Hi all,

好久不見！Yeah, it's a been a while hasn't it? Chinese is still on the down-low for me. I'm lucky enough to still get a handful of emails each month with people creating amazing projects and apps in the Chinese learning space. It's incredible to see it grow, and I'm a little sad that I'm not so actively involved as I was before. Perhaps this will change with two new projects that caught my attention recently.

Outlier Linguistics

First is Outlier Linguistics' Character Dictionary add-on for Pleco. They had a successful Kickstarter campaign, which I backed. I was very skeptical at first regarding their goals and in-depth research, but then I tried their demo app as well as read this interview on Sinosplice, I was convinced and pleasantly surprised by their passion and expertise. The 说文解字 (Shuowen Jiezi) mistake example blew my mind.

In a way this was the kind of knowledge I was I had for HanziCraft and my thesis research. Perhaps I could get in contact with them to help open-source some of the dictionary data, or license some of it for HanziCraft? Can't wait to try out their dictionary though.

Ninchanese

Next up is Ninchanese. They also have a Kickstarter, which is live now & super close to their goal. It reminds of a DuoLingo-type system with a focus on Chinese-only, which is great, since I think Chinese has got it's own unique set of challenges when comes to online learning.

I really love their dedication to style as well. Even though it might not necessarily contribute directly to your language learning, it definitely adds to the motivation and enjoyment.

They also have vocabulary challenges at Ninchallenge, which was nice to refresh my vocab memory.

It'll be interesting to see where these projects go. For now, it makes me super happy to see people build more things. That's why I'd happily back them, even if they fail on their promises or don't deliver quite as well, we need to promote experimentation in the space. They might very well become or are already amazing new resources to add to your learning arsenal.

Happy learning!

It's uncharacteristic not to update you guys on what's happening. I've been very silent on Confused Laowai, but it's indicative of change. It's almost eight months now that I've been living in Taipei. So what's been happening? I'll be candid here.

A shift in focus

During the day I would do web development, working on projects for my self or contract work, then late afternoon/early evening I would teach English. Learning Chinese, as a priority has taken a back seat. I'm focusing more on web development as a potential career.

I said this in my immersion post, that moving to Taipei has changed my motivation to learn Chinese. Before I came here, moving to Taipei was my goal. I wanted to improve my Chinese as much as possible so that I can function in the society. When I arrived, I realized I could function pretty well and the intense focus on the language was downgraded.

Where to now?

In any case, as this change happened (and still happening) this year, I'm not going to stop learning Chinese. This language has changed me and I won't just discard it. I just have to find something else. Motivation is integral to learning a language, if not the most important element.

Habits and motivation will change. This is a challenge. How do you change with it, that's the question here? I've just been slow in trying to figure this out. But I promise I will! Developing HanziCraft for example has been great in mixing web development and learning Chinese.

Life in Taiwan

Taiwan is an amazing country. It's incredibly easy to live here. Even though I work on Saturdays, we spend most weekends traveling and sightseeing. Summer is incredibly hot though. Even hotter than South Africa! It was unbearable at first, but now I've gotten used to it. Here are some photos (taken by me and my girlfriend) of my traveling and life in Taiwan:

View of Danshui (淡水) from my apartment

Getting 蔥抓餅 for breakfast

 View of Zhuwei (竹圍) neighborhood from inside a dumpling place

Watched Dragon Boat races on Dragon Boat Festival (端午節)

 Me enjoying the salvation of water at Fulong Beach

Me with the owner of the homestay/bnb (民宿) we stayed at in Jiufen (九份 )

Walking through the streets of JiufenDrinking tea with Greg from Mandarin Segments on his visit to Taipei

In the end Taiwan is beautiful and I really enjoy it. I'm just not sure where it leaves me with a potential career at the moment. One thing is for sure though, I'll have to work on changing my goals for Chinese. It's been too long and too dormant. What do you think I should I do?

Today on Confused Laowai, I’m featuring a post by Christina from FluentU. In case you are unfamiliar with them, they’re a language learning company that uses authentic video for personalized language learning. You can check them out here.

Ever want to type “haha” or “boom!” during a conversation but you pause and think, “wait, how do you write this word?”. I’ve been there many times and always feel that without the onomatopoeia, my sentence loses a bit of the exact meaning I want to communicate. From reading Niel’s post on onomatopoeia, it gave me inspiration to look further into more Chinese onomatopoeias.

Just how do you say “woof” when a dog barks? How do you express the sound of the ping pong ball bouncing back and forth on the table? After looking through the internet and much research, I wanted to share some of the information I found.

You would never be able to visit a zoo or sing Old McDonald’s without these: animal sounds!

The reason I looked into this was because I was texting one of my Chinese friends about my morning. I woke up to the sound my neighbor’s dog barking consistently for fifteen minutes at a squirrel. I wanted to text them “woof” for extra measure but didn’t know how to so had to look it up. Turns out, to say “woof” in Chinese, is “wang” in pinyin.

Here’s how you can use this word: “我邻居的狗不停地叫，汪汪汪!” - “My neighbor’s dog didn’t stop barking, woof, woof, woof!”

They’re so useful in many occasions, here are some more onomatopoeias for animals!

Animal Sounds

One of the most versatile one character expressions, and my personal favorite is “啪 (pā)” or similar to “pop!” in English. However, you could use it in so many situations and depending on the situation, the meaning doesn’t directly translate into “pop”.

For example, when joking with my friends and pretending that I’d smack them for an inappropriate joke, I can make the motion of hitting (but purposely missing) them while saying “啪!” If you do a couple of slaps, say three back and forths then say “啪,啪,啪!”

Though the first example is the most common way to use this word, another way to use “啪” can be describing something that’s fallen. “我的手机啪就掉下马桶了” or “My cell phone fell into the toilet, plat!”

When walking on the street and all of a sudden you see an interesting sign that is hanging in the window of a shop you can say “我走在马路上的时候，啪，就看到了标记” meaning “When I was walking on the street, voila, I saw the sign.”

I could go on and on with more examples but basically, I haven’t found a situation (though there are some) where I couldn’t use this word! Below you’ll find some other one character onomatopoeias.

One Character Onomatopoeias

After spending a year in China, I’ve become a lot more Chinese with my expressions and natural reactions.

Before living in the Far East, if I forgot something or if I would drop something I’d say “ah!” or “oh crap!” Well, now instead I say “哎呀!” which means “oops!” in Chinese.

A great way to express surprise or “whoa!” would be 哇塞 (wa sāi). You can use this is together with “厉害” (powerful;strong). One of my coworkers went to work only wearing a t-shirt when it was 50 degrees out to teach his class. All the students told him “哇塞, 好厉害!” or “Whoa! So strong!”

Here are some more two character onomatopoeias in Chinese.

Two Character Onomatopoeias

You’ll often hear chatter that you can’t really make out clearly. Here’s the perfect onomatopoeia: 叽里咕噜 (jī li gū lū).

Say you walk into a cafe and hear a bunch of people in the background talking. You can’t make out exactly what they’re saying but you know they’re in the cafe. You can say “他们在叽哩咕噜什么?” or “What are they muttering about?”

Four Character Expressions

Well there you have it. Any other Chinese onomatopoeias you can think of? Feel free to comment below!

You might have noticed that a few weeks ago I added a feature to HanziCraft that automatically tries to find pronunciation clues in each character. Using this tool, I decided to create phonetic sets using the 6800 most frequent Chinese characters.

What is a phonetic set?

A phonetic set is a list of characters where a component produces the same pronunciation clue towards each character.

For instance, the component 马, which is pronounced as 'ma3', can be found in these characters: 吗,玛,码,蚂,犸. They all have the same pronunciation 'ma3'.

You can see both lists here.

Interesting Findings?

零,玲,铃,鈴,龄,齡,伶,翎,聆,羚,苓,蛉,呤,泠,囹,瓴,鸰,鴒,舲

领,領,零,玲,铃,鈴,龄,齡,岭,伶,翎,聆,羚,苓,蛉,呤,泠,囹,瓴,鸰,鴒,舲

Combinality

Read my post on sub-conscious variables in Chinese characters for more info. This is a variable that HanziCraft is working on trying to find. It's not that hard, but just needs some more coding.

