Novel reading experiment

我觉得最好看书的方法是什么词典都不使用。如果不熟悉的词太多的话，不断查词典看书太麻烦了，前进的节奏太缓慢了。我这个人不是那么耐心的。我宁可选择更简单的书看。看不懂的词的意义试试猜出来。

furyougaijin,

well, I know that "consensus" but I absolutely do not believe in it. I am convinced it is a fallacy.

Ever struggled with creating a really good definition for a well-known concept? Isn't 80% of the social sciences (including among others business & economics, psychology, sociology, and information systems) revolving around finding and operationalizing definitions for common concepts like "experience", "knowledge" (!), "cost", "customer relationship management", or "organization"? Why is that type of excercise so hard, given that everybody already comes equipped with a guts feeling of what the term at hand is supposed to mean?

Now you need definitions in science to make statements clear and measurable. But for most applications outside science the guts feeling is more than sufficient if the concept already exists in your head and you got a name for it. Which, surprisingly, is at least roughly the case for most of the concepts named by English or Mandarin terms I accounted (except for a few, culturally determined ones).

The consequence: Definitions are usually not as good as they should be. The translation is better. More often than not a translation leads me to the concept referred to in a much more precise, efficient, and less error-prone way.

There have been more than one incident when I inferred *wrong* translations from context or unclear definitions.

The mono-lingual definition is perfect for me

a) before the lookup for training purposes and

b) after the lookup to find out about particularites regarding usage and connotations - the actual delta towards the concepts in your mother tongue (but the delta is not the whole thing).

I constantly use bi-lingual dictionaries for English. And many second-language English speakers I know, who are by the way much more proficient than me, also still use them. There are good reasons for that.

The first things I read in Chinese were magazines very similary to Reader's Digest called 读者, and another one 青年文摘。Now I am a bit faster at reading and read novels. But those two magazines have short, simple articles. The second one I find better as it contains only Chinese authors, where as 读者 is often translated. I avoid anything translated.

It was written in French:

http://www.zone-litteraire.com/entretiens.php?art_id=330

As examples of easy modern Chinese literature I'd rather recommend something like 梦里花落知多少 or 上海宝贝 - both to be found on http://xxsy.net ...

Shan Sha's book was first published in French, not sure whether it was *written* in French, may well be.

Goulniky,

Wasn't Shan Sha's book originally written in French?! :-)

Henning,

You wrote some time ago that 'In the times we only had Chinese definitions in the Advanced lessons I looked up a word even if I did understand its definition. More often than not that turned out to be necessary.'

I would be curious to hear why you find that context is not working for you. Learning styles aside, there seems to be a consensus that starting from a certain level of proficiency, students benefit more from looking up words in monolingual dictionaries rather than in bilingual ones...

I think I may be wasting my time really, I'm lucky if I understand a full sentence.

Not Brazil? ha ha.

Chapter 10... I'm fairly certain it's set in Paris. ;)

I'm learning to work out which are all the names now based on context. Haven't got much of the overall storyline though.

Doesn't mean your head is so small it's become the pin-pointed dot? Hmmm.....

I'm definitely learning as I go along, like for example 点点头 meaning to nod the head.

Up to chapter 6, 101 left. ;)

Bazza,

You can find audio for some Chinese novels here: http://www.radio.cn/yhtcpps/

I believe Dream of the Red Chamber (Mansion) is offered on the site.

Chinese text is here:

http://24.6.223.65/download/literature/YMQH/HongLouMeng/red.html

English text is here:

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/9603

I have not read or listened to these yet so I'm not sure if the audio matches the Chinese text. I would imagine the Gutenberg project translation into English is pretty good.

For an interesting thread on approaching bilingual (parallel or separate) novels along with audiobooks as a way to fluency, check out this remarkable, crazy, long-winding thread over at the Language Learning Forum:

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=6366

Actually, I bought a bunch of Chinese/English Dr. Seus books this summer before returning to America. I bought them for my 2 year old nephew though, not me... ha ha. I should try reading them though. I just hope that he will also take an interest to Chinese when he gets older. They are really cheap in China, at most big supermarkets like Carrefour. I got them for 8 RMB each. Really cheap as most books are.

Bazza, Pleco 2.0 is still in beta only. They are hoping for late 2007 or early 2008 release. I believe the upgrade will be free if you buy now.

