Preface
Congratulations!
You have come to Step 3 of Learn Chinese Without Writing (LCWW). LCWW3 rounds up the theory part on LCWW and provides you with the third set of tips on how to 'see' patterns in Chinese characters. With these three books, you will feel confident to decode any simplified Chinese characters during your learning journey.
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In this book, you will learn to see patterns through structures . In LCWW2, the 'Chinese Alphabets Book', you learnt the qTRAILS alphabets; in LCWW3, the 'Chinese Spelling Book', you will learn how to 'spell' (construct) Chinese characters. In contrast to English words which are always spelt from left to right, Chinese characters have more than a dozen types of basic structures. When these structures are combined to form complex structures, there is a myriad of possibilities. Hence beginners get more confused the more characters they learn.
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If you still have the mindset that you need to practise writing every Chinese character individually in your mind, it is time to transcend such thinking. After you have learnt to interpret them visually, you will be surprised to discover that there are so many common patterns within Chinese characters. Our radical approach is a more productive and systematic way to remember Chinese characters visually.
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As in the two previous books, this book will not teach you the meaning and pronunciation of characters. We believe that developing the ability to see will benefit you more in the long run. In fact, we hope that you will be able to have a helicopter view of the characters you are going to encounter during your learning journey. The remaining rare characters that you encounter once in a blue moon will be as simple as ABC to you after you have developed the ability to see.
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Most of you probably have interacted with LCWW1 and LCWW2 before coming to this book, then you are very familiar with the new terminologies we have introduced in this series of books. In fact, you have overcome the more difficult hurdles by now. With LCWW3, you will be able to see the big picture by incorporating what you have learnt in the first two books (see next page).
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If you have missed out LCWW1 and/or LCWW2, you will be able to get the key ideas in the recap sections. Skipping the recap sections will make your learning more tedious as you may have to refer back to these pages frequently. The priority is to learn the 35 strokes and the 32 Stroke Patterns first.
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WARNING
Please DO NOT attempt to memorise all the characters in this book.
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We want to expose you to as many varied characters that you are likely to come across (we are confident that we have a good coverage of the characters).
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The key purpose is to get you to enter the flow state—the auto-pilot mode that you will experience when you are proficient. Build your confidence to do self-directed learning.
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Again, remember the purpose is not to memorise the characters, the purpose is to 'SEE'—what we have stressed since LCWW1.
WHY THIS BOOK
Many beginners see Chinese characters as a stack of intersecting strokes and are unable to see patterns that can be systematically remembered and retrieved easily when needed.
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LINE VERSUS SQUARE
As discussed in LCWW1, learning Chinese characters could be disorienting for foreign learners who are used to writing words linearly from left to right. Instead of spacing each alphabet equally on a horizontal line, strokes of a Chinese character are spread across a square artistically.
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Where should the starting point be?
Which stroke does it end with?
How to flow from one stroke to another?
How to position the strokes in the box?
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PLAY TO LEARN CHINESE
It has always been difficult to not write to learn Chinese characters and there are limited ways to play Chinese words like Scrabble or Crossword. One reason is that characters are not reorganised for easy dismantling and construction. In this book, you will learn to decode Chinese characters by their structures and not by strokes. Now Chinese characters are seen as square boxes that can be broken into blocks, strips, L-frame, 7-frame, etc. Hence, you can imagine playing Chinese characters... it is like playing Brickgame, Lego or Tetris. In these games, there are components that can be put together in different ways to create different formations. Learning Chinese characters is more challenging than these games because
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* There are more formations (patterns) to remember
* There are many similar-looking formations that need to be distinguished carefully
* Characters can be further broken down into smaller components—alphabets and strokes
* The sequence of the components in characters is important
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To play the Chinese characters game, beginners will need to find a systematic way to remember the components—alphabets (covered in LCWW2) and strokes (covered in LCWW1). Now, in LCWW3 you will learn how to ‘play’ with these parts and put them together.
WHICH IS THE STARTING POINT?
SCOPE
REDEFINING THE COMPOSITION OF CHINESE CHARACTERS
In this series of book we seek to redefine common understanding on the composition of Chinese characters and this book concludes the theory section.
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With LCWW1, 2 and 3, you will be able to decode most if not all of the frequently-used simplified Chinese characters—more than sufficient for any Second/Foreign language examinations (e.g. HSK, BCT, AP).
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There is a lack of resources to help learners remember characters visually. Chinese characters are usually described visually as pictographs, that is they were created as symbols of real objects, animals etc. However, through evolution, many of these characters look very different from the real world objects now. Furthermore most of the characters which were created subsequently to represent more abstract meanings are difficult to be described visually.
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What we attempt to do in this book is to show you the 'skeleton' of characters. Some of them are micro-organisms and have very simple components while others are higher-level organisms which could be understood by dissecting them structurally, then component by component. Some are simply aliens and do not conform to the standard rules, so you would have to treat them separately.
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Now, let’s begin the journey!
