6 strategies for when you forget a Chinese character
Imagine this: You are on stage. You are announcing one of the winners of the Golden Rooster Awards. Everyone's eyes are glued to you, awaiting the announcement. The tension is palpable. You look at the card containing the winner's name and ... you don't recognize one of the characters in the name. Oops. What do you do? Just mumble something? Pass the card to your co-host? Or guess the pronunciation and hope for the best?
Forgetting or not knowing a Chinese characters is a common problem, even among native speakers. Luckily, most situations are not as intense as the described one. Maybe you just want to order food at a restaurant or you are reading a book. Nonetheless, let's look at 6 common strategies that can help you when you forget a Chinese character.
1. Look it up
This one is a no-brainer. Natives usually use their phone's hand writing input method to search for a character on Google or Baidu. As a learner, you should just use a dictionary app like Pleco to get a character's meaning and pronunciation. You can either write the character by hand or use your phone's camera to find a character. While this is the easiest approach, it may not be available under all circumstances, for example, when taking a test.
Pleco's handwriting recognition
2. Investigate the character
The building blocks of Chinese characters are called radicals and often indicate the category of meaning a character belongs to. For example, the radical for water 氵appears in characters related to liquid, such as river (江, jiāng) and lake (湖, hú). Recognizing radicals can help you narrow down the meaning of unfamiliar characters.
The character 江 means 'river' and uses the water radical 氵.
While not always the case, many characters contain phonetic components that suggest their pronunciation. For example, 吗, 骂, and 妈 all share the same phonetic component 马 (ma) and thus share the same syllable. Getting a rough idea of a character's pronunciation can be the clue you need to remember a character. However, when having to read a character out loud, keep strategies 5 and 6 in mind.
3. Ask someone
There's no shame in asking for help. If you're in a situation where you can't understand a character, simply asking someone nearby can save the day. After all, there are thousands of characters, and it's hard to remember them all. People are generally understanding and willing to help, especially when they see you're making an effort to learn their language. To be honest, native speakers have to look up characters more often than I would have thought possible. It seems that character amnesia is really a thing.
4. Use context clues
Oftentimes, you can guess the meaning of a character based on the context in which it appears. This is especially true in written texts where surrounding words can provide hints. So, if you stumble upon an unfamiliar character, take a step back and look at the whole sentence. Sometimes, reading the next sentence will give you enough of a clue to piece together the meaning. This approach is especially helpful when taking a test where you can not use a dictionary or ask someone for help.
5. Make an educated guess
If you're feeling brave, you could try to make an educated guess about the character's pronunciation, especially if you think you recognized a phonetic element. However, proceed with caution! One of my Chinese teachers' first name was 卉 (huì) which is not a common character but appears as a component in the common character 奔 (bēn, "to run quickly"). She used to get lunch delivered and most delivery persons would arrive and say that they had food for someone called Bēn. This strategy is definitely better suited for situations where there's room for error, not when you're announcing award winners on live TV!
6. Skip it
If all else fails and the situation allows for it, you might just skip the character and move on. Native speakers I have asked said that they would just mumble something if they had to read something out aloud and didn't recognize a character. In free conversations or when you need to write something, this might mean using a synonym or describing the concept in a different way. When reading by yourself, you might be able to understand the overall meaning without getting every single character. Just make sure to come back to it later with a dictionary or a friend to fill in the gap.
Closing thoughts
Forgetting a Chinese character happens to everyone, even native speakers (which actually gives me a lot of comfort). The tips I shared are pretty much your toolkit for those "oops" moments. The key is not to sweat it too much. Not knowing a character isn't the end of the world. It happens to me all the time at restaurants and I usually go for a mixture of strategies 5 and 6. I make an educated guess and then mumble that guess 😂 It's part of the Chinese learning game, just like messing up your tones. So, the next time you draw a blank, just use one of the described strategies.
Until next time, happy learning! 📖
