One of the difficulties of learning Chinese is character recognition. If all you are interested in is speaking (and understanding) you don't necessarily have to worry about this problem. If you are interested in reading, or writing Chinese (for whatever reason) learning Chinese becomes a lot more complex because not only do you have to learn to recognize characters, you have to learn their pronunciation (how they are said) as well as their meaning.
One way to make Chinese as a whole easier to learn is to focus on character recognition, and input, as a separate skill.
What if you could type characters (input them) even if you don't know how the character is said.
Touch-typing Chinese is a reference and beginners guide to learning a shape-based input system (The Cangjie Input system) that is freely available on windows and mac, and also on smart devices, whether apple or android.
Note, this is for Traditional Chinese characters.
(The same input system can be used for simplified characters, but it is not as well organized for simplified characters.)
The input system allows you to use a latin (ABC) keyboard to input Chinese characters. And if you can touch type in English, you can learn this system in such a way that you can build the ability to touch-type Chinese on top of the ability to touch type English.
If you are already familiar with typing Chinese but want an option that allows you to input characters without endless drop down menu's, touch-typing is a potential answer.
But also, if you can't touch type, but don't mind drop downs, quick completion is a method built on top of the main method that allows you to type just two letters which correspond to the first and last element of the character in question.
This method can be used on computers but also on phones and tablets.
Why might you want this to be your first port of call in learning Chinese?
One of the difficulties with learning to read or write Chinese is looking them up.
This method allows you to input Chinese characters easily.
If you can input characters, that means you can easily look them up.
I remember when I first became interested in Chinese characters. I wondered how one would go about learning them all. Even, how do you tell them apart? With this method you learn simple decomposition. You also learn a set of shapes (and derivatives) some of which are characters in their own right, some which are brush strokes. This gives you a way of recognizing the elements of characters.
One of the ways that I use it is to memorize a phrase in pinyin, (and practice speaking it). Then I'll go back and memorize the characters. Then I'll try to type the characters as I read the pinyin.
One thing to be aware of, this systems break down does not correlate to the meaning of characters or their elements. Instead it is completely shape dependent. It does not rely on calligraphic knowledge, and one suggestion is that if you are already familiar with calligraphic rules, then forget them when using this system.
Why is that a good thing (ignoring calligraphic rules)? Because it means you don't have to be familiar with calligraphic rules to use this system.
The name of this book is touch-typing chinese. The assumption is that you can already touch-type in English. You can then build on top of that. If you can't touch type, this can still be useful. You can still use it to input characters, just not as fast as someone who can touch type.
This book includes a comprehensive beginners guide to learning the Cangjie input system. That includes tips for memorizing learning the 24 mnemonics. These are associations between 24 letters of the alphabet and 24 basic shapes (most of which are characters in their own right). I'd suggest this is the most important step. It also includes the rules of extraction, how codes are constructed for characters, as well as exceptions and special cases. And it includes exercises to make learning this system as easy as possible.
Note, this is not a guide to learning Chinese. The focus is on characters, and inputting them.
(For a free online resource for looking up characters and words, check out my indexing-matters.com website. It include a 5 different indexes, both shape based and phonic based for looking up characters and words, as well as a reverse lookup (English to chinese).)
As an additional possible benefit, if you are interested in learning in general, this system offers a good way of practicing breaking things down. The reference itself contains over 7000 characters and their input codes. But in addition these are sorted and grouped based on their character elements. In terms of break down, it shows how 24 basic shapes (and their derivatives can be used to input 7000 characrers.). The idea here is that if you break down things at an appropriate level, you can re-use them to make learning a bit more efficient.