I've been in Taiwan now for just over 2.5 months. So how is it being immersed/living in a country where Mandarin is spoken? Often, when dinner conversation comes up about language learning, especially in informal discussions, immersion is praised as the best way to learn a language. I'm not convinced.

As a disclaimer to this post, I'd like to mention, that this topic will differ from person to person. There is a lot anecdotal evidence here. Mine included!

Just a nice pic of the gardens at the National Palace Museum. Courtesy of my girlfriend.

Immersion works better for beginners

Going from there, depending on your circumstances, you can progress to some form of intermediate level. Even if all the language might be overwhelming for beginners, a survival form of the language requires very little effort to pick up and use. The feedback is instant.

Immersion for intermediate learners (like me)

I struggle to feel the progress. Or maybe I'm just disappointed that my Mandarin is not improving as quickly as I hoped for. But here's the thing, it's not the environment's fault. It's mine.

Motivation is still the key

Immersion, even if the language is all around me, needs the correct mindset and motivation to make it work. Being at an intermediate level makes this even more troublesome, because I don't really "need" to learn more. I can do all survival things already. You need to make the effort, but don't exhaust yourself. Ask yourself this question:

How I can use all this access and exposure to the language in an efficient way, that's already in line with your own study routines and methods?

But there's one thing that immersion does really well.

Listening and more listening!

If you look at the four strands of language learning, lots of input is one aspect of it. I feel like other areas of language learning, such as writing, speaking and reading still need inherent motivation to do even if you're in an immersive environment. They take conscious effort. But listening is sometimes a tough one to crack, because it takes a lot of time. I feel like if there's one thing that immersion can help you with regardless of motivation is listening to the language a lot more than you would have otherwise. Even if you don't understand everything, it allows to get used to the flow and sound of the language.

My listening is one aspect of immersion, that I feel, has improved as I had hoped for.

Conclusion

How has your immersion experience been? Share it with me!

Happy Year of the Snake everyone. It's my year (born 1989), so hopefully it wil be a great one (please don't bite)! Here's an update on my life in Taipei.

Quick Update

My character learning has been slow. My schedule at work has been throwing me around, but I know that's no excuse. I'm lazy. I know it. However, I can feel my listening improving a lot. Immersion isn't necessarily the solution to all language learning problems (a future blog post for that!), but it sure as hell has made my listening practice easier. I eavesdrop... a lot!

Furthermore, I'm working on a project with Jake & Olle, as I've mentioned before, that's taking quite a lot of my time. I'm also working on new features for HanziCraft. So I'm busy busy, but I'm going to make time for more Chinese very soon.

That's all for now.

Have an awesome year! 新年快樂!

Today, I introduce HanziCraft. It's a project that I've been working on for some time now. It started with my thesis, where I needed to easily decompose Chinese characters for my research. I then found data and wrote a little decomposition tool for myself. This was called HanziJS. However, as time went on I realized I wanted more than just decomposition data. Why not create a site that pushes the value of Chinese character dictionaries to a new level?

Questions that come up:

• What are the radicals?
• How does the decomposition traverse itself?
• Is there any phonetic information available?
• Does this character have many definitions? How is it pronounced?
• Now that I know more of the character, where does it fit into vocabulary?
• Is the vocabulary useful?

What will become of HanziJS?

If you are a coder, go check out the github repo. There's quite a lot of updates to it, as well as quite a bit of refactoring (thanks Dusan!). I'm busy writing proper documentation for it.

Introducing HanziCraft

If you want to know how I determine the example words, find the question in the FAQ.

P.S. - If you see any question marks or blocks, then you need to install the proper font to display all the components. Download the font here.

Beta

• Lookup more than one character at a time
• Favorite lists
• Your own user dashboard (currently showing your lookup history. I will implement character analytics in the future)
• No ads
• All future premium features forever free.
• AND Less hassle in learning Chinese characters (and who doesn't want that!?)

Future Features

• Display potential phonetic information in the radicals
• Display similar characters based on components (if a character shares more than 50% similar components)
• Text Analysis (this will be a premium feature that will take a group of characters, perhaps an article and compute what you need to know from the text. This will include unique characters, unique radicals, frequency counts and other cool information)

I hope HanziCraft becomes your goto Chinese character dictionary. I'm building it to be my own goto dictionary, so tell me, what do you need to make it the ultimate Chinese character dictionary? I'll try my best to implement the features you need. Happy learning!

