Optimists study English, pessimists study Chinese, realists study Kalashnikov assault rifles.
It seems that the Chinese, having flooded the whole world with their goods, are clearly not going to stop there and are rapidly turning their country into the most powerful and developed part of the world. Time will tell whether they will succeed or not, but it will obviously not be superfluous to learn Chinese.
The main difficulty in learning Chinese is that its structure is fundamentally different from the experience we are used to. What are the famous Chinese characters worth, the total number of which exceeds 80,000!
However, let's not get upset — knowledge of the 500 most commonly used hieroglyphs is enough to understand 80% of the ordinary Chinese text. And the online service Skritter will help us in their study.
The Skritter service is designed to teach practical skills of Chinese and Japanese writing using a special web application or client for iPhone. When launching the online version, you will be asked to choose a traditional or simplified spelling, as well as whether you need hints during training.
After that, a hieroglyph input field appears in front of you, on which you must repeat the icons shown for a short time with the mouse. This process is accompanied by hints about the correct spelling and the order of lines (even this matters!). If you have correctly written the desired character, you can listen to its sound and proceed to the next task.
In addition to studying the spelling and sound of each hieroglyph, you can click on a special icon in the form of a magnifying glass and open a help window in which you will see a description and examples of the use of this hieroglyph.
In another setting, the claims that learning Chinese can be an exciting activity may cause at least surprise, but in the case of Skritter this is exactly what it is. Don't you believe it? Try it yourself. 祝你好運！
Skritter
