Killer Fact - 指鹿为马 and 馬鹿, ばか, or バカ

The link between deers, deliberate deception and fools in Japan.

Horsedragonfish  鹿 lù deer has an interesting infographic about this hanzi. See below.

 指鹿为马 zhǐ lù wéi mǎ making a deer out to be a horse.  A Chinese idiom about deception. Connected to the Japanese insult baka "fool; idiot" is usually written 馬鹿 (lit. "horse deer"). Archaic Kanji phonetic kanji transcriptions of baka include 莫迦 and 破家.  Etymology from Chinese idiom  zhǐ lù wéi  指鹿為馬 lit. "point at a deer and call it a horse" 

From Baka 馬鹿  Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia.

I should have know this from my studies in Japanese. Baka was one of the first insults I learned in Japan. However, I don't think anyone could explain it to me. My Japanese home stay is responsible as I used to watch Crayon Shin Chan  クレヨンしんちゃん, Kureyon Shin-chan (anime) with the youngest son in the family. 

Karaoke sing along lyrics here

So the 'penny has dropped', 'the pieces have fallen into place' and 'onward and upward' for learning more hanzi. 

More here about the story of the idiom. 

Point at a Deer and Call it a Horse

Proverbs and Sayings

Horsedragonfish

Chinese Superman Awesome Hanzi Explanations

Chinese Superman, HorseDraonFish, Chinese Memes...

When I found this I thought it was great...I wish I could make such excellent explanations and present them like this.

InfoGraphics explaining hanzi and sentences in Chinese and English, amusing memes, hanzi explanations....a very different approach to explaining Chinese Characters.

Examples;

Getting a Haircut in Chinese

An introduction to the Sun

Chinese Superman, HorseDraonFish, Chinese Memes...

Multimedia Chinese Teaching System

Found another Chinese language learning resource. The Rutgers Multimedia Chinese Teaching System has four levels of lessons for first year to fourth year students. It has plenty of content in simplified hanzi, pinyin, audio and English. There is also content in traditional characters.The scripts for learning are quite detailed. Accompanying these pages of scripts are grammar explanations.  There is plenty of content in this site.


However, despite the content navigation for the site is very poor. It is difficult to navigate around the site as menus are not consistent. Sometimes links at the bottom and sometimes the left side navigation changes from English to Chinese Hanzi.   I do not know if this is intentional (perhaps it is an attempt at partial immersion in Chinese). Definitely makes moving around the site challenging. Some of the pages are not set out well. It is difficult to find related content quickly. 


 If the site were redesigned with a consistent navigation it would be better. This site may be useful to supplement your main study. It is a pity that it is difficult to find specific information as the materials and grammar are detailed.

"The Rutgers Multimedia Chinese Teaching System (RMCTS). This is a computer based multimedia curriculum to supplement First year, Second year, and Advanced Chinese (Third and Fourth year) language instruction at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey."

Multimedia Chinese Teaching System 

中文阅读 - 朗朗中文 Yes! Chinese - Learning Chinese

中文阅读 - 朗朗中文 Yes! Chinese - Learning Chinese

Found a website of Graded Chinese Readers. This site offers the following levels;

• Pre-K
• Elementary
• High School
• Grown Up
• Classic Reading
• Flash Cards

The site has very attractive flash animations, interactive Hanzi writing, examples of compound hanzi, and more. Clicking the sound files will read the passages to you. You can also opt to hear single words, single sentences or the whole text.

中文阅读 - 朗朗中文 Yes! Chinese - Learning Chinese

Free CML Blank Hanzi Worksheet

Free CML Blank Hanzi Worksheet

Free CML Blank Hanzi Worksheet

控 kòng 'control', is character of the year in China

 控    kòng    
to control / to sue/ to accuse / to charge

BBC News - Kong, or 'control', is character of the year in China

Electric Things

A long long time ago when I learned Japanese, I started to become very interested in kanji. The first one that fascinated me was 電. I liked the story of the rain and rice field with the bolt of lightning (natural electricity). Now that I am learning hanzi and simplified Chinese the character looks like this 电 and loses much of the original story. However I have realised that this character is turning up again and again in my vocabulary lists. Here are some examples with literal translations;

电视 Electric Look - TV

电影 Electric Shadows - Films

电梯 Electric Stairs - Escalator

电脑 Electric Brains - Computer

电车 Electric Car - Tram

电邮 Electric Post - Email

电话 Electric Voice - Telephone

When I think about these words it makes me think how logical and straight forward Chinese language sometimes is. The literal translations act as automatic mnemonics so that I can easily remember them.

苹果手机

Just found this post today from Dim Sum

The Apple iPhone 4s was announced a couple of weeks ago. iPhones are very popular in China.

The hanzi and words for the iPhone is;

苹果手机 Píng​guǒ​ shǒu​jī


Breaking it down it becomes

苹果 Apple Píng​guǒ

手 Hand shǒu

机 Machine  ​jī

Thinking of a direct translations in this case is how I can remember the word and the hanzi and never forget.  This to me is a ready made mnemonic.

I want to buy an Apple Hand Machine. 我喜欢买一台苹果毛机。

Thanks again to Dim Sum for the original posting.

Chinese Picture Dictionary

Here is a great resource for visual learners. A Chinese Picture Dictionary. Lots of categories with the word in English, hanzi, pinyin and an audio to listen to for correct pronunciation. I found it very useful. There are 52 catagories from Airplane to Weather. Fast to load and quick and easy to look up. An excellent multimedia resource for learning Chinese.

The about page has this information

 “The Chinese Picture Dictionary is a multimedia courseware that aims to expand the vocabulary of beginning-level Chinese language students.  The Chinese Picture Dictionary presents several hundred pictures based on familiar settings of daily life. ..Each picture is presented in an individual page, along with buttons students can click to view the depicted vocabulary word written in Chinese script, view the pronunciation spelled out in Pinyin romanization, and  view a sample sentence using the word.  In addition, students can listen to native speakers of the language pronounce the word. 

The Chinese Picture Dictionary originated from the fact that pictures have long been favored by language teachers as a learning tool.  Because of their visual nature, they can say far more than words, and avoid the unnecessary use of translation.  The thematic presentation of 20 pictures together aims to help Chinese language students to streamline their learning and knowledge of new vocabulary in an effective way.”

NPCR1 to NPCR2

Recently I reached a milestone in my learning. I finished New Practical Chinese Reader and began New Practical Chinese Reader Two. There are some noticeable differences between the two texts. The most obvious is that there is no longer any pinyin with the dialogues that begin each lesson / chapter. The idea is that the text will gradually ween us off the use of pinyin. According to the introduction in NPCR1 this is part of the methodology of the series of books. A more subtle change is that the grammer, sentence patterns, questions and answers have become much more complex. I expected the texts to become more difficult, but there seems to be quite a jump from simple Chinese to more complex Chinese.

Here is something I did not expect. There are many suplementary resources for NPCR1 across the Net. As for NPCR2 there seems to be very few resources available. I can't understand this. It is as though learners had very good intentions to begin learning Mandarin, worked their way through NPCR1 and then stopped. Alternatively many of the supporting web sites seemed to have given up creating media that would help learners who choose this text. There are a few websites where I can still access some resources, but others finished with Lesson 14 of NPCR1. So this makes working through NPCR2 for me a bit more dull and less of a rich learning experience. I have searched for suplementary materials for NPCR2 and found nothing.

I still have access these sites;

Chinese Character Writing Exercise Sheets

Quizlet

YellowBridge

Hanlexon

I should mention that my university UNE does supply me with multiple resources to support my learning. The lesson guides are very detailed, well written and support my studies. There is much to do and much to learn in my course of study. 

So onward and upward using NPCR2. If anyone has a NPCR2 related resource or resources I would be very pleased to know about it.  

Chinese Character Etymology

When learning characters I often find one of the best ways to remember is by learning the etymology of the hanzi. This method helps me a great deal. By looking at how the characters have changed over time and seeing their original forms creates links in my memory. I much prefer this to rote learning the hanzi.