So Olle of Hacking Chinese decided to drop a bombshell on the first of January, his Chinese character challenge. What makes this different from other challenges or goals (new year resolutions?) is that this isn't necessarily a pre-made goal (learn x amount of characters per day kind of thing), but rather a promotion of taking more effort in your Chinese character learning.

Furthermore, it isn't just an open goal for everyone to try on their own, but rather that you get assigned two challenge buddies. These people are a way to make you more accountable to the challenge. I've already emailed my challenge buddies, both with different goals, motivations & levels, which makes this so much more interesting.

Mnemonics

My own goals and motivations

So my goals are two-fold:

1. Get a deeper understanding of the switches between simplified and traditional.

2. Make sense of the world around me.

Here's how I'm going to achieve this:

1. Start paying attention to characters around me that look familiar in context, but are in fact traditional characters. Write them down. Also, I'm going to find a list of characters that were changed from traditional to simplified to gain better insight in these changes. Not only do I want to do this, to learn more characters, but I feel that the heated debate of simplified vs traditional is something I can't really give insight or my opinion on, without being informed of all these changes. At the moment I feel both have their merits, but let's not get into that discussion now.

2. Be conscious and aware of my environment when I'm in Taiwan. When I'm on the commute to work, write down unknown characters. By the end of the year, I don't want to see an unknown character. This is a tall order, but I think it's totally possible. This will help me to go from just characters to interpreting vocabulary & sentences.

 My tools

• Skritter

• HanziCraft (a new site that I'm working on that I wasn't going to release to the public until later this week, but I thought why not sneak it in here. I'll do a big post about this site soon)

Don't wait anymore

Let's do this!: LEEERRRROOOOOOOOYYY JEEEEEEENNKIIIIIINSSSSS

It's been more than a month and a half since I announced that I'm heading to Taiwan for 2013. I've been here now for three weeks. It's been quite the ride and my blog is way due for an update!

Here's what I've been up to so far.

Two Weeks in a Hostel

We saw this amazing rainbow one afternoon from our hostel window. [It even made the news that night on TV!]

Finding a place to stay

It is situated in Zhuwei, which is a suburb of Danshui district in New Taipei. So it's a bit north and bit more from the city than I expected to settle in Taipei, but the view and modern facilities is a nice comfort. My girlfriend works close by in any case and the subway trains give easy access to the city.

Here's our view:

Xmas & New Years Eve

For New Years Eve, we did not make any plans beforehand as we just moved into our new place and have been very busy with exploring and hunting for jobs. We decided to just head down to Taipei 101 and see the fireworks. We heard there were going to be lots of people, but did not expect THAT much people. Wow. It was unreal.

We wanted to get into a club, but all was sold out and way too expensive. We just drank some beers from 7-11 on the street and watched the festivities around Taipei 101. The fireworks in the end were beautiful. We then tried to head home... woops. Mistake. We only ended up getting home at 2h30am!

It did not spoil the evening, but for future reference we will try and organize something before: like a club, or a party at someone's place.

Meeting up with Jake & Olle

My Mandarin

For the first three weeks, I've been slow in my Mandarin. I'm still settling in and try to find my routine. However, as everyday goes past, the language around me is slowly becoming clearer. It's as if all the knowledge that I have learned up until now is slowly waking up and getting ready for action.

The switch to traditional characters has been no problem for me. I know enough simplified characters to understand the traditional characters in context. I still have to figure out my exact plan of action (I need a job first!), but as soon as I get one I'll let everyone know.

I'm excited for 2013!

2012 is coming to an end (hopefully not the world!). I have completed my Master's degree and have been planning the next steps for 2013 for almost a year now. I've always wanted to live in China. Actually soak in the language and culture I've been learning for almost five years. It's one of the reasons why I've been motivated to keep studying and learning for all these years: I knew one day I'd like to live and work in China for at least a year.

My girlfriend, coincidentally, also finishes her degree this year. She also studied Mandarin and wants to visit China. The timing is perfect... but, after long deliberation and many discussions, we've finally decided to head to Taiwan instead (not that it's a consolation!)

