An Expatriate in Taiwan

Hanzi Milestone: 1000

I finally broke the 1000 mark on my Hanzi Flashcards on Friday. Feels good, yet I’ve got a long way to go.

I officially started studying Hanzi on Feb. 9 of this year, armed only with Anki, pen and paper, and a book. I learned approximately 300 Hanzi by simple rote memorization (I also learned to sing a few Chinese songs and entertained my friends at the KTV) before discovering Heisig.

I started using Heisig on July 14 and have thus far finished the first 25 chapters. This brings my total number of Hanzi to 1007. It’s very slow, I know. Many people finish Heisig in a matter of a few months. Since I don’t have as much time as I’d like to dedicate to it, I’m much slower. I get 15 new Hanzi on a good day, sometimes as few as 8 or none at all depending on my schedule. What is apparent is that Heisig has incredibly sped up my learning process. I can read and write all 1007 of those Hanzi; I know the pronunciations for most of them; it’s exhilarating and extremely satisfying to sit down to watch TV and be able to understand the subtitles.

I also read the 國語日報 everyday to practice pronunciation and get some input and it’s nice that I’m always recognizing new characters. Street names, menu items, directions – slowly, everything is becoming more clearer. I cannot recommend Heisig enough if you want to learn to read and write Hanzi. It has worked for me and countless others. It is simply one of the greatest, if not the greatest, method for acquiring languages.

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Comments

3 responses to “Hanzi Milestone: 1000”

  1. Paul Avatar
    Paul

    I too am trying to learn Mandarin. I have never heard of Heisig. Is it a person or a learning guide? Where can I find out more? And congratulations. I once knew a few hundred characters but lack of practice allowed me to forget most of them.

    Reply
    1. The Expatriate Avatar
      The Expatriate

      James W. Heisig is the guy who has created his own learning method for learning the meaning of Japanese Kanji and Chinese Hanzi. Native speakers of those languages tend to learn the characters, meaning, and pronunciation by rote memorization over a number of years. Heisig introduced a method where you can learn the meaning of “primitives” and build off of those to learn new characters, all the while using visual imagery and stories to make learning the characters that much faster.
      My learning is relatively slow. Many people sit down and learn 100 new Hanzi everyday and finished the Heisig book in a matter of weeks. I prefer to just take it slow and make sure I can read, write, and pronounce all the characters I learn.
      Here’s the Amazon link for more info. If you want to get back into Mandarin, I highly recommend it.

      Reply
  2. Bryan Avatar
    Bryan

    I can see the Hanzi characters now that I have Windows 7. This is awesome!

    Reply

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