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Bookish Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5060 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes  Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 1 of 6 24 February 2015 at 4:17am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm having a problem with Mandarin that's preventing me from breaking through to the next level. My knowledge
is extremely imbalanced: I have a pretty good command of the basic vocabulary that's used in spoken language such as conversations and interviews, but I have a huge deficiency when it comes to formal written language such as what you find in news articles. This problem probably started with the fact that reading Chinese characters is hard, so most of my input has been speech rather than reading. However, at this point characters are no longer the problem. I can read the characters of something like a transcribed audio podcast. In other languages, I've typically been able to learn the academic, bookish and formal vocabulary almost for free because those words tend to be cognates with various European languages. But with Chinese, I'm faced with thousands of words I don't understand. I'm confident I will eventually make the breakthrough, but what I feel would be useful is a source of reading material in standard, formal written Mandarin simplified characters, but significantly easier than a typical newspaper. Any suggestions? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5961 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 2 of 6 24 February 2015 at 5:16am | IP Logged | ||
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Have you tried readers? The Routledge Intermediate Chinese Reader by Helen Shen gave my reading abilities a boost.
4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5309 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 3 of 6 24 February 2015 at 5:16am | IP Logged | ||
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NHK World
I don't know if the Chinese is easy for you or not, but the French and Spanish versions are quite easy. It's news in mp3 with transcript, updated 6 times a day. The red words on the page 華語首頁 tells you the 6 update times and has buttons to the mp3. The page 新聞 has the individual news articles, one on each webpage (news01.html news02.html...). With French & Spanish, the mp3s on weekdays are 15mins long and 9mins long on weekends. The first minute or so may be summaries and not transcripted. The actual news articles in detail are fully transcripted. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5060 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 4 of 6 24 February 2015 at 5:46am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks for the tips so far!
Where are the news articles that match the audio? The page you linked has an mp3 news report and some short text articles, but the articles don't seem to be transcripts of the report. Anyway that's not really a problem--my difficulty in reading Mandarin is not at all in sounding out the words, so text without audio is just fine. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5309 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 5 of 6 24 February 2015 at 6:25am | IP Logged | ||
The page 新聞 has the individual news articles, one on each webpage (news01.html news02.html...). Each link to each webpage is below or to the right of the photo near the top-left. If you do manage to reach one of the articles, eg. http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/chinese/top/news01.html, the links to the other articles are near the bottom, spread over 2 columns. The first 1.5 minute or so of the mp3 may be summaries (with background music) and not transcripted. Then there is a pause, the background music stops, and the (six to ten) actual news articles start, and these are fully transcripted. But the title of each article is not read. The mp3 and the transcript/html pages are updated 6 times a day. An mp3 from this morning will not match the html (transcript) from this afternoon. Or you can go to the Spanish or French sites to familiarise yourself with the website layout. (The English site has a different layout). Edited by smallwhite on 24 February 2015 at 2:13pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4445 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 6 of 6 24 February 2015 at 7:58am | IP Logged | ||
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If you have a good enough vocabulary and is able to communicate in public such as asking for directions,
shopping or ordering in restaurants, you can still function quite well when traveling to places like Taiwan or China. The problem with Chinese is that there are certain words & phrases that are common when talking to somebody. When it comes to news reporting, they tend to use different words / phrases that are more formal. An example would be 抓走 zhuāzǒu as opposed to 拘捕 jūbǔ. When talking to somebody, you are more likely to hear 被警察抓走. In a newspaper, you are more likely to see 被警方拘捕 for "to be arrested by the police". Words like "警方" for the police sounded more formal than "警察". The same with "抓走" which is more common when speaking while "拘捕" is more common in writing. Another word that comes to mind is 给钱 gěiqián as opposed to 付款 fùkuǎn for "to pay money". You don't normally hear people say 款 for money as a substitute for 钱 (多少款? for how much does something cost? as opposed to 多少钱？). The same with the word 给 for "to give / to pay" instead of 付 which is more common in writing. I tend to start with magazines before getting into newspapers. The content tend to be shorter and there are lots of photos to go with each article. When it comes to the news, I tend to rely on online editions. For Chinese this is especially practical to be able to just Copy & Paste unknown characters into a computer or online dictionary. I'd read the headline and if I find the text too difficult, I can do an online search to see if there may be a similar article in an English edition of the news. After reading the English edition, I actually find reading a similar article in Chinese much easier. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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