Why Taiwan?

I've been in contact with a few people who work and study in Taiwan and it sounds great. One of the other big reasons for choosing Taiwan was that quite a few Chinese bloggers and learners reside there at present (Chinese Hacks, En Route to Fluency, Hacking Chinese, Horse Dragon Fish & iLearnMandarin among a few more on people on Twitter). I'm excited to finally meet these people who inspire me and have a few beers chatting about the Chinese language.

I'm also curious to expand my knowledge of characters into traditional characters.

Improve my Spoken Chinese

We will most likely get jobs as English teachers, as this is the easiest way to stay in the country without signing up at University (I'm over studying for now!). We'll have to balance our usage of English versus learning Mandarin. I haven't figured out my strategy yet, but I'll find it (and blog about it) once I settle in.

I remember travelling in China last year, where the three weeks that I spent there, were some of the most fun and effective learning I've done.

Living Abroad

Besides I've always wanted to see more of Asia, so I'll be using any spare time to travel outside of Taiwan as well. Japan is high on my list of places I want to travel to. Korea too!

The Initial Plan

We're going to leave for Taiwan mid-December and will try and settle in Taipei. We're planning on staying a minimum of one year.

If anyone has any advice or tips on Taiwan, jobs and living there, or just want to say "awesome man" then leave a comment below!

I received an email a few months back about a new product called ChineseCUBES. I was instantly intrigued, as it was a novel concept, using blocks with Chinese characters on them with augmented reality. I'm definitely a promoter for new and exciting ways to learn languages, especially when it comes to using new technology. Augmented reality has been buzzing for the past two years, especially in mobile phones. I was curious how they will implement this with Chinese characters, so I got sent a copy to review. Here's a short video provided by them on what it's about.

First Impressions

The addition of the webcam was quite surprising. I expected just to use my own webcam, but then I realized, some computers, mostly desktops, do not have webcams, so it was a needed addition.

The Hardware

The writing pen and square works fine with nothing really special.

The Software

Then after installation you have register for an account on their website. With that account you can login using the software. I had some trouble with logging in once I created an account, because they asked me enter an "ID" with a password. I thought it was my username. After a few failed attempts, I realized they wanted my email address instead.

After logging in you enter your serial number written on the CD case.

Why can't I just open the program and enter the serial number? What's the point of having an account? Maybe there's a reason for this. In any case after the installation, everything worked perfectly fine.

Using ChineseCUBES

In Freestyle mode, you get to just play around with the cubes. There are 40 character cubes available and then 5 Tutor cubes. The tutor cubes is a great addition to the characters, because they activate an action on the present cube. The present cube is the last cube added to the webcam. So for instance, when I place the Speak Tutor Cube, the program pronounces that cube and changes the character to Pinyin. A little avatar also pops up.

When you place the copy cube next to a character it copies that character. So now you can write 谢谢 for instance.

Now here's the cool thing. When you start putting random cubes together, the program starts suggesting words for you on the right side of the screen.

Now for Learning Mode.

This mode was a bit disappointing. It takes you on a step-by-step tutorial of each theme; that is the good part. It really explains why certain characters were grouped together in a theme. You end up using all of them in learning one "theme" of 10 characters. The guidance is great and the pop-up tips by Fang Fang (the main avatar/tutor) is good.

However, they add these challenges to Learning Mode, which is basically just a Memory Match game. This feels pointless to me and definitely not a good way to test your knowledge. For some people this might seem nice and "game"-like, but it's old and boring for me. I just end up clicking things until they match. There's no skill and very little memory involved.

At the end of a "theme" another type of challenge occurs, where a stimulus is given, such as a sound of word, characters or the pinyin. You have to choose appropriate answer when the carousel comes around. This again, is terrible user-experience design. When I look at the answer I sometimes take a split second too long. I then have to wait until the answer comes around again. Urgh.

Choice of Characters

Possible Word Combinations: 112

Character List: 我是见很吗不好谢在你谁什她么的也这他那们对去家怎做起哪想里在先太姐请名问生小叫字

It's hard to say if the choice of 40 characters are the best option, but what definitely makes it worth it, are the themes they created around each group of ten.

Overall Impression

I think the augmented reality does add value. The visceral connection between the cubes and your screen is something that is hard to explain. I thought, of taking away the screen and just having the cubes, then I realized, they are pretty useless. The fact that the augmented reality adapts to your interactions, especially with word suggestions in Freestyle mode, definitely enhances the interaction.

If you just had the cubes, then there would not suggestions, no stroke order demonstrations, no instant popups and more. Thus, the augmented reality does add value. 

Could this experience have been replicated by just an online interface? Maybe, but having the actual cubes in your hands and playing with it, is something that cannot be replicated.

I think the Learning Mode though fails in this added value: the physical cubes and augmented reality, could easily have been replaced by a tutor-like system explaining the characters and their combos. However, the idea of "themes" around 10 characters, is clever way introducing characters and their relationships to vocabulary/phrase formation in Chinese.

The Learning Value

Playing with the cubes in Freestyle mode promotes curiosity and an understanding of how Chinese works. This is perhaps the biggest value that ChineseCUBES provide. I'm not sure how well you would be able to remember each word, or start using them in conversations, but it teaches the learner a unique meta-linguistic skill about the language itself, which I haven't seen before. 

Oddly lacking is an introduction to radicals? Or their purpose as well. Therefore, ChineseCUBES, function more from the character-level up towards words and then phrase level.

Conclusion

Beginner learners and Elementary learners would definitely benefit out of ChineseCUBES. Here's the thing though, ChineseCUBES is not the most efficient and effective product out there. Skritter, Anki and other methods are definitely better, but ChineseCUBES fills a weird a gap between having fun, self-exploration, learning and introducing the learner to the unique aspects of Chinese syntax and vocabulary/phrase formation, which is definitely something that needs to be learned.

I would recommend this to people just starting out in Chinese, while using other methods. Spend 10-20min a day with ChineseCUBES in Freestyle mode, and you'll learn a lot of the way the language is structured while picking up new vocabulary.

With that being said, ChineseCUBES is not a product that you need to use, as it does not easily fit in to the four strands of language learning. It's a not a sustainable product, such as FluentU or Skritter that can easily fall into a language learning strand, to keep improving skills. ChineseCUBES, however, might fall into a strand of its own, which I discovered the other day on Leaky Grammar, called improvisation in language.

It allows you to explore the language and improvise using the Freestyle mode, without any care or rigid rules to stop you. It's unique and very engaging.

If you're frustrated and need a refreshing way to start learning Chinese, then ChineseCUBES will hopefully makes things a bit more clearer.

In summary:

• Novel use of Augmented Reality

• Helps you learn the unique features of the Chinese language.

• Freestyle mode and their recommendations is a great way to explore and start with the Chinese language.

• Not necessarily very efficient or effective

• Learning Mode, although great in content, fails in presentation

• Slightly pricey

After running a script last month to see where the first occurrence of a radicals appear in HSK, there were some interesting observations. Such as the fact that some radicals only occur on level 6 or some never occur! I decided to look at some of those radicals to investigate why they are so rare, and maybe learn a bit more about them. First up is 玄(xuán). It sits at radical number 95.

Meaning

I decided to find more clarity. After some searching I found this word: 玄奥. This means "profound mystery" or "the mysteries of the Universe". Then it started making sense. Dark is related to the unknown & this can be mysterious, but also profound & incredible in the sense of its mystery.

The Death Star, before Luke destroyed it, could have been described 玄妙 (mysterious & profound).

As A Radical

Notice how both characters are pronounced the same: xù

玄 doesn't act here as a semantic radical, but rather a phonetic clue to pronunciation. I decided to find some more characters that has 玄 in it. Here's what I found:

弦昡泫炫牽玅玆玈玹眩舷蚿衒铉

Notice something? 玄 mostly occurs on the right. This an indication that it acts as a phonetic radical, providing pronunciation information in semantic-phonetic compounds. Only three characters seem to use 玄 as a semantic radical: 玅玆玈, of which one is just a variant of 妙 in 玄妙.

