7 Tips for Self-Taught Chinese Language

Being the most popular language in the world, Mandarin has more than 1.4 billion speakers. Mandarin or Chinese is a language that is widely studied, especially for people involved in the world of business and commerce.

Mandarin is a language that is difficult to learn. Several factors include this language having various dialects, pronunciation and intonation. Additionally, Mandarin uses characters to represent each word. There are more than fifty thousand Chinese characters. This is the difficulty for foreign language learners.

Don't panic, out of tens of thousands of characters only a few thousand are used regularly. You can follow 7 Tips for Self-Taught Chinese Language below.

Here some tips for learning chinese language

1. Master the components in the character

Components are a combination of several units that form a character. One component can be present in several characters at once. Components are very useful for memorizing Chinese characters, as there are much fewer of them at around 3000 components. 

According to the number of components, Chinese characters are divided into two, characters consisting of one component, and characters consisting of two components. You can dissect characters into two components, so that it is easier to write a sequence of stroke patterns and memorize them.

Example:

Characters with one component: 大 (Dà) large, 小 (Xiǎo) small

Karakter dengan dua komponen: 上 月 (Shàngwǔ) Morning, 下 う (Xiàwǔ) Afternoon

Characters with twin components: 哥 (gē - brother) component of   可 (kě - can)

2. Also learn pinyin

If Chinese characters are called hanzi, then there is also pinyin. Pinyin is the Latin alphabet for understanding how to read Chinese characters. The alphabet used in pinyin is the same as the Indonesian alphabet. Even though the alphabet is the same as Indonesian, the way to spell and pronounce it is different depending on intonation and emphasis.

Pinyin is very useful for beginner learners, you can easily recognize Chinese characters. Here are some examples of pinyin in brackets:

We (wǒ) Me
你好 (Nǐ hǎo) Hello
谢谢! (Xièxie!) Thank you

3. Write with a boxed book

Choose a book that has or has a checkered pattern. This really helps you in positioning the strokes on the paper. Square pattern paper also makes your writing more proportional and neat, this avoids strokes that are too long or too short. You can look for books specifically for learning Chinese characters on online platforms. 

4. Write characters along with sentences

Learning to write Chinese characters one by one is a quick way to memorize Chinese characters. However, you can develop it by making one complete sentence. Writing complete sentences can help you learn grammatical structures. So, you can train in writing skills.

Example:

Brother drinks coffee - gē ge hē kā fēi - Brother drinking coffe.
My parents live in Canada - Wǒ fù mǔ zhù zài Jiānádà - My parents live in canada.

5. Mark the strikethrough sequence in characters

Mandarin has several rules for writing Hanzi characters, namely writing according to the strokes or strokes of the letters. For example, from left to right, top to bottom, or horizontal to vertical.

This stroke order has the benefit of making the resulting character neater and better. If you write characters in the wrong order, the characters or letters may not be read properly. There are tens of thousands of characters with almost the same shape or elements, so you have to pay more attention to stroke patterns.

   Also read :  7 Tips for Effective Japanese Learning for Beginners

6. Trace and write by hand

Chinese characters have asymmetrical shapes and lines. Each component has a different way of scribbling  and curving. You can start writing characters by tracing them. This helps you understand the process of crossing out line by line to create good and correct characters.

Write by hand. Even though there are many applications for learning Chinese language and characters available on smartphones. However, you must still be able to write these Chinese characters manually.

7. Starting from basic vocabulary

Start writing with characters and components with easy themes, for example self-identity, preferences, family. Themes that are close to your surroundings are the ones you use most often.

Learning Chinese characters according to the ones you will use really helps you sort out the characters that are important to learn. Because, of the tens of thousands of Chinese characters, only a few thousand are frequently used. 

Mandarin characters and characters are the main challenge for beginners to learn this language. Even though it's difficult, you can master Mandarin characters quickly if you know the tips and tricks. And don't forget to study regularly and continuously, so that you don't easily forget the characters you have studied.