Tuttle Learning Chinese Characters

by Alison Matthews, Laurence Matthews

This user–friendly book is aimed at helping students of Mandarin Chinese learn and remember Chinese characters.

At last—there is a truly efficient and enjoyable way to learn Chinese characters! This book helps students to learn and remember both the meanings and the pronunciations of over 800 characters. This otherwise daunting task is made more accessible by the use of techniques based on the psychology of learning and memory. Fundamental principles include the use of visual imagery, the visualization of short "stories," and the systematic building up of more complicated characters from basic building blocks.

Although Learning Chinese Characters is a comprehensive book intended for students, it can be used by anyone with an interest in Chinese characters, without any prior knowledge of Chinese. It can be used alongside (or after, or even before) a course in the Chinese language. All characters are simplified (as in mainland China) but traditional characters are also given, when available.

Key features:
Specially designed pictures and stories are used in a structured way to make the learning process more enjoyable and effective, reducing the need for rote learning to the absolute minimum.
The emphasis throughout is on learning and remembering the meanings and pronunciations of the characters. Tips are also included on learning techniques and how to avoid common problems.
Characters are introduced in a logical sequence, which also gives priority to learning the most common characters first.
Modern simplified characters are used, with pronunciations given in pinyin. Key information is given for each character, including radical, stroke–count, traditional form, compounds, and guidance on writing the character.

This is a practical guide with a clear, concise and appealing layout, and it is well–indexed with clear lookup methods. The 800 Chinese characters and 1,033 compounds specified for the original HSK Level A proficiency test are covered.

About the Author:
Alison Matthews is a statistician who has worked in the oil, aviation, tourism, medical and software industries.

Laurence Matthews is the author of the Kanji Fast Finder and Chinese Character Fast Finder books.

Genres: China, Language, Reference, Nonfiction, Linguistics, Textbooks, Asia

384 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 2007

About the author

Alison Matthews is a statistician who has worked in the oil, aviation, tourism, medical and software industries, and also as a university lecturer. She is co-author with her husband Laurence Matthews of several books; they maintain a joint presence on Goodreads under Laurence's profile.

Reviews

[Sam Gellman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here's my thought: If you are an English speaker and you want to learn to read Chinese characters, this is the book you must buy. I'm not super experienced in learning Chinese, but in everything I've tried, this is the only thing that really sticks. It requires a lot of work. It requires a lot of time. It kinda makes your head spin. But it's so incredibly smart. It's so smart. I'm kind of amazed by the book. I want to tell people about the new Chinese characters I've learned and the crazy stories that made me remember them. Of course no one cares, but c'est la vie. But I have actually made real progress and am comfortable that by the end of this book (along with hours and hours of studying) I will know 800 characters.

I think that everyone has different learning styles, and this probably isn't for everyone. I don't think it's the best place to start with Chinese 101. It probably should exist along side more traditional classes (try online Chinese tutoring... a company called CLI that I use is US$18/hour and great 1x1 tutoring), but for someone who has learned speaking and conversation for a year or two... this is the book to learn to read.

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Learning 3-5 characters per day...not expecting to become fluent, but would like to be able to recognize a bit of the writing while I'm there, while gaining an appreciation of the language. I really like the fact that this book speaks to my visual learning preference, as well as creating a mnemonic story for most characters. So far, groovy.

[Nancy Foster · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just trying to declutter my reading tab. I had a copy of this book on my old cellphone, not sure if I can read it on my current device. The information is interesting, albeit better aimed at A2 readers and above. I felt a bit overwhelmed with the book because I am only a beginner.

[Van · Rating 5 out of 5]

1st review: I came across this book in the library. So far it does help me retain the characters' meanings longer than other self-learn books. I strongly recommend this book for those who want to learn Chinese for reading and writing. This book combined with a grammar book and some Chinese learning app is perfect. For those who want to learn conversational Chinese only, as you can see the title does not for you. I love this book's ideas.