If you look at the pronunciation of the other characters you get this:

弦 (xián), 昡 (xuàn), 泫 (xuàn), 炫 (xuàn), 牽 (qiān), 玹 (xuán), 眩 (xuàn), 舷 (xián), 蚿 (xián),铉 (xuàn)

See the trend there? 玄 most definitely acts as a phonetic radical, rather than a semantic radical. It's kinda disappointing that it isn't used a semantic radical more often, 'cause it definitely has interesting meaning.

Conclusion

Oddly enough, there's another word that uses 玄: 玄乎, which means "unreliable". 玄 is definitely that, totally unreliable as a semantic radical, but at least works as a neat phonetic radical.

I was looking at my blog's web analytics when I saw a few hits coming from Skritter's forum. I headed on over and found an interesting topic. Is there a list of radicals sorted by their first occurrence in HSK? So, basically, show the components based on their entry into an HSK level. I decided to spend the day and code this up using code from HanziJS. It was interesting question and I was curious myself.

Details

Here's how the list works:

Nr of radical according to Kangxi Radical list: HSK Level, First Character Occurrence (additional information)

Here's the list. You can also download the .txt file too.

1) 一: 1, 一
2) 丨: 1, 在
3) 丶: 1, 的
4) 丿: 1, 不
6) 亅: 1, 了
7) 二: 1, 会
8) 亠: 1, 京
9) 人: 1, 人 (亻: 1, 们)
10) 儿: 1, 说
12) 八: 1, 期
13) 冂: 1, 同
14) 冖: 1, 学
15) 冫: 1, 冷
16) 几: 1, 机
17) 凵: 1, 脑
18) 刀: 1, 分 (刂: 1, 前)
19) 力: 1, 五
20) 勹: 1, 的
21) 匕: 1, 些
22) 匚: 1, 医
24) 十: 1, 年
25) 卜: 1, 不
28) 厶: 1, 会
29) 又: 1, 对
30) 口: 1, 中
31) 囗: 1, 国
32) 土: 1, 在
33) 士: 1, 喜
34) 夂: 1, 客
36) 夕: 1, 名
37) 大: 1, 大
38) 女: 1, 好
39) 子: 1, 学
40) 宀: 1, 家
41) 寸: 1, 时
42) 小: 1, 京 (⺍: 1, 学)
44) 尸: 1, 呢
46) 山: 1, 岁
48) 工: 1, 工
49) 己: 1, 起
50) 巾: 1, 师
51) 干: 1, 午
53) 广: 1, 店
59) 彡: 1, 影
60) 彳: 1, 很
61) 心: 1, 想 (忄: 2, 快)
62) 戈: 1, 我
64) 手: 1, 我 (扌: 1, 打)
67) 文: 1, 这
69) 斤: 1, 听
72) 日: 1, 是
73) 曰: 1, 喝
74) 月: 1, 有
75) 木: 1, 来
76) 欠: 1, 欢
77) 止: 1, 些
79) 殳: 1, 没
84) 气: 1, 气
85) 水: 1, 水 (氵: 1, 没)
86) 火: 1, 火 (灬: 1, 点)
88) 父: 1, 爸
96) 玉: 1, 国
99) 甘: 1, 期
100) 生: 1, 生
102) 田: 1, 果
106) 白: 1, 的
109) 目: 1, 看
111) 矢: 1, 医
113) 示: 1, 漂 (礻: 1, 视)
115) 禾: 1, 和
117) 立: 1, 站
119) 米: 1, 米
120) 糸: 1, 系
123) 羊: 1, 样
125) 老: 1, 老
135) 舌: 1, 话
138) 艮: 1, 很
145) 衣: 1, 衣
146) 西: 1, 西 (覀: 1, 漂)