Is PlecoDict 2.0 out now then?

The Art of War is also here:

http://zhongwen.com/?lang=en

But that has not really much to do with the contemporary Chinese we learn here at Chinesepod.

For anyone who didn't realise, The Art of War and several other Chinese texts are available free from Project Gutenberg.

As well as plain text versions, you can get a Plucker version to read on a PDA. The plain text can be converted to use with the wonderful document reader in the new version of PlecoDict, if you want easy of lookups on the run.

Has anyone tried reading The Art of War in Chinese?

yea and May your 100 foot pole get even longer. Hell I hope all our 100ft poles get longer.

Bazza, one solution to that... move to Shanghai. Stop what you're doing, tidy up the Britishiqing, purchase a one-way ticket and get on a plane to Shanghai.

I forgot to attach the link

http://lost-theory.org/ocrat/prideprej/

goulniky, I know you can do that and I have tried it with the online version of the da vinci code (although Hanzibar is pretty quicker than ChinesePera-Kun), I could also get Text Aloud to read the whole thing to me if I wanted as well.

I wanted to see how well I could manage completely unaided as that is the ultimate goal afterall. It's somehow cooler reading an actual Chinese book as well. ;)

I wish I'd found a bookshop when I was in Shanghai and stocked up. I never got a newspaper in the end either.

Bazza, I have to send out my applause to you as well. I look forward to the day when I can attempt to do the same. As for now, I still sometimes have to use AltaVista's babel fish translator when I receive e-mails from colleagues at my company's Wuxi or Shanghai facilities. Sometimes I can figure certain things out by context, but I still like to look up individual characters too. Good luck in your efforts.

百尺杆头更进一步

bai3 chi3 gan1 tou2 geng4 jin4 yi1 bu4

May your 100 foot pole get even longer (may you have even greater successes)

I hope that's correct.

Amazing- here is Jane Austen's "Pride and Predjudice" on the web, English and Chinese side by side - There are actually more than 50 classics available here.

-Bob

BTW, with the ChinesePera-Kun plugin, looking up every word online is really a piece of cake. You have to read on screen though

agreed with the comment about reading Chinese novels rather than translated versions of Western ones, but I'd stay clear of such masterpieces as 水浒传 (way too long, even if it was in modern chinese). here's an online Chinese novel that should be approachable : The Girl Who Played Go 围棋少女 (wéiqí shàonǚ) from Shan Sha 山飒. Lots of other stuff on this website, probably 侵犯版权极了!

Based on what I've read so far, I'm probably only comprehending about 10% at the moment.

I'm noticing the spoken parts are usually easier to understand than the descriptive parts. Which makes sense really as most lessons are dialogue based.

Dr Seus sounds like a good idea right now. The more I think about it the funnier it gets. Of course it wouldnt rhyme in Chinese. 我想要一个绿炒蛋和火腿。 Sam-我是!

Bazza- let us know how the experiment works out. Reading is a noble goal.

Bazza,

You're doing better than me. I read comic books (e.g. 七劍下天山). That way, if I don't understand the pictures, I can look at the pictures ...

I am reading at about the same speed as I would an English book as well, so if I don't know it straight away I don't stop to think.

I'll stay with my original experiment perimeters and see what the end result is. I can always read it again later. ;)

Rich, I didnt know such English/Chinese novels existed. Sounds like a great tool for people like us. I must visit the bookstore next trip to China. And I have to agree with Henning. Even as a native english speaker I pack a dictionary when reading a book. If I encounter a word I dont know, I want to learn it now not later and I dont want to guess. Bazza I also have to agree that using a dictionary would let you read each chapter faster as you accumulated related vocab. To me this would be the value of reading such a book. Actually I would have chosen a different story. I was never thrilled with the DaVinci code. Kind of like the fast food of literary product, but it matters not for your purpose, which is to learn Chinese. It does seem you are foregoing even this by not using a dictionary unless you truly have only a few gaps that can be filled by contextual enlightenment. it takes as long as it takes but it is then worthwhile. Ah, maybe we are being far too analytical here - have fun, enjoy the book.

Bazza, you're a very brave man!

