Sidetracked by getting on track

The Perry-Castañeda Library at the University of Texas

I've been sidetracked from my "漢字 Sprint" by getting on track with the academic study of Chinese. After all, that's what I want to do with my life, right?

As I wrote before, my in-laws were in town for about a week for Christmas. They rented a lake house and we stayed with them for the week. I more or less kept up with my reviews during that time, but didn't learn any new characters. I figured that would happen, so no big deal.

However, I haven't learned any new characters since they left. And here's why.

I feel like I know enough characters now to be able to continue
studying Chinese without worrying about individual characters. It's
quite easy for me to pick up new 漢字 at this point, and I think I was
just wanting to finish Heisig to say I had finished it. I think it will
be more worthwhile for me to just worry about learning the language from here on out. There are other reasons too.

My brother-in-law is a theologian who has an MA in theology and is working on his M.Div., and then planning to work on a Th.D or Ph.D afterward. We talked a good bit about grad school and academia in general, and I realized what a huge knowledge he had of the relevant literature in his field. I lack anything even approaching that breadth or depth of knowledge, or even a shallow familiarity with the literature in Chinese Studies. I realize that his knowledge comes from the fact that he is working on his second graduate degree in his field, with an eye toward doctoral work, but there's no reason I can't start reading some of introductory books out there. He mentioned how great it is to find syllabi for courses at other universities and seminaries online, so I started seeking out syllabi for undergrad and graduate Intro to Chinese Linguistics courses, and ordered a bunch of books:

Jerry Norman: Chinese (Cambridge Language Surveys)

Sun Chaofen: Chinese: A Linguistic Introduction

John DeFrancis: The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy

John Defrancis: Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Sys

Patricia Buckley Ebrey: Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook

Paul Rouzer: A New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese

Edwin G. Pulleyblank: Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar

Wieger, L.; Davrout, L. (translator): Chinese Characters, Their Origin, Etymology, History, Classification and Signification

I figured this should keep me busy for a bit. As you can see, I ordered a couple books on Classical Chinese. I'll be working through Rouzer this semester (following the syllabus for David Sena's Intro to Classical Chinese course), in addition to following the reading from Tim Xie's Intro to Chinese Linguistics course and Marjorie Chan's undergrad Intro to Chinese Linguistics course (I already have the Ramsey book that Xie uses). I only have a few classes this semester and I'm working part-time at Starbucks, so I'll have plenty of time for study. My classes are on Tuesday and Thursday only, and I'll be done by 3 pm and have asked my boss not to schedule me those days, so I'll have those days to read and use the library at the university. I may write a paper or two if I have time, just to get back in the swing of doing research projects. The last one I did was on Japanese folk music nearly 5 years ago. I may post the papers here, but I'm not committing to anything though. ;)

So from here on out it will be language learning, and study. I got an iPhone last week, and installed Pleco immediately. It's been quite a while since I've been able to use Pleco (I dropped my last phone and the touchscreen broke, but I had no insurance on it and no money to buy another). I've forgotten how useful it is to be able to look up an unknown character just by writing it on the screen. Should make reading 《鹿鼎記》much quicker. If you can recommend any other iPhone apps for Chinese learners, that would be great (stock iPhone only, I don't think I want to jailbreak).

So that's what's been going on here! I think this is a much more useful and practical direction for me to take in my free time, rather than obsessing over the number of characters I know. The Heisig books are useful, particularly for beginners, but you have to know when to put them down, especially if you've already reached a certain level in the language.

漢字 Sprint Days 7-9: Turned into a vegetable

I had the last few days off from work. Seems like a good time to cram in some more characters, right? Well, it didn't happen. I think maybe something clicked in my brain and I finally realized I was done with the semester, so I spent the last couple days vegging out. Bad idea. I learned 59 characters last night (Day 9), but I now have 325 漢字 reviews due in Anki, plus about 200 cards in my vocab deck. I work this afternoon, and most of the rest of the day will be spent getting ready for the in-laws' arrival tomorrow.

I'm going to clear out as many reviews as I can today (with a focus on 漢字 -- vocab can wait) and tomorrow morning, then hopefully I'll be able to learn some tomorrow morning before the family arrives. While they're here...we'll see. I'll probably have some study time but I'm not counting on much. I'll probably just keep up with reviews, and maybe learn a few new kanji.