152) 豕: 1, 家
156) 走: 1, 起
158) 身: 1, 谢
166) 里: 1, 里
172) 隹: 1, 谁
173) 雨: 1, 雨
176) 面: 1, 面
189) 高: 1, 高
23) 匸: 2, 望
26) 卩: 2, 迎
27) 厂: 2, 颜
43) 尢: 2, 就
56) 弋: 2, 试
57) 弓: 2, 张
58) 彐: 2, 雪
63) 戶: 2, 所
70) 方: 2, 房
80) 毋: 2, 每
81) 比: 2, 比
83) 氏: 2, 旅
92) 牙: 2, 穿
93) 牛: 2, 件
97) 瓜: 2, 瓜
103) 疋: 2, 蛋
104) 疒: 2, 病
108) 皿: 2, 篮
114) 禸: 2, 离
116) 穴: 2, 穿
128) 耳: 2, 最
130) 肉: 2, 肉
132) 自: 2, 自
133) 至: 2, 到
136) 舛: 2, 舞
137) 舟: 2, 船
139) 色: 2, 色
142) 虫: 2, 蛋
144) 行: 2, 行
157) 足: 2, 足 (⻊: 3, 跟)
175) 非: 2, 非
180) 音: 2, 意
203) 黑: 2, 黑
35) 夊: 3, 夏
54) 廴: 3, 健
55) 廿: 3, 世
82) 毛: 3, 笔
87) 爪: 3, 爬 (⺤: 1, 爱)
91) 片: 3, 片
94) 犬: 3, 然 (犭: 1, 狗)
101) 用: 3, 用
112) 石: 3, 碗
121) 缶: 3, 萄
122) 网: 3, 网 (罒: 2, 慢)
126) 而: 3, 而
129) 聿: 3, 健
134) 臼: 3, 瘦
148) 角: 3, 解
149) 言: 3, 信 (讠: 1, 说)
150) 谷: 3, 容
151) 豆: 3, 短
164) 酉: 3, 酒
171) 隶: 3, 康
177) 革: 3, 鞋
185) 首: 3, 道
186) 香: 3, 香
209) 鼻: 3, 鼻
11) 入: 4, 入
45) 屮: 4, 塑
65) 支: 4, 技
66) 攴: 4, 敲
68) 斗: 4, 科
71) 无: 4, 无
78) 歹: 4, 列
98) 瓦: 4, 瓶
107) 皮: 4, 被
124) 羽: 4, 翻
141) 虍: 4, 虑
143) 血: 4, 血
153) 豸: 4, 貌
165) 釆: 4, 播
167) 金: 4, 金 (钅: 1, 钱)
160) 辛: 4, 辛
184) 食: 4, 食 (饣: 1, 饭)
200) 麻: 4, 麻
207) 鼓: 4, 鼓
5) 乙: 5, 乙
52) 幺: 5, 率
105) 癶: 5, 登
110) 矛: 5, 矛
118) 竹: 5, 竹 (⺮: 2, 第)
127) 耒: 5, 籍
131) 臣: 5, 藏
161) 辰: 5, 震
188) 骨: 5, 滑
190) 髟: 5, 髦
193) 鬲: 5, 融
194) 鬼: 5, 魅
208) 鼠: 5, 鼠
47) 巛: 6, 巡
89) 爻: 6, 攀
95) 玄: 6, 蓄
155) 赤: 6, 赤
140) 艸: not found (艹: 1, 菜)
147) 見: not found (见: 1, 现)
159) 車: not found (车: 1, 车)
162) 辵: not found (辶: 1, 这)
163) 邑: not found (阝: 1, 都)
169) 門: not found (门: 1, 们)
170) 阜: not found (阝: 1, 院)
174) 靑: not found (青: 1, 请)
183) 飛: not found (飞: 1, 飞)
187) 馬: not found (马: 1, 吗)
154) 貝: not found (贝: 2, 员)
168) 長: not found (长: 2, 长)
181) 頁: not found (页: 2, 题)
195) 魚: not found (鱼: 2, 鱼)
196) 鳥: not found (鸟: 2, 鸡)
182) 風: not found (风: 3, 风)
178) 韋: not found (韦: 4, 围)
210) 齊: not found (齐: 4, 济)
211) 齒: not found (齿: 4, 龄)
199) 麥: not found (麦: 5, 麦)
205) 黽: not found (黾: 5, 绳)
212) 龍: not found (龙: 5, 龙)
90) 爿: not found
179) 韭: not found
191) 鬥: not found
192) 鬯: not found
197) 鹵: not found
198) 鹿: not found
201) 黃: not found
202) 黍: not found
204) 黹: not found
206) 鼎: not found
213) 龜: not found
214) 龠: not found

There might be some errors here somewhere. If you spot anything let me know!