Chinese is widely considered as one of the hardest languages to learn. There are apparently over 80,000 Chinese characters, a fact that, at the beginning, can seem pretty intimidating for learners. But luckily, you only need to know 3,500 in Standard Chinese. Anyway, and even if 3,500 still seem to be quite a lot, once you start learning the characters, like any other vocabulary, the main thing you have to do is practising.
ShaoLan Hsueh, is explaining in this video an interesting method that she created for learning Chinese in an easy way. Her method basically consists of enabling learners to recognize the characters through simple illustrations. Following the building block principle, the student will first learn some basic Chinese characters, and then will start making sentences.
In other words, the character building blocks refer to the inseparable Chinese characters, that can actually be used independently. These characters can be frequently used to make up new characters, and the goal of the above-mentioned method, is to remember them by creating an association with a specific picture.
Written by Ana Jiménez Morente
Content Editor. Communication Trainee, DG TRAD – Terminology Coordination Unit
Sources
- OxfordWords blog. 2017. Is Chinese hard to learn? Available at: http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/12/how-difficult-is-it-to-learn-chinese/. [Accessed 07 February 2017].
- People’s Code. 2017. Easy Chinese? Available at: https://peoplescode.net/2014/12/04/easy-chinese/. [Accessed 08 February 2017].
- TED. 2017. Learn to read Chinese … with ease! | ShaoLan – YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=troxvPRmZm8. [Accessed 07 February 2017].