I got asked to write a (short I guess) piece on how I learnt to read Chinese characters. My teacher told me that most westerners in particular have trouble with reading and writing and she was interested in how I did it.
Let me start from the end. I have been in Hong Kong for three years and three months now. In that time I have learnt quite a few characters. I'm not sure how many exactly - maybe around 1000 or 2000? But I know it's enough to order food off the Chinese menu at local restaurants (which is cheaper sometimes) and I can read the Metro newspaper (都市日報) on the train into work or school. Well, "reading" is an overstatement. I can work out what most articles are about.
I had a strong desire to learn Cantonese pretty much from the time I set foot in HK. Initially this meant speaking but I wasn't too far along before I wanted to get into the characters also. What really sealed it for me in the end were two things: first was that I lived in Tai Wai (大圍). Not too many people speak English there - at least not as many as on Hong Kong Island Proper - and most of the local restaurants (茶餐廳) there only had menus written up in chinese. Second reason was that I found I didn't have that much opportunity to speak with locals. My language initially wasn't at a level that I felt confident enough to use it and it's all too easy to fall back to English in HK. I didn't have too many friends to practice on either. So I figured reading would help to increase my vocabulary and so help my speaking and listening also.
So, there's the history. So what did I do?
Well, I bought a dictionary. Oh, and a notebook.
I bought what has turned out to be a fantastic dictionary published by the Chinese University Press. It's simply called 'Chinese-English Dictionary'. It has both Cantonese and Mandarin pronunciations although it's designed for learning Cantonese more than Mandarin. It turned out to be a fantastic resource and I now take it with me wherever I go (seriously!). The notebook is the paper kind. It's small and fits in my back pocket. It also comes with me wherever I go.
I started by trying to translate chinese signs that already had the English written underneath them. The first thing I tried was this - 如遇火警切勿使用升降機 - 'If there is a fire do not use the lift'. It was a good choice because I saw this time quite frequently as it is posted in every lift in Hong Kong. Having the English helped to work out how to group the chinese characters into something useful. eg: 使用 means 'to use' and 升降機 is a lift (it literally translates to 'ascend descend machine'). This first exercise took me about 4 or 5 hours I from what I recall. I knew nothing of radicals and so would resort to simply counting (or guessing) the number of strokes in each character and then looking it up in the number of strokes index in the dictionary. From this I moved on to other signs. There are stacks of signs in Hong Kong written in both English and Chinese telling you to mind the platform gap or stand behind the yellow line, not talk with the driver when the bus is in motion, to put lugguage in the rack, queue up here for the taxi or bus, not to smoke or throw rubbish in the toilet and so on. I would go about my daily life and write signs in my notebook as best I could and then come home and translate them.
My other activity was translating menus. I first started out by translating the basic words so I could at least work out what was in whatever dish I was to order. If I knew the characters for beef (牛), chicken (雞), pork (豬), fish (魚), seafood (海鮮), rice （飯) and noodles (麵) then at least I had an idea of what I was eating. On top of this I started bringing menus home and translating them also. However the biggest help to me learning food words turned out to be my colleagues. Ken, Samson, KP, Karl and Samuel. You were an invaluable help to my learning and I will always be grateful to you for it.
My colleagues were aware of my desire to learn to read as well as speak Chinese. So they made me order my own food! We'd all go out to eat together to one of the local restaurants. They'd help me read the menu filling in the blanks where appropriate. I'd have to order on my own also. My colleagues would be there to support me if I stumbled or mixed things up (Thanks to my bad pronunciation I nearly ordered beef shit and rice once much to their amusement). They wouldn't let me order the same dish day after day - that was too easy a way to get out of learning. Over the course of about 10 months I got intimately familiar with the menu at 老地方 and towards the end I started reciting it to my colleagues. Much to their boredom I'm sure. This exercise was stopped after 10 months because of SARS and we never regularly went out to lunch after SARS was finished. But I credit that time and my colleagues as my larges assistance in getting my reading off the ground.
