Touch typing Chinese and Learning to Learn

Learning is perhaps one of the key points of existence. We learn so that we can have new or different experiences. Being able to learn means we can do new things or do old things in novel ways. This ability to learn underlies the ability to solve problems. It also underlies the ability to create meaningfully.

Mental models, or more simply models, are what we create when we learn. Whether we are learning something that is outside of ourselves, some system we have to run, build, sell, install, fix or upgrade or whether it is something that directly involves ourselves, mental models are the result of that learning.

A key to effective learning, to understanding, is building these models from two points of view. So that learning is efficient and non-frustrating we can break what we are learning into clearly defined elements and focus on small groups of these in relative isolation.

A further element of learning is indexing the models that our brain builds so that we can call them up without having to think.

An additional key to learning is being able to check what we’ve learned, so that we can improve our models when necessary.

This books details a set of simple concepts, and includes principles (both first principles and basic principles) that can be easily adapted to make learning, problem solving, and creating easier.

These concepts and principles provide a framework for both thinking about how to do things and how to actually do them. 

Learn how to learn, and how to:

• Build better mental models (and how to scale and modularize them)
• Make learning efficient, effective and less frustrating
• Improve problem solving abilities
• Deal effectively with fear and frustration
• Use limits to become less limited
• Utilize mental models for better muscle control and body awareness
• Improve our understanding and the way that we do things

It all starts with the notion that our brain builds models, mental models, and those models form the foundation of our understanding, intuition and habits. At the same time, we can choose how we construct and index those models thus improving our understanding and the way that we do things.

Imagine being able to touch type Chinese.

Most people type Chinese characters phonetically, based on their sound. And because each sound in Chinese (in Mandarin at least) is associated with many characters, that means you have to pick the desired character from a drop down menu. You have to type, and look, and type and look.

Imagine being able to type Chinese characters without having to use drop down menus. Imagine being able to touch type Chinese characters as easily as touch typing English. Imagine having already learned how to touch type in English and then learning to touch type Chinese on top of that skill.

This book is designed for people who want to be able to touch type Chinese. It uses an input system that is free and comes preloaded on apple systems, and is free (and relatively easy to load on windows and android systems).

It assumes the ability to touch type in English, and while some basic knowledge of Chinese characters is helpful, it isn't necessary.

Perhaps the most important aspect of this book, apart from teaching you the basics of touch typing Chinese is that it provides an easy to use reference for looking up typing (or input codes for characters that you just can't figure out.

Why I learned to Touch-type Chinese

I learned to touch type Chinese a long time ago when I got tired of using a paper dictionary to look up characters. I thought I'd build my own database that I could enter characters in once I'd looked them up, so that I wouldn't have to look them up again. Instead I'd use my spreadsheet. I'm not quite sure what my thinking was, perhaps just that anything was better than having to figure out radicals or worse yet, count strokes.

To build my database, I'd lookup a character, find it's pronunciation and then use pinyin to type the character into my database. The challenge was searching through endless dropdown menus (they seem endless when you have to keep using them). This coupled with the fact that at the time the display font was quite small. I wondered if there was another way.

That way turned out to be an input method called the cangjie input method.

I found a few handy websites that helped me learn the basics of the method. However, I ran into some problems with certain characters. So while it was an improvement, there were teething problems. And that's what this text is designed to help you avoid. It, ideally, makes it easy to learn this method and provides a, hopefully, easy to use index so that you can easily lookup the codes for characters that you are having trouble typing.

Very basically, the cangjie input method requires you to break down charcters into elements. When you understand the breakdown method, and once you've memorized 24 shapes and the letters of the alphabet they are associated with, you can get touch-typing Chinese.

I already had a lot of experience with Chinese characters when I learned the method. It took me less than a day to memorize the character-letter associations, but I was fairly motivated. I've include the mnemonics that helped me.

I've also created a short but comprehensive beginners course at the beginning of this book to make it easy to learn this input system.

You'll have to do some work, but I've chunked the learning to make it easy to get this work done.

The nice thing is, with this method, you can type characters based on their shape. As a result this makes it easy to input characters, say in google translate, so that you can look them up. Sure you can use your phone.

And as a side note, I used this method as a basis for an indexing system for my own Chinese character website.

Reducing Dependencies

But if you learn this method you aren't dependent on ai or tech, at least not completely. You'll have a bit of agency. Plus it offers a tool to help break down characters so that you learn them. So if I see a character, and I haven't got my phone, I can try to remember it by breaking it down using the cangjie input codes.

Then when I do have access to my phone or computer I can type it in.

Sure there are methods where you can use brush strokes to write the character. But that means you have to write the whole character and sometimes with some characters, the system won't be able to figure out what you've written.

The cangjie method isn't always fool proof, hence this book, but you can use it to type any character with a maximum of five key strokes (plus one extra to *enter* it).

I've used it to copy Chinese characters from books and other paper sources that I've then pinyinized so that I can then practice reading them. (I like to find books that are translated from books that I like or an interested in in English.)

A quick alternative

If you aren't interested in touch typing but do want a method that you can use that doesn't rely on you knowing the vocalization of a character, there is the quick cangjie input method that just used the first and last element of a characters' cangjie code. This method is relatively easier to learn because you simply have to figure out the first and last elements of a character and their associated codes.

Why the first and last elements? Because they are the easiest to see at a glance. I've also used that idea as a way to subsort the reference section of this book. Characters are sorted alphabetically by their cangjie input codes. And then characters are subgrouped based on the final letter of their cangjie code.

Since letters don't correspond to a single shape but a range of associated shapes, I've also sub sorted characters based on the actual shapes that the character contains. Why go through all of this trouble? To make a lookup system that is easy to use, particularly when all you can figure out is the first (and possibly last) element of a character's code.

Benefits

While touch-typing Chinese is cool, is there a better reason for learning this (or any other) shape-based input system? It removes one of the biggest hinderances to learning Chinese, being able to find information on a character easily. If you can enter a character based soley on it's shape, you have agency. You can freely type characters which means you can easily look them up in electronic media.

Another more general benefit of this method is that it gives you practice in breaking things down. You start being able to see characters in terms of their structural components. These aren't necessarily meaning, or phonic based, but they are clearly recognizable. And the thing is, these elements, which relate to 24 letters of the latin alphabet, allow you to freely input any commonly used Chinese character.

The reference section in this book includes 7200 characters (characters that I've come across at some point or another in the process of building my database). Characters are grouped by their ending elements so that it is easier to get a sense of how cangjie input codes are extracted. (The rules of extraction for cangjie input codes are covered in the included Beginners Guide. But the layout of the reference section ideally makes it easier to get a handle on those rules.)

To make character lookup easier, I've included an Initial elements index. In this index characters are sorted by their first element. I've also included a Final Elements index. Here, characters are sorted by their final elements. There is also a quick index that, once you are more comfortable with the cangjie input system, can make looking up a particular character a bit easier.

The book also includes a section on how to install the cangjie input system on your computer, phone or smart device.