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How to memorize Chinese characters (and why you keep forgetting them)

Why you keep forgetting characters

1. You review when you remember to, not when you need to

Memory loses what you've just learned very quickly. The psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus measured this in 1885, in what is now known as the forgetting curve: much of what you don't review in the first few days is lost, and every review done at the right moment makes the memory last longer.

2. You see them as random drawings

If every character is a brand-new shape, your memory has to store thousands of unrelated pictures. But most characters are built from pieces that show up again and again. Once you learn to see the pieces, everything gets easier.

3. You start with characters you'll hardly ever see

A random list or a phrasebook makes you spend energy on rare characters, while the ones that are everywhere stay shaky.

4. You only recognize them

Seeing a character and thinking “I know this one” is not the same as recalling it when you need it. To make it stick, you have to pull it out of your memory without having it in front of you.

7 techniques that work

1. Break each character into parts

Almost no character is a one-of-a-kind drawing. Look at how these are built:

In 妈, the 女 part hints at the meaning and 马 (horse, pronounced mǎ) hints at the sound. 吗 works the same way: 口 (mouth) plus 马 gives 吗, the question particle “ma”. A huge number of characters work like this. Once you see it, you stop memorizing drawings and start recognizing pieces.

2. Learn the most common radicals first

Radicals are the pieces that repeat the most, and they usually point you toward the meaning. You don't need to memorize all 214 traditional radicals: with the 20 or 30 most frequent ones, you'll already recognize pieces in almost everything you study at the beginning.

3. Make up a story for what doesn't make sense

When the pieces aren't enough, a short story helps. 忘 (wàng, to forget) is built from 亡 (to be lost) on top and 心 (heart) below: what gets lost from the heart is forgotten. And 忙 (máng, busy) puts the same 亡 next to 忄, the heart turned on its side: so busy you lose your heart. The more absurd or personal the story, the better you'll remember it.

4. Review right before you forget

This is called spaced repetition. Instead of reviewing everything every day, each character comes back after longer and longer gaps:

• Today
• Tomorrow
• In 3 days
• In 1 week
• In 2 weeks
• In 1 month

If you miss one, it goes back to the start of the line. You can do this with paper cards sorted into boxes (the Leitner system), with Anki, or with an app that organizes it for you.

5. Test yourself instead of rereading

Look at the meaning and the pinyin, try to write or picture the character, and only then check. That effort to remember is what locks it into memory. Rereading a list makes you feel like you already know it, but it fades fast.

6. Write by hand: a few times, and well

You don't need to fill pages. Write each new character three or four times following the stroke order, while saying its pronunciation and meaning out loud. Stroke order isn't arbitrary: your hand learns a fixed path, and the character comes out the same way every time.

7. Learn them inside words

A character on its own gets forgotten; one that shows up in several words you use sticks. 电 (diàn, electricity) appears in:

How many characters do you need?

Big dictionaries list tens of thousands of characters (the Kangxi Dictionary, from 1716, has more than 47,000), but everyday use is concentrated in a few thousand. The official list of frequently used characters in modern Chinese, published in China in 1988, shows it like this:

To start, aim for the first few hundred: they're the ones you'll see most on signs, menus and messages. What matters isn't the final number, but learning them in order of frequency. You'll find all the numbers, level by level, in how many Chinese characters you need to know.

How many new characters a day?

It depends on how much time you have, but review sets the pace. With 15 to 20 minutes a day, 5 to 10 new characters a day is a pace you can keep up. If review takes all your time on a given day, don't add new ones that day.

Common mistakes

• Copying the same character 50 times in a row.
• Studying isolated lists, with no words or sentences.
• Reading only the pinyin and skipping the character.
• Leaving all your review for the weekend.
• Learning rare characters because they look pretty before the frequent ones.

How we do it in Macalaoshi

We built our app, Macalaoshi, so this method happens on its own and never gets boring:

• Collect 1,300+ characters from HSK 1 to HSK 4, with pinyin, meaning and audio.
• Every character levels up when you get it right, so you see what you've mastered and what to review.
• Writing mode: learn to write them stroke by stroke, in the correct stroke order.
• Challenges and bosses you can only beat with your vocabulary, so reviewing feels like a game.
• A short plan for every day. It's free to start.

Frequently asked questions

Should I learn pinyin or characters first?

Pinyin first, for the first few weeks, so you learn to pronounce correctly. After that, always learn characters together with their pinyin, until you can recall each character without help.

Do I need to write by hand to learn Chinese characters?

Not to read, but writing each new character a few times, in the correct stroke order, helps fix its shape in your memory and tell similar characters apart.

How long does it take to learn 1,000 Chinese characters?

At 10 new characters a day with daily review, that's a little over three months of new material. Allow a little more, because on some days review takes up all your study time.

Do flashcards work for learning Chinese?

Yes, if you try to recall the answer before you see it and review at longer and longer intervals. Just looking at cards without trying to remember does very little.

What app helps you memorize Chinese characters?

It depends on what you need. Macalaoshi lets you collect characters from HSK 1 to 4, write them stroke by stroke and review them by playing. Pleco is the most widely used dictionary, and Anki is useful if you want to build your own flashcard decks.

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