Learning Chinese Characters

According to the highly enthusiastic book Learning Chinese Characters, it represents “a revolutionary new way to learn and remember the 800 most basic Chinese characters.”

That’s a lot. There are thousands of characters, but 800 would be an excellent start.

In a very friendly way, Learning Chinese Characters uses imagery to help with memorization of characters as well as with pronunciation. I ultimately read very little of the book during my Chinese unit, because at a certain point, given the time limitations, I decided it would be more productive to focus on oral skills and pinyin, and save the characters for the future.

I did like what I got through of it and found the methodology effective, but I don’t know whether I would have been able to make it through hundreds of characters with this approach. Maybe, maybe not. (Mnemonic schemes tend to get on my nerves.)

Down the road I will try to return to the question of how best to learn Chinese characters on one’s own, and in the meantime, I welcome reader comments on this book and suggestions for other options.