How can I gain some fluency with Chinese radicals? ?
I’m learning Mandarin, and having some success with speaking the language, but I haven’t been able to make any headway in writing. I’ve been told to try to get a feel for the radicals, rather than trying to memorize each one. Which ones should I learn first, and how? How is writing usually taught?
(I’m completely self-taught; I don’t know anyone who can help me with my Chinese, and there are no programs at my school. I only have access to books, websites and software. Also, if it helps, I have a pinyin entry method installed on my computer.)
you need to get a character workbook that shows you the correct stroke order, otherwise your characters will look ugly (possibly illegible), but don’t get discouraged. It will become intuitive after a while. Basically, it’s top to bottom, left to right, outside in. The character workbooks usually have little boxes with dotted lines so you can trace over it in the correct stroke order.
Yes, first learn the basic radicals. (sun, moon, water, fire, mountain etc.) I didn’t, but I wish I had.
How I learned to write characters was that I would see the list of characters for a particular lesson, cover the characters, and try to write them from just looking at the pinyin. If I got one character wrong, I would do it over again. Also, my book had a little dialogue incorporating the characters learned from that section. I would read the pinyin-transcribed dialogue and write the corresponding characters for each pinyin, and if I messed up ONE character, I would do it all over again.
When I was done with that, I would make my own sentences to try and make sense of what I just learned. This was also a way to recall previously learned characters.
Lastly, write every chance you get. If you’re waiting in line for something, or during TV commercials, just write write write, even if it’s the same character, 20 times. You can never write enough.
Learning Chinese Part 1 – Lenaia.com – Introduction to the Chinese Language and to Lenaia.com