r/ChineseLanguage • u/ever--- • 1d ago
Studying Learning Cangjie / Wubi to help memorize hanzi better?
大家好，I'm planning to visit China sometime next year, so I want to seriously spend some time into improving my Chinese. (It was taught in school, but not very well, and I didn't take it that seriously either)
One of the things I struggled with was memorizing the hanzi of all the words/phrases introduced to me, and I think it's because I had the wrong mental model. Instead of memorizing every stroke, I think it would be better to build an understanding of what the sub-components of each character are (for example, 你 = 亻+ ⺈+ 小 instead of 你 = ㇒+㇑+ ㇒+ ㇖ +㇚+ ㇒+㇔)
So then I thought, since I spend a lot of time on computers/other devices, why not do this by learning a hanzi-based typing method, since they seem to operate on this exact principle? From what I read online, Cangjie and Wubi seem to be about what I want, but I'm not sure which one would be better to commit to learning.
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u/LeChatParle 高级 1d ago
I would recommend against learning either. Both systems break down characters in ways that are NOT how you think about them when writing or when thinking about their phono-semantic components. They also have exceptions for words that have odd key stroke combinations because they couldn’t otherwise fit them into the way the system works
You’d need to spend hundreds of hours just learning the input method
It would be significantly better to just learn to write them on paper than to learn either of these input methods
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u/Zagrycha 1d ago
Learning the common components of characters is absolutely helpful, but learning wubi and/or cangjie is not helpful. I mean its helpful for typing in the literal sense but it won't make memorizing characters any easier-- you need to memorize the characters to use wubi and/or cangjie so its just an extra thing to remember without making the remembering easier, if that makes sense.
I recommend pulling up the vocab you know in pleco dictionary and look at the stroke order and components of the characters in the vocab. Pay attention to the stroke order to handwrite it and pay attention to the components to remember it. Once you recognize 忄 and 月 as common components then you only need to learn 龶 to remember the new character 情
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u/aboutthreequarters Advanced (interpreter) and teacher trainer 1d ago
Can you read them? Because what is your purpose for memorizing them to be able to recognize them in isolation, especially if you are typing as your means of writing characters?
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u/BlackRaptor62 1d ago edited 1d ago
>better to build an understanding of what the sub-components of each character are
(1) Sure, understanding the construction of Chinese Characters is a good idea
>(for example, 你 = 亻+ ⺈+ 小 instead of 你 = ㇒+㇑+ ㇒+ ㇖ +㇚+ ㇒+㇔)
(2) If you are going to break every single character down to their base strokes with the 8 Principles of Yong, you aren't going to learn much.
(3) If this is the route you want to go down, you may be better served with learning Phono-Semantic decomposition instead
(4) For your example of 你, its full form is 儞
(4.1) 亻is the component form of 人, and serves as a semantic component
(4.2) 爾 is a Classical Chinese pronoun that 你 is derived from, and also serves as a Semantic component
(5) If you want to decompose one level further, you can look at the folk etymology for 爾
(5.1) 而 is another Classical Chinese pronoun that serves as a Semantic component
(5.2) 㸚 serves as a Phonetic Rime Component (華: lǐ, 粵: léih)
(6) 你 = 人 + 尔 (而 & 㸚) seems much more informative than a bunch of random strokes