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Chinese without knowing the characters | ||
Tags: Chinese Characters | Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| albysky Triglot Senior Member Italy lang-8.com/1108796Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4227 days ago 287 posts - 393 votes  Speaks: Italian*, English, German | Message 1 of 6 13 February 2013 at 11:59am | IP Logged | ||
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Do you think it is possible to learn to speak chinese and build a good oral passive
understanding of the language without learning the characters but relying only on the pinyin to expand your vocabulary ? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4517 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 2 of 6 13 February 2013 at 12:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yes. There are textbooks based on that idea, and the people I know who've used it were generally much better than our other classmates.
That said, if you live in the Sinosphere you're going to need a good (a couple?) hundred characters just for survival. If you don't live in an area where Chinese (I assume Mandarin?) is spoken, then I'm not sure what you intend to do with your skills. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| akkadboy Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5247 days ago 264 posts - 497 votes Speaks: French*, English, Yiddish Studies: Latin, Ancient Egyptian, Welsh | Message 3 of 6 13 February 2013 at 3:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think that the FSI Mandarin course doesn't use any character...
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6389 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 4 of 6 13 February 2013 at 6:34pm | IP Logged | ||
It depends on what you mean by "good oral passive understanding". Personally, I waited way too long to learn characters, for reasons I won't get into here. I found it quite difficult to progress beyond the B1 level. I blame this mostly on the homonyms, which can be cleared up by learning characters. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Homogenik Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4663 days ago 314 posts - 407 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Polish, Mandarin | Message 5 of 6 14 February 2013 at 3:25am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm sure it's possible to do it, but I think it must be hell getting past a certain point. I'm only a beginner and already
the numerous homonyms are getting me confused. Knowing the characters actually help a lot to distinguish the words. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4283 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 6 of 6 14 February 2013 at 5:29am | IP Logged | ||
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There are Chinese people here (2nd & 3rd generation) who are character-illiterate.
Their parents wanted them to keep up with spoken Chinese (Cantonese or Mandarin) but it would take a lot more effort to get them to write with any degree of fluency. 1 thing I do find in the Chinese community is that there is a lot of respect for elders & authority figures (like teachers). In the West it is very common for people to be self-taught in a number of things including languages. For the Chinese it is more common to attend classes or get help from private tutors. I know a few fluent speakers (Cantonese or Mandarin) in my generation but only 2 are fluent enough to write paragraphs that make sense. People from the previous generations learn the Chinese classics including works by Confucius. Expressing ideas often mean writing in a formal style that reflected you are highly educated. Kind of deterrent for many in the Chinese community in N. America (outside of Asia) to keep up with the characters. And then the Internet came along when messages appear from people of all ages. On the other hand I do write quite a bit on online blogs, not because I remember even half the characters but because I am proficient enough in spoken Chinese and can look up words on online dictionaries using Pinyin. You know how to pronounce characters, you know the meaning, the next step is just copy & paste characters into the text box. Personally I don't know all the characters from memory to write them on paper. Being online for a few months and constantly looking them up with Pinyin I can recognize enough to read a newspaper and get the context. Looking them up using online dictionaries is a good start. There is 1 learning system I recently come across call: Gurulu Chinese. Their site is www.gurulu.com. Came across their online advertisement which sounded quite interesting. Their system of learning characters is strictly based on Simplified version used on the Mainland and not Tradition for Taiwan & Hong Kong. You start from simple character like 玉 for jade and add a roof to become 宝 for treasure and add enclosure to become 国 for country. Edited by shk00design on 16 February 2013 at 1:01am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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