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Of course there is a meaning in chinese characters. Once you get that 木 is a tree (which is pretty easy to see), you might figure that 林 is woods and 森 is a fo

Of course there is a meaning in chinese characters. Once you get that 木 is a tree (which is pretty easy to see), you might figure that 林 is woods and 森 is a forest, even though 森 will look wildly complicated for someone who never really looked at chinese characters. People are learning to read chinese like this for thousands of years, and instead of remembering 12 individual brushstrokes for 森 you just need to remember that it's 3 trees.

bildung 11y ago
Of course you are right! But as I understood the article, the treatment difference occured during the first phase, association between character and meaning. They observed that those character-meaning pairs that got repeated more often during the first phase have been remembered more often in the second phase (as part of two-character combinations).
madaxe_again 11y ago
It's also book in Kanji, and I've always thought it looks more like a book with its leaves hanging open - even though the pictogram is indeed a tree.
- z2 11y ago
  You may be thinking of 本 :) It actually has a much more complicated and varied etymology than that of 'tree'. http://www.chineseetymology.org/CharacterEtymology.aspx?submitButton1=Etymology&characterInput=%E6%9C%AC http://www.chineseetymology.org/CharacterEtymology.aspx?subm...
  - drivers99 11y ago
    The Heisig method is very good at getting you to be able to remember the differences between characters, in particular how to write them. (To keep it on topic...) it is based on building up the characters from previously learned components ("radicals"). It also builds on your existing knowledge of English because you learn the radicals and characters with English keywords. The idea is to learn the characters in English first, so that you'll have that as a base of knowledge to learn the actual language. [1] a good intro: http://akitajet.com/wiki/Heisig_Method http://akitajet.com/wiki/Heisig_Method if you want to try the method I would suggest picking up Remembering the Kanji volume I and then utilizing http://kanji.koohii.com http://kanji.koohii.com for the mnemonic "stories" and to practice with their spaced repetition method.

bildung 11y ago

Of course you are right! But as I understood the article, the treatment difference occured during the first phase, association between character and meaning. They observed that those character-meaning pairs that got repeated more often during the first phase have been remembered more often in the second phase (as part of two-character combinations).

madaxe_again 11y ago

It's also book in Kanji, and I've always thought it looks more like a book with its leaves hanging open - even though the pictogram is indeed a tree.

z2 11y ago
You may be thinking of 本 :) It actually has a much more complicated and varied etymology than that of 'tree'. http://www.chineseetymology.org/CharacterEtymology.aspx?submitButton1=Etymology&characterInput=%E6%9C%AC http://www.chineseetymology.org/CharacterEtymology.aspx?subm...
- drivers99 11y ago
  The Heisig method is very good at getting you to be able to remember the differences between characters, in particular how to write them. (To keep it on topic...) it is based on building up the characters from previously learned components ("radicals"). It also builds on your existing knowledge of English because you learn the radicals and characters with English keywords. The idea is to learn the characters in English first, so that you'll have that as a base of knowledge to learn the actual language. [1] a good intro: http://akitajet.com/wiki/Heisig_Method http://akitajet.com/wiki/Heisig_Method if you want to try the method I would suggest picking up Remembering the Kanji volume I and then utilizing http://kanji.koohii.com http://kanji.koohii.com for the mnemonic "stories" and to practice with their spaced repetition method.