At FT Magazine, Isabel Berwick introduces Chineasy, a visual-based learning system invented by ShaoLan Hsueh that uses simple illustrations to help people recognize and interpret Chinese characters.
“In a nutshell, I take thousands of characters, I analyse them and break them down,” she says. “It’s just like when you see a Harry Potter Lego castle – it’s not easy to see what they are made of until you break them down, and by breaking them down and analysing them on the computer I am able to see, just as the Lego castle is built with several frequently used building blocks, so there are thousands of characters and they are built with similar elements. You only need to know a few of those building blocks. Some of them are much more frequently used than others, so you prioritise them.” [Source]
Click through to access the Chineasy website, and watch Hsueh’s TED Talk from earlier this year:
