Remembering Traditional Hanzi: How Not to Forget the Meaning and Writing of Chinese Characters, Vol. 1 »

"The approach that has helped thousands of learners memorize Japanese kanji has been adapted to help students with Chinese characters. Remembering Traditional Hanzi covers the writing and meaning of the 1,000 most commonly used characters in the traditional Chinese writing system, plus another 500 that are best learned at an early stage." Of critical importance to the approach found in these pages is the systematic arranging of characters in an order best suited to memory. In the Chinese writing system, strokes and simple components are nested within relatively simple characters, which can, in turn, serve as parts of more complicated characters and so on. Taking advantage of this allows a logical ordering, making it possible for students to approach most new characters with prior knowledge that can greatly facilitate the learning process.

Introduction 1

Uprooting Biases about Character Learning 2

A Short History of the Course 6

The Basics of the Method 11

The Design of this Book 12

Concluding Comments 14

Acknowledgments 15

Stories (Lessons 1-12) 17

Plots (Lessons 13-19) 125

Elements (Lessons 20-55) 189

Indexes

I Hand-Drawn Characters 383

II Primitive Elements 397

III Characters by Number of Strokes 401

IV Character Pronunciations 409

V Key Words and Primitive Meanings 418