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I've always enjoyed this forum post from YesJapan (japanese learning site), not exactly Chinese but maybe directionally applicable. http://yesjapan.com/YJ6/que

I've always enjoyed this forum post from YesJapan (japanese learning site), not exactly Chinese but maybe directionally applicable. http://yesjapan.com/YJ6/question/1394/how-many-kanji-does-one-have-to-know http://yesjapan.com/YJ6/question/1394/how-many-kanji-does-on... Highlights: > 100 kanji - basic signs > 500 kanji - 50% of printed material > 1000 kanji - 85% of printed material > 1945 kanji - 97% of printed material > 8000 kanji - 100% of anything japanese kanji in electronic form (still only about 99.99% in printed material as a lot of ancient texts have some pretty obscure one time only kanji). > Learning kanji is uber important in increasing your ability to communicate effictively in Japanese. What [YesJapan] does, and does well, is give users an excellent base of Japanese from which to work from. With a base of about 2000 vocabulary words and enough grammar to get by in most situations, the kanji comes secondary as they will then help to start bridge the gaps between the beginner/intermediate level and the advanced/fluent level. > As far as learning speed goes, there is a fast assimilation of the first 100 kanji. After that, the learning pace levels off to a slow progression until around the 800-1000 kanji point when the pattern recognition starts to kick in, then past 1200 the pace picks back up again until around 2400-3000 where the pace levels off again because at this point the literacy level is of that of a graduate student, and only obscure or rarely used kanji are available for further study. You can judge your kanji learning speed through the first 100 kanji benchmark. It takes one unit of time to learn the first 100 kanji, then about 14-30 units of time to learn the 800-1000, and then another 7-15 units of time to finish off the joyou list (and name kanji). So if it took you 1 month to learn your first 100 kanji it should take you another year to 3 years to learn your next 1000, and then another half a year to a year and a half to finish the list. Again, faster learners will find themselves closer to the earlier stages of the spectrum, while casual learners and slower learners towards the further end of the spectrum. > Another nice benchmark to keep in mind when studying Japanese is that going from a western to asian language (meaning no prior fluency in an asian language) takes 88 weeks (5 hours a day study) or 2200 hours of study to go from 0 to complete fluency. 44 weeks, or about a year of intensive study should put you at around the JLPT 3-2 level, and another 44 weeks to put you at the JLPT 1 level. Again this is assuming 5 hour a day of dedicated language study, so if your study time is less then that, you can plan your progression accordingly. One of the benefits of living in country is that the 5 hours comes a lot easier and quicker then living outside the target country where the material has to be self or externally generated. > In case you were wondering - western languages to other western languages take about 22 weeks (550 hours of intensive study), non-western/non-asian languages 44 weeks (1100 hours of intensive study) and asian languages [88 weeks] (2200 hours of intensive study). The other benefit of learning a language in one of the other two language families is that if you decide to learn another language in the same language family (region 1 2 or 3 as described above) it takes only 22 weeks of study. > Which brings about another intersting topic. Korean takes about 52 weeks of intensive study to master from a western language (because their writing is mainly hangul, the necessity to learn a complicated script is lessened, thus easier to learn then chinese or Japanese). Thus learning Korean first, followed by Japanes will only take 74 weeks of study, vs 110 weeks of study going to Japanese first then Korean.

_hao 6y ago
It's entirely applicable! Actually Heisig and Richardson make the observation that after you finish both books (3000 characters) you'll be able to approach Chinese like a Japanese person would. Meaning that you'll have the knowledge of the characters, but still no knowledge on their pronunciation. Here's the section from the introduction of the book - https://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/en/files/2013/11/RH-S1-sample.pdf https://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/en/files/2013/11/RH-S1-sample.pd... > Those of us who come to the language as adults can gain a similar advantage by tying each of the character forms to a particular unit of pronunciation and meaning, a “key word” in English, that we already know. Before you dismiss the idea of affixing English words to Chinese characters out of hand, consider this: all the Chinese dialects, no matter how mutually unintelligible they are when spoken, use the same characters for writing. These characters convey the same meaning, no matter how they are pronounced. What is more, when the Japanese use Chinese characters, they assign them still other pronunciations. In other words, there is nothing in the nature of a character dictating that it must be verbalized one way or another. Unlike students coming to Chinese from an alphabetically written language, the Japanese already know the meaning and writing of a great many of the characters. By the time you finish this course, you will be in a position similar to theirs. Of course, you will eventually need to learn Chinese pronunciations, just as Japanese students do. But adding difficult and unfamiliar sounds to a solid knowledge of character forms is a much more manageable task than trying to memorize meaning, pronunciation, and writing all at the same time.
- astrobe_ 6y ago
  We have the exact same situation in Europe: if you some of the many words English inherited from French, they are written exactly the same, have exactly the same meaning, but are pronounced in a very different way.

_hao 6y ago

It's entirely applicable! Actually Heisig and Richardson make the observation that after you finish both books (3000 characters) you'll be able to approach Chinese like a Japanese person would. Meaning that you'll have the knowledge of the characters, but still no knowledge on their pronunciation. Here's the section from the introduction of the book - https://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/en/files/2013/11/RH-S1-sample.pdf https://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/en/files/2013/11/RH-S1-sample.pd... > Those of us who come to the language as adults can gain a similar advantage by tying each of the character forms to a particular unit of pronunciation and meaning, a “key word” in English, that we already know. Before you dismiss the idea of affixing English words to Chinese characters out of hand, consider this: all the Chinese dialects, no matter how mutually unintelligible they are when spoken, use the same characters for writing. These characters convey the same meaning, no matter how they are pronounced. What is more, when the Japanese use Chinese characters, they assign them still other pronunciations. In other words, there is nothing in the nature of a character dictating that it must be verbalized one way or another. Unlike students coming to Chinese from an alphabetically written language, the Japanese already know the meaning and writing of a great many of the characters. By the time you finish this course, you will be in a position similar to theirs. Of course, you will eventually need to learn Chinese pronunciations, just as Japanese students do. But adding difficult and unfamiliar sounds to a solid knowledge of character forms is a much more manageable task than trying to memorize meaning, pronunciation, and writing all at the same time.

astrobe_ 6y ago
We have the exact same situation in Europe: if you some of the many words English inherited from French, they are written exactly the same, have exactly the same meaning, but are pronounced in a very different way.