Strategies for learning Chinese characters: 00

 

It is fairly universally held that the Chinese written script is one of the most difficult aspects of the language, if not the most difficult.  This is behind the mainland Chinese government's decision to simplify it, to cut down the illiteracy levels.

    The traditional approach is to knuckle down and commit the images to memory.  If one has to copy them out a hundred times before one can actually remember how to reproduce them, so be it.

    I say "reproduce", because that's usually the more difficult part, having to put down the right combination of strokes onto a blank piece of paper.

    The passive recognition part, at least, gives the reader/student an image to work on.  Whether the analysis ends up being correct or not is another matter, of course.

    This is the focus of this mini series: to try and make passive recognition less of a hit-or-miss exercise, even fun.

    In what way fun?  Fun in devising strategies for remembering, turning it into a game.  Fun in getting it right every time, using those mnemonics, feeling a sense of achievement.  And, of course, extra exercise for the brain in the process, especially for the elderly.  Win win.

    A bit of background here for those who mightn't already have gone through the foundation steps.  Those who have already done so can treat this as revision.

    Chinese characters are generally made up of two components:

* the radical (which gives a clue to the category of the meaning of that character);

* the phonetic (which gives an indication of the pronunciation, although this element is not consistently predictable -- as I keep reminding students, "Rules are never 100% rules.").

    The radical component:  water radical characters are to do with water, whether they are nouns, verbs, adverbs or adjectives.  For example:

河 hé: (N) river

洗 xǐ: (V) to wash

清 qīng: (adj) clear, (adv) clearly 

濁 (浊) zhuó: (adj) muddy, turbid 

    One can, therefore, at least get closer to what the character is to do with -- "water" in the list above.  Of course, one can't just use this element, one also needs to know the basic grammar to be able to identify if the water-radical character is a verb, a noun, an adjective, or an adverb, before one can hazard an informed guess.  One can't be as random as to try to pin the tail on the donkey with the Chinese language.

    An English equivalent of the radical component in a Chinese character providing a clue to the meaning of the whole would be the suffix -ology:  it's a field of study, it cannot be eaten or worn.

    As I keep saying to students, "If you don't know how to express something precisely, do it in a long-winded way, use baby talk.  Silence = no communication."  So it is with the recognition of the Chinese script.

Chinese sayings: 18 (不怒自威)

 

不怒自威

bù nù zì wēi 

“not angry naturally awesome/threatening”

I have unfortunately been blessed with a demeanour that makes me look angry even when I’m enjoying myself.  

    So many times I’d been at the computer screen, having a good time all focused on the task in hand, and someone would ask me what I was so angry about.  

    A lot of Chinese people seem to have this body language, too, actually, so maybe it’s a cultural thing.  (However, an ex-student Patsy, who’s English, told me she’d often get told, “Don’t worry, it might never happen,” when she was sitting happily somewhere daydreaming away.)

    This misunderstood body language has had its dramatic effects in the classroom and the exam room.

    Students will change what they’ve offered in a translation exercise in class, purely on the basis of my asking “Why?”, instantly thinking I’ve asked because their version is wrong.  

    It’s the what-I-call “shake the tree” device in my teaching style, i.e., if they can justify why they’d parsed the sentence a certain way (interpreting a word as a verb rather than as a noun, e.g.), then they can be sure they’d got it right, rather than arriving by hit or miss.

    If their tree is weak to start with (they’re just guessing wildly, pinning the tail on the donkey*, rather than analysing the sentence based on actually knowing how the Chinese language works), it’d keel over at the slightest shaking.  They need to shake their own tree in real life, as I won’t be there to tell them if they’d been right or wrong.  

    Admittedly, it could be the way I ask “Why?” (maybe more challenging a tone of voice than intended), but one particular oral exam episode showed that I don’t even need to open my mouth.

    It was a final year oral exam, therefore two examiners present.  The other examiner was a colleague from Taiwan, who has smiling eyes even without moving her lips or feeling happy.

    The candidate on the day was presenting his arguments on some given topic (environmental pollution or human rights violation, which are common final year themes).

    My colleague and I, seated opposite him, were making notes as we listened to him.  

    At one point, I looked up at random from my note-taking, not for any particular reason, and my eyes met the candidate’s.  

    He immediately stopped in mid-flow, and looked very nervously at me.  

    Exam over, I asked him why he’d done it.  He said the look on my face made him think he’d made a mistake (wrong grammar, or wrong usage of language / expression).  

    I said, “But I didn’t even open my mouth!  And I wasn’t thinking that at the time!  You weren’t saying anything wrong at that point.”

    不怒自威 indeed.

    After that, I would remember to keep my eyes down all the time and not make eye contact, or prime myself to smile before I raised my head.

(London, 2000s)

* For those who might need help:  “pin the tail on the donkey“ is a game where the player is blindfolded, turned round a few times, then has to pin the paper tail onto the picture of a donkey on the wall, in the place where the player thinks the donkey’s tail should be.  I use this phrase for doing something in a hit-or-miss fashion.