Monthly Archives November 2009

Scary Hanzi Followup

C’mon, you remember a time when a page of hànzì looked like this:
Doesn’t this seem to parallel the 2nd, 4th and 5th levels of Hanzi Hell? If you buy the analogy of learning Hanzi as “texture discrimination”, the money quote from today’s Language Log post is:
The texture-perception literature is full of contrasts among local features [...]

Sound off: Mandarin literacy, Chinese style

On a new blog with a different view of Mandarin literacy acquisition
No matter how fervently you sometimes wish it weren’t the case, Mandarin literacy requires learning hànzì (汉字 = Chinese characters). And literacy is an absolutely essential component of full language acquisition for modern Mandarin. Ergo about two years ago I embarked on a self-paced [...]