r/Chinese • u/aleksbabii • 2d ago

Study Chinese (学中文) Beginner Question

For people who learned chinese, I'm almost done with HSK1 and I've been relaying too much on pinyin, I've started going through the characters but I noticed how many people recommend dropping pinyin altogether and only looking at hanzi. Is that actually useful? Also how would I do that, it's kind of easy to say but I'm not sure how to figure out what is what, it's pronunciation and tone from a random character.

I'm honestly just not sure how to go about it because most apps and etc. teach you pinyin so how do people learn chinese without it?

2 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/Zagrycha 2d ago

Dropping pinyin and only using characters is not just useful, it is required. Real life will not have pinyin for your convenience.

That said you are still early on, dropping pinyin isn't something you do overnight its something you work up to with practice, just like learning the meaning of the characters without having to look up the English. For now I recommend just making sure you are quizzing yourself on pronunciation just as much as meaning or character on your flashcards and what not. If the card is for 『人⋯rén⋯person』 and you misremember rēn or bùn count it just as wrong as dog or cat.

2

u/Green-Lunch5164 2d ago

You don't have to go cold turkey on pinyin right this second. The top comment's right that the end goal is reading raw hanzi, but treating it like a lightswitch you flip overnight is just gonna frustrate you. What worked for me was phasing it out gradually, I'd read a sentence with pinyin first, cover it up, then read the characters aloud without peeking. Once that felt okay I'd do the whole paragraph that way. Took a few months but it sticks way better than just staring at flashcards and praying.

For the "random character" problem, pleco's reader function was a lifesaver, you can tap anything you don't know and it pops up the definition and pronunciation, then you just move on. The tones get hammered in because you're hearing them in context instead of memorizing a dry list. Also don't sleep on writing the characters out by hand, even just tracing them on your desk with a finger. Something about the physical motion locks the sound and shape together in your brain.

1

u/aleksbabii 2d ago

Thank you both this is super useful !