How do I cause the creation of a Chinese mnemonic guide?

February 4, 2013 10:19 AM

Hello, I'd like some info on how to create a Chinese menmonic guide to make it easier to learn vocab.

I've been studying some Chinese vocabulary recently and I'm finding that I can remember the tones reasonably well if I can listen to the vocab lists on audio CD. My main mnemonic technique is to associate words that have the same tone pattern (e.g. yiyang- alike, baicai- white cabbage, niurou- beef). I also contrast words that have the opposite-looking tone pattern, e.g. contrasting with the above is ditu- map, daxue- university, etc.

What I'd like to know is if someone has already put together a Chinese vocabulary guide that draws out these sort of patterns? If not, how can I economically arrange for the creation of such a guide? I'd really like it if there were such a guide for approx. 9000 words, the level required for near-native proficiency. It would also be good if I could get a Chinese national to pronounce the words in the various lists so that I could study the guide with an audio CD.

Here are some angles on the situation that I'd appreciate if people could consider and then advise me on:

-Are there any memory experts who could affordably work through a list of Chinese word definitions and find patterns?
-If it possible to use crowd-funding to raise enough money for a group of people to comission such a project and then receive a copy of the guide?
-What sort of organisations could group their efforts to create such a guide?

Thanks for any advice on the above.

posted by Musashi Daryl to Education (7 answers total)

Spaced repetition software is your friend. Many of these programs can do audio "cards" and are probably the best way to learn anything involving memorization. There are also a lot of free cards available, and of course you can make your own. Try FlashcardDB.
posted by asperity at 10:24 AM on February 4, 2013

I didn't elaborate on that well enough -- it's generally possible to link groups of cards as well, so that will help on group association. Unfortunately I can't say for sure that anyone's got a pre-existing set that has the linked groups you want, but it seems likely. Language learning is the most popular use of this software.
posted by asperity at 10:27 AM on February 4, 2013

I append the tone number to the pinyin when I learn words ("wo3 bu4 zhi1 dao4"). For some reason this is easier than trying to remember the tones themselves.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 10:28 AM on February 4, 2013 [1 favorite]

Again, Skritter. Also, Anki.
posted by Tanizaki at 10:35 AM on February 4, 2013

I think it's going to be very hard to achieve the high level of Chinese language competency you are looking for (as expressed in this posting and your earlier postings) sitting in front of a computer screen. Think about the way children learn...they learn by listening to, talking to, and interacting with real people. I'm not saying you shouldn't do the type of studying you are describing, rather just giving the advice that it would be a good idea to complement it with as much speaking with native Chinese speakers as possible. That's how you will see your language skills really take off.
posted by Dansaman at 11:21 AM on February 4, 2013

I'm pretty sure memrise is doing exactly this for all languages. Sets of Chinese flashcards with crowd sourced mnemonics, and where available, audio.
posted by jacalata at 12:13 PM on February 4, 2013 [1 favorite]

There are electronic Chinese dictionaries as well as flashcard databases; they all have the pinyin and therefore tone information. It would not be hard, I would think, to programmatically categorize words by tone, and then pull out vocab in groups like you describe. (If you can't or don't have the time to write code to do this, you could probably go on elance or something?) Chinese also has few enough sounds that you can just get somebody to record each possible syllable once and automatically string them together. (It sounds much better in Chinese than it would in English.) I know Pleco dictionary for smartphones has a feature to do this.
posted by vogon_poet at 10:24 PM on February 4, 2013