This website was made for me. I studied the Remembering Traditional Hanzi book (I made around 700 cards) and came up with all the exact same pitfalls Phil and Kevin noted. They have done a great job filling in those holes with Hanzi Hero. I really like learning through mnemonics. I’m glad to have been introduced to the book first, though, so I could know the background of the system and what was missing… and how to write the characters. I find value in being able to write them. (Perhaps in the future an option could be added to Hanzi Hero to follow the strokes of how the characters are written out?) I am not certain I would understand how great this website really is if I hadn’t gone through the book first. I needed to walk through their pages slowly as an introduction to the mnemonics system and to see how things were done.
I actually started with Remembering Simplified Hanzi. I knew nothing of the language (or that there were even variations to the language). I quickly learned that I had a choice to make. Do I learn mainland/ simplified characters or traditional characters mostly used in Taiwan? (Please forgive my ignorance- I’m sure there is more to this than that).
My decision was…to learn them both. lol! Each has their own set of pros. I know more people who use traditional characters so that is what I’m starting with. I really enjoy watching cdramas and it looks to me like most of those are translated with simplified characters… So I’m getting a little of both through Hanzi Hero and YouTube. Cdramas are where I get the phonetic component. Comparing translated scriptures is how I am practicing reading the language. (dubbed with a YouTube Chinese reader actually is very helpful!)
My ultimate goal is to add on a third component: ancient Chinese. I have a friend who did that and made the comment that NOW Chinese is making so much more sense. It would be fun to pick up an ancient manuscript and be able to read it! The Chinese have such a rich past.
This is my story and goals. What are yours?