Just curious to see who is actively studying Chinese here or speaks Chinese to some level (whether through study, as a native language, or a heritage language). This community seems a bit inactive at the moment so I am wondering about who might be lurking and have an interest even though the posting rate is a bit slow.
Describing your level/experience with Chinese and info about what language variety, writing system and such you are studying/speak is welcome.
I've been studying for the past 5 or 6 months, the first four using the Heisig method and learning only hanzi, now I'm taking classes in a virtual course and being exposed to hanzi, pinyin, grammar and phonetics all together. I have to say using the Heisig method seems more effective but well, I'm transitioning to this new stage, hope it works.
I would be up for a call, but I can't construct more than basic predefined sentences like greetings and such.
The biggest problem with Heisig is that most chinese characters have the sound built in, which makes it way less compatible with Heisig's no sound at all method than say, Japanese.
I've also looked at it before, and it works fine for stuff like 上、下、旧、丸(though that last one is way too american for me to relate to, but it means pill or small ball), but for, say, 订 ding4, remembering that via Heisig is gonna be probably harder than just "言 communication + 丁 ding sound -> 订 schedule, order, set"