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Tadoku - Read More or Die | ||
Tags: Foreign Languages | Reading | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| josht Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6245 days ago 635 posts - 857 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Spanish, Russian, Dutch | Message 9 of 35 30 March 2011 at 8:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks for the clarification. I think including a tidbit from what you've just read would
make it more interesting, yes; good idea. I'd say they'll have to just be snippets though and not whole sentences, though, due to Twitter's character limit. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Li Fei Pro Member United States Joined 4922 days ago 147 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 10 of 35 30 March 2011 at 9:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I want to do it, but I'm a Twitter novice AND my reading level in Chinese is really low. Hundreds of pages,
even from kids' books, sounds impossible. Is it worthwhile to do it and post just 1-3 pages per day, I wonder? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6269 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 11 of 35 30 March 2011 at 10:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hjordis: "sentence" is apparently meant for reading that is a lot less than a page, for
example target-language dictionary definitions. If you do a lot of those and feel like they may add up, you can track sentences. Too much work, imho. Li Fei: I'd draw the line at 800 characters for Chinese. If you know that many, getting into reading Chinese is going to do you a WORLD of good. It's easy to put it off again and again like I did, now I know 3000 characters, probably 7000 words and a good amount of grammar yet phrasing something in Chinese is not easy and the result often sounds unnatural to Chinese ears. I need to get more in tune with the way the Chinese language is spoken, and that's something no textbook can teach me really, hence I'm participating in the challenge. Things you can try that are easy enough for someone at the 800 character level: parallel texts (contact me), any electronic text if you use on-hover translation (e. g. Wenlin software, a free browser plugin or Wordchamp.com), simplified texts e. g. from here or from an easy reader, Chinese blog posts, Chinese song lyrics, movies or TV series with Chinese subtitles, graphic novels. Keep in mind that children's books don't have to be easier than adult's books because of vocabulary like "bow-wow" and because they aren't as good at keeping someone's attention. Easy books I can recommend: * the series "Stories of ..." by Asiapac Editorial Board (interesting stories from Chinese history & mythology retold in easy Chinese as comics) * 三人行 - Annas Sommer in Beijing (nice story specifically written for German students learning Chinese, ca. 800 characters) * 青春之歌 as adapted by the Beijing University Press, which also publishes series of short stories in easy Chinese 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| hjordis Senior Member United States snapshotsoftheworld. Joined 4985 days ago 209 posts - 264 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 12 of 35 30 March 2011 at 11:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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@Sprach- Yeah, I found that. Thanks.
I don't think I'll be participating after all. I don't think I really need it as some sort of motivation or anything, and the whole counting system is too hard to make balanced, no matter how you try. Sentence length varies, font size varies, book size varies, and so on. I don't even know what to do with PDFs. I guess I could count them as two web pages since they look like they're about 6 paragraphs. Plus I messed it up by changing my twitter name right after I entered. Only realized later that was probably a bad thing. Does anyone know why double rowed books in Japanese are worth more? Logically it seems like the extra space would make it LESS sentences, unless it was also a bigger book. I asked in the comments, but he just said trust me, it's more:/. I believe him, I'd just like to know the reasoning. Though I did count that example scan, and while it does come out to more than the average page in my books(except for one with a smaller font and my bigger hard covers), it seems to have shorter sentences in general. @Li Fei- hundreds of pages is impossible for me as well, even if my time wasn't limited by other responsibilities. Go ahead and enter for fun if you think it would help motivate you or something. Edited by hjordis on 30 March 2011 at 11:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5565 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 13 of 35 31 March 2011 at 12:02am | IP Logged | |||||
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About double rowed books - there was a post on the blog Where he explained why those books contain more text. I don't remember for sure, it was either smaller font or a larger format. And in the text he explained how he got the sentence average. I don't remember the details but it did seem plausible to me, especially as most Japanese books I own have a very similar layout.
But actually it isn't important that the stats are perfect, what's more important is that challenges like this help you set a goal (x pages a day for 30 days) and help you keep track of your progress. Edited by Bao on 31 March 2011 at 12:07am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| LordSilent Newbie United States Joined 4786 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English | Message 14 of 35 31 March 2011 at 12:12am | IP Logged | |||||
If you've got Japanese PDFs just do a character count on what you've read and divide that by 400 to get your page count. Or you can use the tool Blackdragonhunt made and it will do the page counting for your. It places the tadoku page counts in the comments on the pdf.
Our paperbook average for characters/page in japanese is 400 (obtained by Seizar before the first round). We have several already OCRed double row books and their physical copies. With a little math we counted the character averages per page of several books and and the average of that was 1.5~ times greater than that of a non double row formatted paperback book. edit: Just realized the old ranking was down so if you guys want to take a look at that check here http://digitalartificer.com/railed/ranking.php Edited by LordSilent on 31 March 2011 at 12:19am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hjordis Senior Member United States snapshotsoftheworld. Joined 4985 days ago 209 posts - 264 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 15 of 35 31 March 2011 at 12:18am | IP Logged | |||||
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Okay, I didn't see that post even though I went through the archives. I thought it was probably something like that. I was just wondering because I don't have any double rowed books. I do have a book that reads left to right, which is kind of weird. I think it's for advanced learners(I can't read it yet; I just didn't want someone else to buy it).
Yeah, I know it's not important that they're perfect. It's a combination of that and the fact that I already had goals set for my reading that made me decide not to participate. @LordSilent Thanks. And like I said I believe you. Really. I was just wondering the reason it was that way. I'll drop it now. Edited by hjordis on 31 March 2011 at 12:22am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| LordSilent Newbie United States Joined 4786 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English | Message 16 of 35 31 March 2011 at 12:21am | IP Logged | |||||
I have a couple that are horizontal and go from left to right but they are old translations of Isaac Asimov books. And thats fine I just wanted to clarify things for you. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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