1. You find picture-stories (mnemonics) for the 1600 most used Chinese characters.
2. You find 1600 little exercises to learn the Chinese characters.
3. You find audiofiles with the picture-stories. This makes it possible for you to repeat the picture-stories and learn the meanings of the characters while you are on the way.
4. You find a vocabulary with words which contain the new character.
5. You find a structure which enables you to learn the most used characters first.
You might wonder why the characters are so colourful. Every character is pronounced in a specific tone. We have chosen a colour for every tone. Every character appears in the colour of his tone.
When you see a character in a certain colour again and again, you will eventually remember this colour and with the colour you will remember the correct tone. Red is tone 1, yellow is tone 2, green is tone 3, blue is tone 4 and grey is tone 5.
We have created groups of 400 Chinese characters. In the first group of 400 characters, you find the 400 most used Chinese characters. In the second group of 400 you find the second most used Chinese characters. Every group of 400 characters has been divided in 4 groups of 100 characters. So, you can learn the most used characters first.
In the vocabulary, you find the same groups of 400 characters again. In the top block, there are only words which consist of the 400 most used characters. In the block below, there are only words which consist of the 800 most used characters.
So, once you have learned the 400 most used characters, you can repeat them by learning the words in the first group. In the first group, you will only meet the 400 most used characters.
To learn a Chinese character means to learn a little picture-story. When you will see a character lateron, you will see the little line-drawings (radicals) within the character and you will remember the picture-story and the meaning.
All line-drawnings (radicals), which show up in the picture-stories, are links to the pages of the line-drawings (radicals). Click on them and find the picture and and the stroke-order of the line-drawing (radical)!
In the picture-stories, the little line-drawings (radicals) show up in the sequence in which they are written. So, when you write a character, you simply write one line-drawing (radical) after another.
When you learn a new character, write the character by writing one line-drawing (radical) after another. Follow the stroke-order as shown on the pages of the line-drawings (radicals). Your strokes don't have to look good. What counts is that you are active while learning!
While you write the character a few times, you recite the mnemonic. When you think "tree" you write the line-drawing (radical) for tree. When you think "table" you write the line-drawing (radical) for table.
Try to imagine the picture-story in the colour of the tone of the character. Red is tone 1, yellow is tone 2, green is tone 3, blue is tone 4 and grey is tone 5.
You can learn up to 50 characters in one day with lenaia.com and still find plenty of time to repeat the characters which you learned before!
After having learned 10 characters, you can click on the "E" at the end of a row of characters which leads you to an exercise-page.
Look at a character on the left and find the right picture-story (mnemonic) for it on the right! Choose the box! On the right, you can look at the basic meaning of the character (e.g. fatal, and, provide) only and choose the box. If you are not sure you can read the entire picture-story (mnemonic).
After having chosen the boxes, you can check your answers by clicking on "check answers" at the bottom of the exercise-page.
In the picture-stories, the little line-drawings (radicals) show up in the sequence in which they are written. So, when you write a character, you simply write one line-drawing (radical) after another.
The audiofiles enable you to listen to the picture-stories (mnemonics) of 10 characters while you are writing them. When you hear "tree" in the picture-story (mnemonic), you write the line-drawing (radical) for tree. When you hear "table", you write the line-drawing (radical) for table.
So, after having learned 10 characters, you can listen to the audiofiles and write the characters while you listen to the picture-stories. You only look at the row of the 10 characters which you have just learned and write one character after another while you listen to the audiofile with the picture-stories. This takes about 4 minutes for 10 characters.
You can also listen to the picture-stories while you are on the way. When you hear "tree", you imagine the line-drawing for tree", when you hear "table", you imagine the line-drawing for table. In this way, your mind imagines one little line-drawing after another until you have written the entire character in your mind.
So, you can repeat Chinese characters while you are driving or sitting in the subway. The audiofile with the picture-stories of 100 characters is ideal for this. It will take about 35 minutes for 100 characters.
Once you have learned 100 characters, you might want to repeat them in a fast manner so that you don't lose too much time with repetition. The audiofile for fast repetition assists you in repeating a block of 100 characters in 6 minutes.
You look at the navigation-block of 100 characters and recite the Pinyin (pronunciation) and the basic meaning of one character after another. If you don't remember, the audiofile will tell you the Pinyin (pronunciation) and the basic meaning a second later.
You can print a block of 100 characters and make a little dot below every character which you didn't remember correctly immediately. After having gone through 100 characters in this way, you can have a closer look at the difficult-ones again.
A Chinese word consists of 1 to 4 characters. The basic meanings of the characters convey the meaning of the entire word. This is why a learning vocabulary should always mention the basic meanings of the characters.
In every part of this website, we mention the basic-meanings of the characters which the Chinese words are composed of.
1. Look at the characters of one word. If you don't remember the picture-story and the meaning of a character, you can click on the character. Every character is a link to the page of the character.
2. Read the English translation.
3. Simply transcribe the Pinyin and the English translation.
4. Listen to the audiofile while you look at the Chinese word and think of the English translation! In this way, your ears, your eyes and your mind are involved in the learning process.
5. Write the Chinese word a few times. It doesn't matter at all whether your strokes look good. What counts is that you are doing different things while you are learning!
Try to get a feeling for the core of the basic meaning of the character!
To write a Chinese character means to write one line-drawing (radical) after another.
In the picture-stories, the radicals show up in the sequence in which they are written. So, when you write a character, you just recite the picture-story and write one radical after another as they show up in the picture-story.
In this introductory-video, you can see the different features of the picture-story-part (book) of Lenaia.com. Please watch the videos to the five parts (books) of this website in the following sequence:
1. Introduction to the Chinese Language
2. Chinese Radicals
3. Chinese Characters and Picture-Stories
4. Chinese Pronunciation
5. Chinese Grammar
6. Chinese Lessons
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Thank you for learning Chinese with us!
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