An octogenarian student says for learning Chinese characters, she writes the pinyin (/romanisation for the pronunciation) for the characters that she recognises in pencil on the text.
Her approach to learning is commendable, but I'm not sure I understand the logic of it.
Surely there's no need to write the pinyin on the text for the characters that one DOES recognise? If one already recognises the character, I'd have thought one wouldn't need some/any form of mnemonic.
Surely one only needs to provide annotation(s) (after looking up the pinyin, and writing it down against the relevant character[s]) for those characters that one does NOT recognise (/ will have trouble recognising subsequently, however many times)?
Or am I missing something here??
(UK, 2026)
PS: A while after posting this blog (yes, my brain's arrived on the slow train), I wonder if maybe she just needs to reassure herself that she knows the pinyin (/ romanised spelling) for the character(s)?
I think I can relate to the old lady. For me, there is a distinction between recognizing a character, and remembering how to pronounce it. In fact, quite often in recent months I have noticed how many Chinese characters I recognize at first glance (meaning that I remember well having seen them before) and I may even be able to write them, but I forgot how to pronounce therm. After all it is not different from when I do not remember a student's name, even though I know their face very well, a long standing problem of mine in the classroom...
ReplyDeleteHaha, your recognising a student's face but not remembering his/her name is the opposite of my problem (with my prosopagnosia, when it comes to Chinese faces).
DeleteImagine my dilemma one year when I had FOUR students from a Chinese background in the same class.
One lesson, 2 turned up -- one on the door side, one on the window side. I stole a look at the register (passed around at the beginning of every lesson for people to sign attendance), to establish which of the 4 were present.
When it came to asking questions, I confidently called out (let's say) Wang Meiling for the answer from the student by the window, looking at her straight in the face. The answer came from the other side of the room!
The Chinese script being pictographic, one might indeed be able to work out the meaning of a character without knowing/remembering the pronunciation.
DeleteAdmittedly, one does need to know certain basic rules for a start to help with the guessing. (I will cover some of the basic rules in a separate blog.)
An example is the character 旦, which comprises 日 / sun (which one does need to know = "sun") and a horizontal line at the bottom. (I'm deliberately not providing the readings here for the purpose of this illustration.) 旦 means morning / dawn, or day (vs night). You can visualise it here: the sun over the horizon, therefore = morning or dawn or day.
Two of my favourites for visual clues are:
凹 which = concave, to dip down
凸 which = convex, to protrude
凹凸不平 āo tū bù píng / "concave convex not level" = uneven (e.g., potholes in the road, particularly of concern to cyclists).
Having this conversation with you here has inspired me (as usual) to go and write up this 4-character phrase as a separate blog.