(no subject)
6/1/15 19:12![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
owlectomyI have just passed 3400 Chinese characters in Skritter, the app I use for Chinese vocabulary.
And I am still pretty bad at reading Chinese.
And I have, at last, discovered why - when it comes to Chinese and Japanese - people tend to be so insistent that you need to know some enormous amount of characters to read well. Because if I can read ~3400 characters and I'm still bad at reading, I just need to know more characters, right? Even if I already know enough to have ~99.5% text coverage?
Nah.
More than more characters, you need more words with the characters that you already know. (I have about 11,000 words. I think I would do a lot better with around 15,000. 11,000 is about enough to read Taiwanese romance novels, except that they use traditional characters and I deeply resent every time I spend a minute looking up a traditional character only to realize it's the same as a simplified character I already know well, but for no apparent reason it looks completely different.)
More than more words, you need a feel for the language. You need the same strategies that will let you read "All mimsy were the borogoves" without knowing what mimsy and borogoves are. (To acquire these strategies, you mostly need to read more easy stuff. Finding more easy stuff is the hard part when you're past a beginner level but not bull-headed enough to just force your way through some Mo Yan or whoever.)
I may not succeed in reading a wuxia novel before 2016. I may make that a "before I die" kind of goal. But I did read two whole (children's) novels in 2014, so that's something!
And I am still pretty bad at reading Chinese.
And I have, at last, discovered why - when it comes to Chinese and Japanese - people tend to be so insistent that you need to know some enormous amount of characters to read well. Because if I can read ~3400 characters and I'm still bad at reading, I just need to know more characters, right? Even if I already know enough to have ~99.5% text coverage?
Nah.
More than more characters, you need more words with the characters that you already know. (I have about 11,000 words. I think I would do a lot better with around 15,000. 11,000 is about enough to read Taiwanese romance novels, except that they use traditional characters and I deeply resent every time I spend a minute looking up a traditional character only to realize it's the same as a simplified character I already know well, but for no apparent reason it looks completely different.)
More than more words, you need a feel for the language. You need the same strategies that will let you read "All mimsy were the borogoves" without knowing what mimsy and borogoves are. (To acquire these strategies, you mostly need to read more easy stuff. Finding more easy stuff is the hard part when you're past a beginner level but not bull-headed enough to just force your way through some Mo Yan or whoever.)
I may not succeed in reading a wuxia novel before 2016. I may make that a "before I die" kind of goal. But I did read two whole (children's) novels in 2014, so that's something!
(no subject)
7/1/15 06:50 (UTC)