Just received a reply from George about whether we'd be able to choose our own colour schemes to represent tones.

George suggested for the moment they'd stick with a few popular sets.

Two of those are outlined on this website:
http://www.sinosplice.com/life/archives/2009/08/11/tone-and-color-in-chinese

Dummet's 1/red 2/orange 3/green 4/blue
Sinosplice 1/orange 2/green 3/blue 4/red

My personal scheme is (copied from my email I sent to George, too lazy to retype - sorry!) 1/blue, 2/green, 3/red, 4/black, neutral/grey. Reasoning behind this is partially as they're distinct from each other and stand out on paper (unlike red/orange of Sinoplice), and partially from the blue/sky/high etc associations from the Tuttle book. Restrospectively I've also tried to use time of day (blue cold of night, green dew in morning, red midday heat, black dusk) linked with my mneumonic images - but that's pretty tough going.

I was wondering what you guys use? Are there any colour schemes we have in common, or do we all use different ones (or none at all!)

Cheers


Byz

I haven't really used any colour schemes yet, but the one I like best comes from a comment by "Carl", an art director, on that Sinosplice article:
Blue: Sky: high: First tone
Green: Mid-level: vegetation: trees and plants grow up: Second tone
Brown: Earth: rolling hills; downs and ups: Third tone
Red: Action: Anger: Striking: Force: Fourth tone
So, if I have the option to customize my colour scheme, I'll use this one!

I would very much appreciate the possibility to define my own colour scheme! All my (paper) flash cards are colour coded (1st tone - red, 2nd - orange, 3rd - yellow, 4th - green) and attempting to use a different scheme online would seriously challenge my mental abilities ;-)

BTW: Thanks for giving us Skritter! Apart from being a great help with my studies it's also so much fun to use everyday.

I've always been afraid of using colour associations. Signs here (in Shanghai) often are in colour and I'm afraid my brain might latch onto the colour of a character on a sign and confuse itself. Has anybody had this experience or am I just dreaming up problems?

I don't think colours work at all for me. I've switched them on (can't do any harm, surely), but I can't picture any. The only thing it does help with is compound words: if ever both the tones are the same I notice that from the colours.
Mostly I think I remember hearing the words to get the tones. Of course, this means it's almost impossible to learn the tone of a character I haven't already come across in sound.
I wonder whether this ia because my brain is less visual and more aural, or maybe just because I have spent a long time hal-listening to mandarin in the background whilst doing childcare and housework.
What percentage of people find the colours useful?

Some people definitely have better visual or aural memories than others, but I doubt anyone's strictly one way or the other.

At the moment I'm going through heisig, learning individual characters. What helps is splitting my notebook, across two pages, into 4 sections. One for each tone, colour coded. So when I recall the character, I get a double whammy of where it was on the page, and the colour it was. I guess they both reinforce each other.

This is generally a short term thing, after a while the tone becomes more internalised. So, I can't see a character for it to flash up a colour in my mind. I guess some people might, though.

As for words - like you say you notice if the tone is the same, and so you also notice if the tone is different. Even if you might not be sure of what colour it is, often I find I'll have a vague recollection. Light then dark. Or something.

What I think would work well, if I put the effort into it was the splitting tones/colours into times of the day. Blue - cold of the night, green - morning dew, red - midday heat, black - dusk. By memorising these with my other mnemonics I guess I could remember the tone a lot easier from the character. However, that's just more work for remembering mnemonics, so I only add it in if I constantly forget the tone for a particular character.

I'm rather expecting, when I get to adding words, the combination of words + tone will reinforce the individual character tone... And vice versa.

So yes. Colours/page position seems to work for me a lot of the time. Especially for short term memory, before it gets internalised. Still, plenty character tones I still have problems with (perhaps because I forgot the colour/page positioning before they entered my long term memory). I'm hoping by using colour tones on Skritter, I'll be able to nail those down too.