I did a huge pile of work and also travelled a lot in March, so Chinese took a back seat. I even took my Heisig book away with me and optimistically carried it in my hand luggage everywhere I went, yet my schedule was so full that I didn’t get a look at it. I…
I coloured my consonants
I’ve been up all night doing Chinese, because I couldn’t tear myself away. Because I am memorising all these characters, using the Heisig method (I’m nominally up to 250 characters now), I’m very interested in memory aids and techniques. Some people use a coded system of four colours to remember the different tones (dīng versus dǐng,…
That’s close enough
As you can see, today I got all 236 Heisig characters right and just made one mistake in the pinyin, where I used a fourth tone instead of a first tone. That’s good enough for me and I’ll now give myself permission to move on to Chapter 11 of Heisig. I’m glad I took his…
Still not quite there.
Five mistakes today. Try again tomorrow.
Almost 100% recall.
Today I tested my hanzi again. I start with the Heisig keyword, then I try to correctly write the character from memory and recall its pinyin spelling, using the correct tones. There are 236 characters in my set, so writing plus pinyin gives me 472 chances to make a mistake. I only made three mistakes…
Today’s corrections.
I’m working and working on my Heisig set of 236 characters because I want to know them with 100% certainty and accuracy before I tackle the next 2,800 characters still to come. Here are today’s corrections.
My baboon has a new balloon.
我的狒狒有一个新的气球 Wǒ de fèifèi yǒu yīgè xīn de qìqiú. 狒狒 fèifèi, baboon. fèi – hamadryad, a mythical being that lives in a tree (lol). 气球 qìqiú, balloon. qì – gas. qiú – sphere. 新 xīn, new. 的 The possessive particle 的 de is used as an attributive. It connects the adjective 新 new to the noun 球 balloon. New-balloon,…
MO or MU
I am avidly learning Chinese. Amongst other things (ChinesePod, talking to Harry, finding fun 中文 things on the internet), I’ve resumed learning characters from the famous Heisig system for learning to read. I’ve just reached the end of Heisig Lesson 10, which means I’ve absorbed 236 characters, a personal record. 236 characters feels like a…
All your base are belong to us.
你的基地都属於我们的 Nǐ de jīdì dōu shǔyú wǒmen de I am back on the case learning Chinese. Rather to my amazement, after such a long time away, it is all still there in my head.
Behold the majesty of my Chinese desk.
Look, it is huge. I have somewhere for all my books and study materials. Imagine how much I will get done.
The Hanyu You Want 