Learning Chinese

As you can probably tell from the dates on my posts, it's been a while since I updated this website. Over the late spring and summer, I have been busy planning and preparing for my wedding. My wife and I have now returned from our week and a half in Hawaii – returned to our regular life. That life must include a return to my studies.

What are the most common Chinese characters? A Taiwanese linguistic researcher answers the question. Chih-Hao Tsai performed a study that assessed the frequency and stroke counts of Chinese characters that appeared in Usenet newsgroups during 1993 and 1994. The result is a collection of 4000 of the most frequenty used characters organized into sets of 200 by the "Learn Chinese Online" website.

There's a problem with the idea of learning a language on my own. Language is the means by which people communicate. I can learn the symbols of a language easily enough and can absorb vocabulary. That's easy to do. (It's also easy to produce learning aids for this kind of study. The iTunes store is full of flash card apps.) There are plenty of dictionaries and phrasebooks. But the difference between this kind of learning and real communication is the difference between painting by numbers and drawing something only imagined in dreams. I can purchase the most expensive paints but I still won't be Monet. Likewise, I can learn a few hundred words in Mandarin but it won't help me order a drink in a restaurant in Taipei.

Over the Christmas holiday this year I formally proposed to my girlfriend. While the timing (and the ring) was a surprise, it is something that we had discussed before. I was therefore spared the agony of wondering whether or not she would say yes. I just had to worry if she would like the ring.