Pinyin tips~
so i made that post and then someone asked a question and i figured i might as well just make an expanded post so here we go
i feel like these tips are for high beginner/low intermediate learners. if you’re a low beginner, you should probably still use pinyin to help you as you learn characters
so when i learn new vocab i don’t write the pinyin and the character together. instead, i’ll do something like this:
剃刀 razor (tìdāo)
when i do this, i’m not seeing the pinyin when i read the character so i’m more encouraged to try and remember how to pronounce it on my own
also, if you’re drawing from a paragraph or something longer, try not to put the meaning/pinyin for new words next to the original in the text. what i do is i underline the word and then i go to a different page and write the character and definition like i did above
if i’m just writing a whole sentence in my notes, i don’t put pinyin with it at all
*if whatever you’re reading has pinyin included under the characters, grab a notecard and cover it up as you read. you might accidentally catch little peeks between lines, but it’s a good way to help you pay attention to the characters more than the pinyin*
another thing to do is try and get familiar with the phonetic components of characters
you’ve probably noticed that there’s like five qings (请，情，清，青，晴）yeah? well when you look at them, they all have the same basic part: 青
while characters aren’t phonetic, many of them contain hints to their pronunciation by using these phonetic elements. since those characters all share a phonetic element, the thing that sets apart their meaning is the radicals
as you read just try and figure out what parts of characters are phonetic elements. if you think you’ve found a character that’s based off a phonetic element, look at the radical and try to figure out what it means. it doesn’t matter if you get it wrong so long as you start to practice recognizing some of these characters. once you’ve made your guess, you can look it up and see how close you were on pronunciation/tone and meaning (because sometimes the pronunciation is tweaked *just a little bit*)
here’s a huge list of characters grouped by phonetic components
also, beware the look-alike radicals!