Around the time of SARS I also started having Cantonese lessons. I had one lesson every two weeks or so consistently for a year. i obviously informed my teacher of my desire to read and write as well as speak and she accommodated this from the outset. She would write any new characters out in chinese as well as the romanisation as we went along. I'd copy her stroke order and she'd correct me as necessary. It must be during this time I learnt about stroke orders and radicals and stuff. It made looking up characters much easier! As I said I had lessons once every two weeks and over the course of a year we worked from the basics (hello, what's your name etc etc) to the point where I was writing short essays describing everyday events in my life. Again I was blessed with a fantastic teacher. Chou Tai (曹太太) teaches at the Chinese Language Centre at Chinese University (中文大學) and she agreed to take me on for these private lessons. My chinese progressed in leaps and bounds during my time with her thanks to her efforts.
I'm not sure exactly when but during all this time I started reading the newspaper also. I'd take the train to work every day and I could get the Hong Kong metro was available free at MTR (Hong Kong's subway) stations. It's a Chinese language paper with one or two pages of news in English normally. I started slowly translating bits of articles in the paper. Normally just the headlines and the initial lead-in text. Again my colleagues helped here tremendously as I'd come into work newspaper in hand and ask for help. I found that slowly I was reading less and less of the paper on each train journey and, in fact, it became a kind of measuring stick for me. The less of the paper I read meant that I understood more about each article that I was reading. My reading of Chinese is obviously much much slower than my English. I'd get quite proud if I was still on the front page by the time I got into work as it meant I was able to read enough characters to understand the contents of the entire article. Conversely I'd get disappointed if I made it to the English section (which was at the back) as it meant I was having a 'bad news day' - too many articles with characters I didn't know. Some stories were repeated in the English section which proved to be a good cross-check. I found myself quite often having read something incorrectly. Mr X was sentenced to jail for 20 years where in fact it turns out he was released from jail after 20 years... Oh well. I learnt the character for 'jail' at least!
And this brings me back to the present pretty much. I am confident to go into any restaurant and order pretty much anything now off their chinese menu. I got a real buzz going to Guangzhou and walking into a local restaurant much to the surprise of the people around and ordering off their menu speaking Cantonese to the staff. It's a fantastic feeling. I still read the paper every day also. I bring my dictionary with me and if I get a chance to sit on the train I take out my dictionary and translate on my way into work.
Oh one more thing. I bought a mobile phone.
I bought a Chinese language Nokia 6600 about 18 months ago. It's only in Chinese (no English language mode) which was a challenge in itself. But I've now learnt the Chinese for SMS, MMS, video, save, folder etc. Anyway, the phone had a chinese-english/english-chinese dictionary on it. This has been one of the most useful tools for me. I'm at the stage where I can read a lot of characters that are used in an everyday context ie: on signs etc. But a lot of times I find myself being able to read individual characters but not understanding what they mean. I can input the characters into the phone and translate them which is very very useful. I find myself doing this quite often now.
So that's it. It didn't turn out to be short at all! I guess if you want to take anything away from this article (you mean you got this far?) I guess there are a few key things:
1) Get a dictionary. It helps a lot. I recommend the same one I use. It's great for Cantonese in particular. It's all in Traditional Chinese which is what's used in Hong Kong. The ISBN is 962-201-922-6. Type that into Amazon's search and you'll find it easily enough.
2) Get a notebook and keep it with you always. That way you can write down anything that gets your attention and translate it later. I also found my notebook a good reference initially. I'm on my third notebook now after three years
3) Learn Traditional Chinese. The characters are more logical. A lot chinese characters are composed using a radical which gives it context and a second part which gives it its pronunciation. Sometimes you can make a good guess how to pronounce a character this way. Simplified Chinese removes some of this logic. Also, if you know traditional you can work out a lot of simplified characters. Going the other way is harder
4) Read everything. I remember one night I was out with a friend who commented that I was reading every shop and street sign on my way to a bus stop. I wasn't even aware of it.
5) Read the paper. You'll get nearly no joy out of it initially - for the first year or so - but it helps a lot.
6) Ask for help. I have never come across a negative reaction when speaking Chinese. My colleagues in particular were fantastic.
There you go! I hope it wasn't too long.
