Hi, my suggestion is to take a MOOC "HSK-1 level" course so to learn just what you need. Focus on the essential. Chinese is difficoult : do it slow, make strong basis. Characters are made up with the "Radicals" : but if you analize a character in the very moment you have it down, you will remember it better . You don't need "lists" -- you need to practice! see → archchinese.com When you will feel more confident , then dive into Listening comprehension of songs with Lyrics : this makes sense! I have organized myself in this way: day 1 - Mooc : § 1 and so on day 2 - Mooc : § 2 and so on day 3 - Song or http://www.kinezika.info/pdf/chinesecharacters.pdf Write down the dialogues, English and Chinese separated, so you can use English to test yourself. When you repeat, write apart the most difficoult characters that you can't remember, and break them down, so they will finally "make sense" Last but not least , that should be always interesting to study Ancient Characters , I have to dive in this study , sooner or later. Best wishes

I suggest you first learn the simple common radicals, they are root words on which more complicated ones are built on. The easier characters are made from meaning combinations. Learning them will also help you understand Chinese culture and history too. Some common radicals are 人 (亻) human, 木 (tree) シ (water), 火 (fire) 扌 (hand) 足 (foot, leg), 金 (metal), 魚 (fish), 鳥 (bird), 口 (mouth)女 (female). For example, when 人 usually changes into 亻for making the entire combination looks pretty, 众 (a group of people) 仁 (two persons) to mean benevolence, this is what ancient Chinese believe the relation between persons should be. 木 -> tree-> wood, 林 = forest (two trees), 森 = jungle (three trees). It is used with all things made of wood, or names of trees. Therefore in 90% of the cases, even if you don't know the character means, seeing the 木 radical means it is associated with the name of a tree or something made from wood. This applies to all other radicals. Learning Chinese this way takes more time but you will remember it better. This form is never taught in schools because it is time consuming. If you are learning in this environment, learn how to dissect the characters and learn why it is written in that way. Also sometimes, it means no sense. This is because the element of beauty is also very important in its execution with a brush on the paper.

Hi, Axel Rose, I'm afraid the way we learn characters doesn't apply to you well, coz even kids in kindergarten would have a good spoken Chinese and are emerged in a all-Chinese environment here, which help them to understand the characters they learn in primary school both in speaking and writing. it wouldn't be difficult for you to just memorize some basic characters at primary school level (let's just say grade 1 to 3), but how to fit those words in casual talk and written Chinese is another story. the text books for Chinese students are generally hard for non-native speakers. below is a list of all characters for primary school Chinese : http://www.sohu.com/a/116271698_334705

Hello Axel, when I went to elementary school about 20 years ago, the textbook started with a few chapters on Pinyin (the official romanisation system for Mandarin pronunciation). Then the basic strokes are taught, followed by characters with few strokes and simple structures, such as 日月山水田土. Then, gradually we learned more and more characters and they became more complex. Every chapter had about ten new characters that we had to to memorise. I think for foreigners the learning process is similar. First you start with Pinyin so you can associate sounds to characters and words, then you learn the basic strokes, then the basic radicals, and slowly you can learn more complex characters. It's probably not a great idea to learn just any character regardless of difficulty, because then it would be like copying pictures if you don't understand the structure and the building blocs of each character.

In any case, this should be an idea of what you are searching for ** ; search also for "Radicals", as the audio-visual experience kisses memory. Best luck ** https://goo.gl/hE4FNS