I'm so looking forward to the day I know enough characters to be able to read just a simple book. With other languages I've always prefered the 'infer the meaning from the context' tecnique but that is a whole lot easier when it comes to European languages that are closely related to your own language.

Having to learn characters sometimes really annoys me as I've always been a visual learner relying on a lot of reading to learn a language and before Cpod it was a real obstacle to learning Chinese.

On the other hand Cpod has changed and challenged my approach to language learning and I've accepted that I'll just have to be patient when it comes to reading Chinese. Right now looking up everything I don't understand would just be too time consuming and not very conducive to any real progress in learning Chinese.

I'm no masochist. Bring on the Chinese Dr Seuss!

Sorry, very bad maths there. lol Probably more like 3 to 4 months.

Only about 6 years then, Henning. ;)

I am reading 雷暴 (Thunderstorm) now. It is the original story to the movie that came out internationally last year, "Curse of the Golden Flower" with 巩俐(Gong Li). Its background/backdrop is different than the empress tail of the movie, as it takes place in Tianjin in the early 1900's with a struggle between lower and upper class. It is set as a play, so it is really easy to read, as you know when someone talks, and easier to follow. Because it is Chinese, you do learn a lot of how they behave, interact with each other, and think. For example, the opening, is a servant girl talking with her dad who is also servant to the rich people, and her talking about how he badly treats her, her mom, etc. Very interesting. And it is 对照 (bilingual) so if I really need to see the meaning, there is English, but usually avoid reading it. Such a book is sold at most every Foreign Bookstore in China in the English/Chinese novel area (usually for Chinese to learn English)

No, even if it would take you 50 days for the first 10 pages, I bet it will be down to 25 for the second 10, 10 for the third 10 pages, 5 up to page 40, 3 up to page 50 until you reach 2-4 pages per day.

henning, it would probably take me about 10 years to read it all if I did it that way. ;)

Bazza,

I myself learn most from looking up words actively. It really helped my English to make it a habit to look up every word that I am not 100% certain with. I stopped following those "you have to infer the meaning from context" advices long ago.

In the times we only had Chinese definitions in the Advanced lessons I looked up a word even if I did understand its definition. More often than not that turned out to be necessary. And not only do I look up every single uncertain word but every individual new character also.

I will not eat green eggs and ham...I will not eat them sam I am...not on a boat... not on a horse....etc..etc..I will not eat them...I don't not like green eggs and ham....

are there some good chinese kids books?

Incidently, that what would make a good chinesepod lesson...to transcript a chinese kids book....

"One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish"

Now that I could probably read!!

lol...that would take me a whole two seconds....wouldn't even need to open my eyes...

My favorite Chinese novel is 水浒传 (outlaws of the marsh). This was one of Mao's favorites as well and is rich in Chinese culture. My goal is to someday read it in Chinese. Another good novel rich in culture is 红楼梦 Honglou meng (dream of the red chamber also known as the story of the stone). Im sure Jenny has read this. I recommend both highly.

-Bob

if you can read a novel why not a chinese novel? it is easier and might let you learn something about china. Also translated novels have an added difficulty because of foreign place and peoples names. I am reading 兄弟 by 余华and recommend it. It started off funny (peeping tom story) but has become rather disturbing (文化革命events)

I read Alice in Wonderland through pretty quick, but it was more of a version for young teens. Still, lots of VERY interesting words in Alice in Wonderland, even in the English version!

tough one. I am currently reading a book by 林语堂 and I find it hard to stay focused on the story rather than just picking up new vocab.

Maybe Bazza, you should start off with Harry Potter or something?

Not really such really how many characters I know but I think I'm familiar with about 1000.

We should probably try to get Bazza a pirated, I mean Chinese-dubbed (movie) version of The Da Vinci Code... after he posts that he finished the book.

Out of interest how many characters would you say you know?

Is there not a risk that the translation is a poor one? I would think in this case it would not be poor though.

I was thinking of doing this for improving my listening by getting some movies that are either totally new to me and watch without subtitles and perhaps ones that I know well and listen to the sounds without subtitles.

I've read the first 3 chapters so far and haven't much of a clue of anything that happened so far hehe.

You're to be commended for you ambition. Not only will you help your reading skills, but you'll know the Chinese for all sorts of European artists and geographical locations.

Maybe a future Chinese Pod lesson topic?