I remember my teacher telling me about a website a long time ago; but, that was in high school. Does anyone know a free website where it will teach my how to properly write Chinese characters?
I mentioned this is another thread but you must have not looked too much… There’s a website called “abcs of chinese” this will teach you all the radicals. Then after you finish with that you can use arch chinese online dictionary to search characters and will give the definitions/stroke order/ and some example sentences. All the above should suffice.
Hi ya!
Could you expand on your desire to write properly? Do you mean stroke order, beautiful calligraphy… etc?
For general practice I really recommend Skritter. They also have a function where you can only complete the character in the right stroke order. Maybe that’s something you’re looking for.
Let me know what you’re after and perhaps I could give you more some more focused feedback.
Fi
Hi Fiona,
I assume the website you mean is “skritter” not as you wrote “skitter”. It has a good demo version to learn how it works. Pricing is about 15 USD per month. Thanks for the advise.
Petra
Thank you Fiona, I’ve used Skritter before, it was very good. Unfortunately now I use a mac, and Skritter is refusing to work on a mac, something about requiring adobe flash.
Is there an alternative to Skritter that can be used in Mac OS X ?
You might want to check out there updated HTML5 app. Here’s the discussion about it + the link.
If you have an iOS device, i’d recommend the app personally unless you have a writing tablet for your computer,
or use the Android app.
Excellent, I will re-try skitter again!
Why not use the lite version of Skritter on ChinesePod? You can practise any characters that are in your CP vocabulary list on Skritter. I have no trouble using it on my Macbook Pro.
This is how you do it. Even though this video is talking about Kanji, it doesn’t matter the method to learn them is the same.
If you want to learn traditional or simplified characters, Heisig has released books on both.
http://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Simplified-Hanzi-Meaning-Characters/dp/0824833236
http://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Traditional-Hanzi-Meaning-Characters/dp/0824833244
I have been using a book by Alan Hoenig that seems to be similar to the ones mentioned above. I like Tue book so far but just started it.
I love that Abroad in Japan YT channel. Very funny. The books you recommend are very helpful although I think it’s best to make up your own stories to remember them since they stick in your memory for longer.
Yes his Abroad in Japan channel is great! Absolutely, always great to put your own spin on a story to aid memory.
@joshuapetering105 @GwilymJames
I was reading through the first part of “Remembering Simplified Hanzi: Book 1” and found it a bit strange that there are no notes on the pinyin and how the character should be pronounced. Has anyone used this book and noticed a problem later on where they don’t know how to pronounce the words they can read? I really want to enjoy this series but I’m worried that after being able to read, I will have to go back through all the vocabulary again and learn how to pronounce everything.
Arch Chinese can be used to print out sheet of practice characters or words. The meaning and pinyin, along with stroke order, can be included. Is there a way one can export a list of words to Arch Chinese?
Not that I know of. The way I use it, I just search whatever characters I’m not sure of the meaning/stroke order or pronunciation. For characters I don’t know the pinyin for I use the cangjie(hand writing) input on my cell phone. I can’t tell you how much that helps when you come across characters you can’t read, also to access characters only used in cantonese like 冇 乜 唔 etc…
To answer matts question. The first book does not include the pronunciation of the characters, that’s what the second book is for. That series “remember the…” is designed for people afraid of characters and need to be eased in. Like I said earlier in this thread, go to that site abcs of chinese, it’s free and you will learn all the radicals/common components with pronunciation meaning stroke order. Then after that you will be more than capable of learning all the hanzi you will ever encounter, traditional or simplified. All you need is a good dictionary. I recommend the Far East character dictionary, it has the 3000 most common characters with meanings stroke order and example words, there is a simplified version of this dictionary if that’s the route your looking to go. It’s organized alphabetically by pinyin. Also included zhuyin if that’s your thing.
I made a mistake, I guess 唔 is also used in mandarin, just came across it while flipping through a comic
@KnowledgeAllah Thanks again for the suggestion. I checked out the ABCs of Chinese site and I like the idea but the execution and website are just terrible. A lot of time the content doesn’t work and I had to try 3 different internet browsers before I could get the lessons to even work. Do you still use this site frequently? They reference ABCs v2.0 but looking at the screenshots for the app it is using a super old iPhone 3G and I can’t find the app on the Google Play app store. I’m wondering if it’s just an issue with my computer or if the site just isn’t maintained any more.
I don’t use it anymore, I used it for the first 4 to 6 months of studying mandarin. I definitely agree, and I do believe it is not maintained anymore, it was like that even when I first found it almost a year and a half ago. Although it’s a bit glitchy, if you can ignore that enough to get a good feel for the radicals, it’s worth the effort. I would just go through the sound test, the meaning test, and then when they trace the character on the screen I would copy it down into my notebook, then move on to the next one.
Are you using skritter? I never used that before but I think that would work a lot better from the looks of it (although it’s much more expensive). Maybe try to upload a deck of the radicals into skritter may work in the same way? Not sure how skritter works exactly but I think you can upload your own decks for practice?
Heisig may work for you but I just really hate the fact they separate the pronunciation into a whole another book, if that doesn’t sound like a slick marketing tactic then I don’t know what does. And the fact every blogger recommends this book also makes me wonder. I looked at it while in Kinokiniya once, and was not that impressed (for the price of the 2 books). If you already understand how mnemonics work then you can do it on your own. If you can get it for half the price or less, maybe it’s worth it.
加油
I have recently just started using Skritter. I find that it’s pretty good, but it is mostly for reviewing the vocab and practiving writing. I currently use a mix between Skritter and a book Chinese Characters by Alan Hoenig.
There’s a whiteboard animation about how learn Chinese characters it was really helpful for me because it explains so easily as beginner your can start quickly.