Okay, those in a hurry simply download this file, print it, and cut it into single cards.
However, the following explanation is for those who wisely decide to deal a little longer with what their tool for maybe the next several years is like:
The downloadable files on this page are all PDF-files. They can be opened and printed with Adobe Acrobat Reader (to be downloaded here) or with many more PDF-Readers. The printing has to extend to the front AND the back side of each paper as every odd page contains the front side, and every even page the back side of several flashcards. When you cut the printed paper along the lines you will get twelve flashcards from each. It is advisible to use hard paper, such as paper with 180g/m².
If you feel that what I offer you is helpful, or if you want to leave a suggestion for improvement, please enter a message in the Guestbook.
Of the selection of the characters and their translations:
These 3013 characters are not randomly chosen. I downloaded a
Chinese novel and decided that every character in it will have to be
contained in my flashcard collection. I also tried to make occur most
of the multi-character-words of the novel on the flashcards, in order
to later being able to read the novel. Secondly I got the dictionary
of the C/E DICT project from the www.mandarintools.com
- a website of great importance to every sinologist as I think. After
that I wrote a software to analyse the novel and generate the
flashcards by the help of the dictionary. It turned out that the
novel contained 3140 different characters, 3013 of whose were
mentioned in the dictionary of the C/E DICT project, along with
translation into English and a lot of words which the respective
character is part of.
The flashcards show every possible
(according to C/E DICT) pronounciation of a character. After that
there are at most three words listed which this character is part of.
Usually these are the words which occur most frequently in the novel,
which is "Shanghai Baby" by Zhou Weihui, by the way. If
less than three words with that character were mentioned in "Shanghai
Baby", further words containing the character were randomly
chosen from the dictionary to fill the number of three.
My
flashcards can also be used if you use the books "Practical
Chinese Reader", Beijing Commercial Press. Almost every
characters of the first and second book are part of the flashcard
collection. The characters missing to cover the first two books are
less than 149, probably less than one hundred.
Now, just a short comment on the choice of my literature: Yes, I did read "Shanghai Baby", and no, I do not consider it a great piece of Chinese literature. Nevertheless I decided for this book to learn Chinese with – for three reasons: 1stly It is written in contemporary and easy language, 2ndly it was available on the Internet as a file, which made it easy to be processed by a programme, and 3rdly the German (and English) version is available in every bookshop and can be read alongside the Chinese one.
For those who have already started to learn Chinese using the 1375 flashcards of Sinolingua Beijing there is a reduced version of my flashcard collection, so you do not need to print the characters of Sinolingua again. More of that below.
The back side of a flashcard:
The statistics on each card gives information about how important the respective character is to the novel and (thereby) for the whole Chinese written language as well.
About different layouts:
When downloading the file you have the choice between a file with and one without lines as well as between two (Chinese) fonts. Those thin lines mark the edge of each flashcard and are held in light grey. They are particularily helpful for the cutting of paper which diverges from the A4-standard as you will find it in China very often. Those who use a professional cutting device do not need lines and can download the unlined version. You only need to make sure to divide the paper equally. The fonts are FZKaiTi and PMingLiu. FZKaiTi is a Linux-font (but no problem if you use Windows) and is particularily useful if you also learn to write by the help of these cards. However, nobody hinders you to like PMingliu more, but you should not write copying these characters, as they are designed not quite the way handwriting should be like.
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FZKaiTi |
PMingLiu |
Download of the 3013-cards-collection (Deutsche Version hier):
Lest I shall never know whether my work was helpful to
anyone – before downloading, please check this box:
GUESTBOOK!
most lately when the flashcards are cut and the first one used!
To download, please, right-click on the link and select "Save target as".
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FZKaiTi |
PMingLiu |
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Lined |
flashcards_compl_FZKaiTi_lines.pdf (2,5 MB) |
flashcards_compl_PMingLiu_lines.pdf (2,2 MB) |
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Unlined |
flashcards_compl_FZKaiTi.pdf (2,5 MB) |
flashcards_compl_PMingLiu.pdf (2,1 MB) |
For users of the 1375 flashcards by Sinolingua:
I myself use the German version of these cards and that was it what gave me the idea of extending the collection and write a software for this purpose. However, you should not necessarily learn writing by the help of these cards, but they offer the great advantage of carrying the order of the strokes on the front side.
In their collection you find all the characters used in the first and the second book of "Practical Chinese Reader" (Commercial Press Beijing) and some more from other textbooks. In the flashcards that I created, however, 149 characters that occur in Sinolingua do not occur. This reduced version has only 1787 and can be downloaded here:
Download of the 1787-collection ( Deutsche Version hier):
Lest I shall never know whether my work was helpful to
anyone – before downloading, please check this box:
GUESTBOOK!
most lately when the flashcards are cut and the first one used!
To download, please, right-click on the link and select "Save target as".
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FZKaiTi |
PMingLiu |
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Lined |
flashcards_red_FZKaiTi_lines.pdf (1,8 MB) |
flashcards_red_PMingLiu_lines.pdf (1,6 MB) |
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Unlined |
flashcards_red_FZKaiTi.pdf (1,8 MB) |
flashcards_red_PMingLiu.pdf (1,4 MB) |
