Sommary of TedTalk Video (How to learn Chinesee with ease by ShaoLan)

Shaolan is daughter of a calligrapher in Taiwan. She  knew the chinesee character form her mother when she was kid and consider that this language is interesting. However, some people agree that learning Chinesee is difficult as impentrable as the Great Wall of China. In age of five, ShaoLan started to learn how to draw all stroke for each character in the correct sequence. She learn new character every day during the course in next 15 years. ShaoLan has been wondering that if she can create the easy way of learning Chinesee, so anyone who want to study this language can understand easily.

As a result, a Chinesee scolar  would understand about 2,000 characters. To understand basic literacy, we need about 1,000 characters. Then, 40% of basic literature is enough for us to read the road signs, restaurant menus, understand the basic idea in web pages or newspaper. Therefore, ShaoLan started thinking of method to learn Chinesee in simple way and it might useful. Then, She succesfully introduce the fast way to learn Chinesee by understand only eight characters. 

 

The eight characters that she use is quite interesting because it is based on the shape that we usually can see in daily lives. For example, the word MOUTH draw as the opened mouth until it square. The shape that look like a person who walk means PERSON. The character of person with two arms both sides that seems like someone who screaming “Help! I am on fire!” means FIRE. The symbol of the DOOR look like a pair of saloon door in the wild west and other  four characters that seems like the TREE, SUN, MOON AND MOUNTAIN. Shaolan called these eight characters radicals because they are building blocks.

 

To create new character, we can combine both or several characters from those eight character. One example is one tree is tree, two trees means woods and three trees means forest. After  we know character, we can combine it as phrases. By using this method, the first eight radicals will allow us to built 32 characters and next group of eight characters will built extra 32 characters. So, with very little effort we will able to learn a couple hundred characters which is same as a Chinesee-eight-year-old.