Reddit reviews Chinese Characters: Learn & Remember 2,178 Characters and Their Meanings

Heisig is awesome!

Personally I like Hoenig even better: They have shorter mnemonics and I think the overall organization of the book is better.

http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Characters-Learn-Remember-Meanings/dp/0982232403

And then there is Matthews. They have even solved the problem with pronunciation! The problem with Matthews is that they only have around 800 characters though. So not really comprehensive...

I wrote a long mindless rant about Mandarin some time ago.

TLDR:

• Learn the characters first, from day one, yo.
  
• The folks over at RtH have a nice resources list.
  
• Get a textbook, and use that to kickstart your learning, but once you outgrow the textbook discard it.

I'm not sure specifically how tofu learn works as I didn't want to sign up just to see it, but what helped me immensely in the beginning stages of learning characters was learning by component instead of frequency. Learning character components is like learning the alphabet for English. There are about 200 components that make up Chinese characters, and once you start recognizing the constituent components, it gets easier and easier to remember characters. So 想 = 木+目+心 instead of a bunch of random strokes that have no meaning to you.

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This website (ninchanese) seems like a good intro to things based on a quick google search. I personally used the James Heisig books when I started as I think it's the most systematic approach to the idea of learning by components that I've seen. I learned 15-30 characters a day during my lunch breaks at work and after a few months the whole Chinese writing system was demystified and I knew around 3000 characters. After that it's just a buttload of reading to get used to seeing everything in context, just as with any language.

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There are other books out there nowadays, too. This one by Hoenig seems good.

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All this is to say that I personally think a lot of time and frustration can be saved by learning one's first 1500 characters in a logical manner based on the character components instead of trying to memorize things based on frequency. Like, what's the point of learning 你 before 人 & 小？ Or 我 before 手 & 戈？

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Anyway, I hope this was slightly helpful! Good luck, and let me know if you have any questions?

This is going to require some blood, sweat, and tears, but it's honestly the best way.

Alan Hoenig, of "Remember the Kanji" fame, made a book about learning Chinese characters. It starts with the simplest characters (e.g. "one") and components (e.g. "straight vertical line") and build each off of eachother. It's an excellent method, and incredibly comprehensive.

Do this in conjunction with some sort of flashcard system (hoetron recommended anki, which is good) and if you commit yourself for 3 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 2-3 months you should be able to get a command of those 2,200 characters.

I'd recommend Hoenig, but if you want to start with something simpler Tuttle is also great.