2nd review: my first review is a bit abstract. Im still using this book as a reference. If you want to try out this book, i would suggest you to follow the instruction and how-to-use advice from the author, such as learning chapter 1-6 in order then you can jump to where you need. The first few chapters to give you an idea how to use the story-memory and pictures technique to connect characters to their meaning. Then you are free to use other Chinese grammar book. When you want to learn about the character that you see in the grammar or beginner Chinese book, use this book as a beginner dictionary. Go to index search for the pinyin of that character that you see in the other book, then this book will give you the number of that character that you can go there and learn how to memorise them.

I found it very helpful. Dont expect to remember all of them. Sometimes you might not remember, when I can remember, i go back to the stories that I read. This memory revise process is faster and help me memorise them longer.

Well, not everyone will follow just one technique. Personally, this one suit me. You need to try and see if it suit you. If it does not, just go find different methods in other books. Learning is a long process, but keep in mind we can reach to the same destination with different approaches. I might see you there even though we take different paths.

[Jane Lowy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great idea for a foreign language book! I was able to learn to recognize and even approximately pronounce a lot of Chinese characters using the authors' method of visualizing stories reprsenting the character fragments. I found it a bit trying however, when they left out the pictures or had "do it yourself" pronunciations, though I could see their point that I was supposed to learn to create my own mental pictures - and, of course, not all sounds translate. Still, I couldn't help feeling somewhat cheated in those cases.

On the whole, though, I thought it was a very readable, humorous, and relatively easy way to learn to read some Chinese, which was something that I never thought I would do!

[Joy · Rating 4 out of 5]

To start, I'll confess I didn't use this book as directed: I don't like using a lot of mnemonics, I find the fairies and dwarves and teddy bears a lot more faff than just remembering the thing I want to remember. I also think linking up Chinese pronunciation with English words is not helpful for developing good speaking skills. Xíng doesn't sound like shingle and cūn doesn't sound like stun, and in my opinion it's an ill-advised crutch to remember them this way.

A lot of radicals are introduced through illustrations. Sometimes these are intuitive - 人 as a person's two legs, 目 as an eye - but a lot of the time it's just a drawing drawn around the character, not particularly memorable or helpful. Many of the latter radicals draw a person around a character, and the person is doing something, with a speech bubble saying the meaning... Which doesn't create a very strong association for me. The book does encourage you to create new mnemonics if the presented ones don't work for you.

So, that's a lot that I don't particularly like...

BUT, this is still a fantastic list of hanzi and radicals ordered in a systematic way. So even though I'm disregarding about half of the book's content, I still find it immensely valuable. It's a difficult balance when teaching or learning Chinese whether to learn the simple hanzi that are less useful, or the everyday words that have many strokes and components. This book does a great job at it, focusing on the radicals that comprise those most important characters and working our way up to them.

This book takes a long time to even flip through, and much longer to properly learn all these characters. Impressively, it teaches all of the characters in the old style HSK Basic A level. HSK is about to go through its second revision, so this list isn't a perfect match to that standard anymore, but it still means it contains a good sample of the characters you need for basic everyday communication.

Each character is given with the stroke order and a few common words that include it. They note when certain characters are easily mixed up (ex 'remember 未 has a shorter stroke on top, while 末 has a longer stroke on top') and when there are tricky stroke orders.

All in all, this book has been compiled with a lot of care and it really shows. I would recommend it to anyone wanting to learn to read or to write Chinese. Just remember that you can take the parts that work for you, and leave the parts that don't!

[Vinh Khang Nguyen · Rating 4 out of 5]

it is a really long read。 however, I really enjoyed the progress. This is my recommended way to use the book:
1. Everyday study just one chapter.
2. You should have a book to write down all the characters in the chapter.
3. Don't read the story made up in the book, create your own stories then you would be able to retain the memory longer.

The book is super good in arrangements of all the characters from basic to intermediate and how it builds up characters and their building blocks from simple to complicated, from easy to difficult.

However a minus star from me because of the stories they made up sometimes too complicated, and not necessarily that way. Also there is still a lot of typing mistakes and wrong meanings of some words where I discovered by double checking with Pleco ( another famous Chinese learner's dictionary).

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're learning to read Chinese, you need this book. It has line drawings and stories to help you learn and remember your first 800 characters, and the method works really well.

