Tuesday, December 06, 2011
Exercising the memory
I will soon turn age 63. I can notice a very slight deterioration in memory and cognitive abilities. Learning Mandarin Hanji characters definitely seems beneficial as a mental exercise. Initially I had to spend literally hours tracing one character over and over and over. Slowly, it became easier. I was able to visualize certain characters during the day. I began to gain a sense of stroke order. Many elderly people take up crossword puzzles as a way to keep the mind active. I do not enjoy doing things which are arbitrary and meaningless. I do not enjoy games. There is actually a government committee in China which oversees the characters. Each school grade has a certain number of characters that they must master before they proceed to the next grade. A college student can recognize about 4000 characters which allows them to understand 80,000 words. 2000 characters is the minimum for reading a newspaper. 100,000 is required for Classical Chinese.