I have found three sites that are useful to look up hanzi etymologies.

YellowBridge has a Etymology Explorer which allows you to draw the character (using a mouse) to aid lookup. There are other methods of lookup too; English, Pinyin and others. After finding the hanzi, the explorer can then show the formation method, simplification method and character decomposition.

Hanzi Etymology Explorer

 Another site Chinese-Characters.org has a Pinyin index and a Radical index. Unfortunately the last entry into the weblog was in 2009 and the home page explains that it was a huge project and a labour of love. Do not expect this site to have everything. 

Chinese-Characters.org

Chinese-Characters.org

Third site that you can find much detailed information on hanzi etymology is 中文.com. While I like this site it does look very busy and complex. It displays the hazi with every associated compound. It does have multiple ways to lookup. You can even make quizzes with the learn page. 

Hanzi Etymology Explorer

Hanyu.com

So three very useful sites for etymology look-up. 

Does anyone know of any others? Leave a comment if you have a similar site to recommend.

MDBG English Chinese Dictionary

MDBG English Chinese Dictionary is the best online dictionary I have found so far.  The dictionary The word dictionary contains information about Chinese words, consisting of one or more Chinese characters. Results of searches in the word dictionary will show the following;

• Simplified / Traditional Chinese, the Chinese words matching the query
• Mandarin, the Mandarin pronunciation in Pinyin or ㄅㄆㄇㄈ (Zhuyin Fuhao)
• English, the English definition
• Traditional / Simplified Variant, the Traditional / Simplified variant if available
• HSK, the HSK level(s) in which this word occurs

I find it very useful as it has animated stroke order and you can hear the hanzi pronounced.   It will break the hanzi into character composition. The interface is very easy to use. So a very useful tool for a Chinese Mandarin Learner. Have a look for yourself MDBG Character Dictionary

The most common Chinese characters in order of frequency

The most common Chinese characters in order of frequency is an interesting website. The 汉字 hanzi are listed according to falling statistical order.

The tip from the web page introductions states that the list could be used;

"Students can use the character list to create flashcards in order to train Chinese. Teachers can aslo make such cards to use in their teaching. Write the Chinese characters (possibly both simplified and traditional forms) on one side of a little piece of cardboard. Write pronunciation and explanations on the other side."

The list has 2700 hanzi. It has the first 2400 hanzi and then there are gaps. I like the look of this web site and the list. It has hanzi, pinyin and examples of usage and sentences. Quite a useful resources. Here is an from the beginning of the list.





The most Common Chinese Characters in order of Frequency

The Most Complicated / Difficult Chinese Character

I found this on YouTube. According to the comments it is;

Biáng biáng noodles

• The most difficult in contemporary usage
• A traditional character
• It means Biáng biáng noodles (noodles found in Shaanxi Province)
• Not found in modern dictionaries
• Can’t be entered into computers
• Not used as a Kanji in Japan

 See it written here

Even more information found on Wikipedia Biángbiáng noodles

Hanzi Practice Sheets

I find learning Hanzi quite enjoyable. For me I do not find it particularly difficult. I expect it comes from learning Japanese Kanji for many years. So learning new Hanzi does not bother me. The rules of writing Hanzi top to bottom, left to right and fill boxes before closing them is something that comes naturally to me now. I have several sources of Hanzi practice sheets; Hanyu.com has stroke order animations and sound files for New Practical Chinese Reader (NPCR), a site called New Trier has downloadable sets of NPCR 1 and NPCR 2 practice writing sheets  and lastly there is Hanlexon. I like Hanlexon resources as the site will allow you to customize your own Hanzi character practice sheet. I found this site very useful before my last exam.

I don’t really have one set method for learning Hanzi. I use pen and pencil to fill out practice sheets. I occasionally use my iPad with a drawing App. I tend to rote learn while listening to music. I do try to make links and connections with previously learned Hanzi. I do use a lot of Mnemonics which I shall write about in detail in a future post.