowd. A person with arms stretched wide is 'big.' A person inside a mouth is a prisoner.
Putting the lesson to work, here's the Chinese-language cover of the Harry Potter novel The Prisoner Of Azkaban. Can you spot the character for prisoner?
Here's the word for adult, combining big and person:
Here's the word 'adult' on the upper left-hand corner of a cover of a Japanese magazine (Chinese and Japanese share the same character set, more or less). See? You're already reading Chinese.
Here's a Chinese ad for Ray Romano's sitcom 'Everybody Loves Raymond.' Can you spot the word 'everybody' now that you know the word for person?
Here's the character for tree, with a dollop of vegetation on top for good measure:
Two trees are woods, three make a forest, and there are other logical variations.
Here's a promo for NBA star Jeremy Lin, also from Taiwan, where Lin in a pretty common name that means forest. Spot it?
Learn Chinese Characters App
To be sure, ShaoLan is taking liberties with the language here. Very few Chinese characters are actual pictographs that reflect the meanings of the words. This is supposed to be good fun, and a way to remember what's what. 'The illustrations are the first step in my method,' she says. 'The beautiful images allow people to remember characters easily. We can illustrate hundreds of them. We illustrate all the radicals and lots of the new characters you build from radicals whenever they make sense. Once people recognize the radicals and are trained to ‘decipher’ any given character, they will need to start to understand a bit of Chinese culture and history to comprehend more characters.'
In an example of weaving in a little history, here's the character for mountain, with Chineasy illustration on top.
Two mountains stacked on top of each other mean ‘to get out’. In ancient times, the Emperor sent his enemies into exile beyond the mountains. Today, exile has come to mean to get out.
You can pick up a few more Chinese characters by flipping through this gallery:
This app is only available on the App Store for iOS devices.
Description
This application introduces Chinese characters to non-native speakers or young kids in a fun and intuitive way: to understand their origins as pictures of the objects they represent.
For example, the Chinese character for Sun was originally a circle with a dot in its center. It has evolved over the history, but you can still find traces of its original shape.
Besides explaining the picture meanings, this application also demonstrates the correct way of pronouncing and writing the characters. It even let you practice on your iPhone side by side with the demonstration. You'll find that you will be able to read and write dozens of Chinese characters in no time!
Your feedback is greatly appreciated!
Feature Highlights
* An introduction covering the basics of the Chinese language, including its grammar, stroke order rules, the Simplified and Traditional Chinese, and so on.
* Featured character are organized into categories and are introduced with their picture origins.
* The Progressive Study mode allows you to learn most common Chinese characters first and to measure your understanding with carefully selected questions in tests.
* An index page of characters listed in alphabetical order, with search functionality. Users can search with character's pinyin, Chinese writing, or the English meanings.
* Recorded Character sound
* Character writing demonstrations and practice screens. You can practice writing Chinese characters right on your device screen!
* This application runs on iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad, which means you only need to buy once and use on all your devices!
Users Feedback
'Dam good ***** - This app organizes the most commonly used Chinese symbols in an orderly, accessible fashion.' - by Push926
'Fun and Easy! *****' - by Ryan1223432
'Very helpful. I am looking forward for more updates! *****' - by Nightreaver
'This App is Awesome! *****' - by RebeccaTVS
'Awesome! Thanks! Love the historical info because it all makes so much more sense. *****' - by Jondailey
What’s New
Ratings and Reviews
Helpful in Learning Characters
Learn Chinese Characters Program
This will not teach a person the Chinese language, but it makes a handy reference when one is working with pinyin and wants to see what the real words are. The progressive study has the worthy goal of quickly familiarizing a novice with Chinese text to make it less intimidating. The percentage learned status displayed here is deceptive, however. I have completed enough levels supposedly to be able to recognize over 60% of characters in typical text, but from my experiments with Chinese newspapers, it is closer to about 40%. The number of errors in the English text also increases in the later progressive lessons as if less proofreading were being done. An amusing example is where a bride is described as 'newly web.'
Learn Chinese Characters Pdf
Appropriate for more serious Mandarin learners.
Don't be fooled by the lack of fun animated games this app is actually quite helpful. Mandarin learners will benefit from the stroke order videos and character writing practice. A more advanced Chinese learner is able to recognize characters by their radicals, and this is one of the few apps that teaches basic stroke composition/radicals. Buy this app, practice writing with a real pencil and paper and you will be well on your way to understanding basic Chinese sentences through the meaning of characters. This app focuses more on characters than grammar or reading though so it's not perfect, but I haven't found a better app for learning Mandarin characters. The app even gives you the meaning based on the characters etymology and structure. Well designed app! Learn your Mandarin characters here and enjoy the animated apps like MindSnacks Mandarin for tonal/fast recognition studies. Don't buy this if you are just learning Mandarin for a quick week in China or don't plan on practicing the language through reading. This will not help the people who just need quick study to get by in China. Buy a phrase book in your local bookstore for that.
Annoying sound glitch
The sound doesn't work when you click on a character within a lesson. It works in the glossary of characters, but not within the lesson. For example, in the introduction to pinyin and pronunciation, it says 'Click below to hear the four different tones used in Mandarin,' and when you click on them, nothing happens. But if you jump out of the lesson and go to the glossary and then click on the relevant character/word, then the app will play the sound. This is extremely frustrating, and a very shabby glitch in the program. The developer needs to fix this ASAP, for it's a glaring mistake that severely detracts from the app's usefulness. What good is reading a lesson on a tonal language if you can't actually hear the tones while doing the lesson? It's obviously a bug, but it needs to be fixed immediately. Otherwise, content-wise, the app seems pretty good. But until the developer fixes the sound glitch, I recommend any beginning student of Mandarin to buy another app.
Information
Requires iOS 8.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
Supports
Family Sharing
With Family Sharing set up, up to six family members can use this app.