I came across this TED Talk a while ago and thought it deserved a place on the blog since it is so relevant to what I’m studying! In it, ShaoLan Hsueh discusses her intuitive method of learning Chinese characters, which she calls “Chineasy”. Have a watch:

You can learn more about Hseuh’s background on the TED website. And you can check out the Chineasy website as well if you’re interested.

It’s important to remember that since she is from Taiwan, Hsueh is actually using traditional characters instead of the simplified characters that are used in mainland China. This is apparent when you look at the character “door”.

Hsueh uses the traditional variant, that looks like this: 門

As opposed to the simplified version that looks like this: 门

She also mentions that if you know 1,000 characters, you have achieved basic literacy in Chinese.  And, according to Hsueh, if…