There are also drawings and stories to help you learn the pronunciations, but I cannot recommend these. The pronunciation they teach is not the Mandarin one, but the closest English approximation. If you want to learn to pronounce Mandarin so badly that people will beg you to switch to English, that's the way to go.

Learn how to pronounce Mandarin, for real, before you set out to read it. Then use this book to learn to read. It will greatly speed up the process.

[Khoa Ngô · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book to learn chinese Characters with clear logic

[Mel · Rating 3 out of 5]

The teaching style did not suit me

[khushi ☆〜（ゝ。∂） · Rating 3 out of 5]

think Chineasy but all the characters have lore. fun, but personally, i prefer a more grammar-based approach to my language learning books it seems :/

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dnf, switched to hiragana and katakana, but great mnemonics :D

[Allison]

took forever, just used this book to get more practice writing characters and understanding their different components

[Amin Bachari · Rating 4 out of 5]

برای شروع نوشتن چینی خیلی کمکم کرد

ولی از یه جایی دیگه ادامش ندادم چون دیگه غیرکاربردی شده بود.

در کل برای شروع زبان چینی عالیه

[Helmut · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vom Riesentarzan und dem weinschnorrenden Zwerg

Ein freundlicher Polzist läuft jeden Abend am Hafen entlang. Er grüßt die vielen Pärchen, die er trifft, mit einem freundlichen "Abend, abend!". Sogar den Geisterriesen, der den Dom am Ende des Piers bewacht.

Kaum zu glauben, dass sich mit dieser Geschichte sowohl die Zusammensetzung als auch die Aussprache und Bedeutung eines chinesischen Zeichens lernen (und vor allem auch behalten!) lässt. Es funktioniert aber! Auch ich war diesen mnemotechnischen Kunstkniffen immer irgendwie ablehnend gegenübergestanden, doch dieses Buch hat mich eines besseren belehrt. Gerade bei den chinesischen Zeichen, wo man sich nicht wie bei europäischen Sprachen nur die Bedeutung, sondern darüber hinaus auch die Aussprache merken muss (da man sie nur sehr bedingt aus dem Zeichen selbst ableiten kann), hilft die Geschichtentechnik ungemein.

In Kombination mit einem Vokabelkasten habe ich innerhalb von nur 2 Wochen halbwegs regelmäßigen Trainings 100 chinesische Zeichen gelernt und kaum Probleme damit, diese zu erinnern - und das mit nur rudimentärsten Chinesisch-Vorkenntnissen; und ich habe noch vor, alle 800 HSK-A-Zeichen dieses Buchs zu lernen.

Klar ist, dass man sich in der Sprache des Buches, englisch, einigermaßen sicher fühlen sollte, da gerade die Aussprachegedächtnishinweise der Wörter sich natürlich am Englischen orientieren, und es nicht viel bringt, wenn man versuchen will, sich eine Fremdsprache innerhalb einer anderen anzueignen, wenn man die andere nicht gut beherrscht.

Sehr liebevoll aufgemacht ist das Buch auch: etwas dilettantische (aber sympathische) Zeichnungen, Strichreihenfolge und zugehöriges Radikal sind immer angegeben. Gutes Papier, stabile Bindung und ein Wortindex am Ende des Buchs für Bedeutung und Aussprache komplettieren das Paket.

Das Wort, um das es in der Geschichte oben geht, ist übrigens "duo" und bedeutet "viel". Für eine Vokabel viel Aufwand, aber wenn man das in der Masse sieht, funktioniert es.

[Skeetor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best book I found to learn Chinese characters. At first I was hesitant with the goofy stories they use to teach them, but it works! Do pay close attention to the introduction as it is packed with useful information.
I was sad to learn that there is not going to be a Volume Two...

[Crissman Loomis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Outstanding approach for mnemonics to learn the Chinese characters. Easy and well structured, it builds on itself. Generally I can read about half the Chinese characters I see now, and I have a framework for learning the remainder. A great place to start Mandarin studies.

[Chuluuntulga Sosorburam · Rating 5 out of 5]

enjoyable way to learn Mandarin.