Once they're gone, I'll be back at it 100%.

漢字 Sprint, 第六日

Today is Day 6 of my 漢字 Sprint.

I learned another 50 漢字 today, bringing my 6 day total up to 250 characters. Not bad for less than a week, eh? If you could learn 300 characters per week (which I intend to do) in this way, you could be done with the basic 3000 characters after just 10 weeks of intensive study. Not bad at all.

I noticed something today that might be helpful to other using the Heisig method. As I've mentioned in other posts in this series, I'll often assign a more concrete image to a vague character (see Obama for 人/亻 in the previous two posts). This is good, because it helps you to be more vivid with your mnemonic stories. However, don't feel like you have to use Obama (or whatever) just because that primitive is in the character. "Person" is just fine, and sometimes better. Case in point:

        Q: captured

        cnn captured obama's pent-in speech.
       

        A: 囚

Really? A person in an enclosure (or pent-in) isn't good enough for captured? No need to make things more complicated than they are. (Note: I sometimes use "enclosure" for 囗 because I learned it that way first)

        Q: captured

        I captured the person in the enclosure.
       

        A: 囚

Much simpler. Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler, right Einstein?

Anyway, I'm nearly caught up from my two missed days. At a rate of 43 per day (which is what I need to finish this Sprint on time), I should be at 258 characters so far, and I'm at 250. I might try to catch up with the 50/day mark though, so I can have a little leeway. The inlaws are coming in town next week, after all, so there may be a couple days I skip. I don't want to be antisocial when they traveled so far.

And as I mentioned in the comments yesterday, my 漢字 power level is now OVER 1000!!!

Yes, I know. Lame meme reference. It's my one time, I promise.

See you at 2593 漢字!

漢字 Sprint, Day 5

Today is day 5 of my 漢字 Sprint.

Yesterday I mentioned that Days 2 and 3 didn't go so well, so I'm kind of catching up from that. I added 50 漢字 today. That means that so far I've added 200 new 漢字 during the "Sprint," so the catch-up is going well. I'm only 15 behind schedule (I need 43 per day to finish by the end of Christmas break). I may end up adding another 15 today just to finish catching up if I have time.

My retention for the 100 new characters I added yesterday was 97%. Pretty dang good. We'll see how that all plays out over the next few reviews though.

Lots more Obama characters today (I use Obama in my stories to represent 亻). Here's one I thought was funny:

        Q: double
        Obama put a muzzle on his double.
       

        A: 倍

See you at 2593 漢字!

漢字 Sprint, Day 4 + Supercharged 漢字 Mnemonics

So today is Day 4 of my 漢字 Sprint.

Yesterday I wrote that I had done 50 characters on the 10th, none on the 11th, and 75 yesterday. Well, that was before I had actually done the characters, and I was hoping that saying I had done it would motivate me to make sure it got done. I didn't end up doing any.

However, today I learned 100 new characters. It really wasn't too bad. I really doubt I'd be able to keep up that pace, if only due to the volume of reviews I'd have, but for a single day it wasn't an unmanageable load. The One Kanji, One Picture thread really helps tremendously as far as remembering the characters. It almost feels like cheating because it makes it so easy. Here's an example (note: like the thread's author, I use Obama for the 亻 primitive because it's more vivid than "person"):

      Q: transmit

          Obama transmitted rising (smoke) clouds to communicate.
         

      A: 伝

Seems like cheating, right? However, I don't think it is for a few reasons. It still requires me to write the character from memory. But more importantly, I know I'm learning them because I remember them when they pop up in other characters. For instance, 臓 (entrails) is made up of 月 (primitive is called "part of the body") and 蔵 (storehouse). My mnemonic story is "When you die, your entrails get put with the other parts of your body in a storehouse." I have to remember "storehouse," which is a fairly complex character in its own right, in order to mark the card correct.

Anyway, by today (Day 4 of the 漢字 Sprint) I should be at 172 to be on track with a rate of 43 per day like I mentioned in the first post. Since I got off to a rough start, I'm only at 150, but I'm pretty happy with that. I'll continue at 50 per day, so I'll be caught up to where I should be within a few days. I'm going to be posting daily about this until I finish, so if I go a day without posting, harass me because it means I didn't learn any characters.

See you at 2593 漢字!