Comments on: Why you should learn Chinese in Chinese

By: How to learn Chinese in the long term with intrinsic motivation | Hacking Chinese | Hacking Chinese

Sun, 04 Feb 2024 21:09:26 +0000

[…] the language makes it easier to master the skills needed to function in that area. Beginners should learn Chinese in Chinese as early as possible. Feeling that you can use the language you learn is motivating! More advanced students can rely on […]

By: Training your Chinese teacher, part 2: Speaking ability | Hacking Chinese | Hacking Chinese

Sat, 01 Jul 2023 16:40:24 +0000

[…] Read this article for more about learning Chinese in Chinese. […]

By: How to learn Chinese characters: My best advice | Hacking Chinese

How to learn Chinese characters: My best advice | Hacking Chinese — Tue, 06 Jun 2023 09:08:20 +0000

[…] learn the stroke names, how do you talk about Chinese characters in Chinese, then? After all, learning Chinese in Chinese is a good idea! Well, you gradually learn how native speakers do it and they certainly do not describe characters […]

By: Al At

Al At — Wed, 03 Jun 2015 02:23:56 +0000

Olle,

Absolutely great content. THANK YOU!.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sun, 31 May 2015 19:51:15 +0000

I strongly agree. I started using a Chinese-Chinese dictionary probably far earlier than I should have, but a good tutor, immersion, and enthusiasm canceled out most negatives.
Related to your ‘The importance of knowing many words’ and your other ‘Chinese-Chinese dictionary survival guide’ articles, I found being able to enjoy extended trips looking up word after word after word to be almost more enjoyable than the book I was reading in the first place, and to be wildly helpful in increasing my vocabulary.

There are also 同近反义词 thesauruses that are really easy to find in China that describe very succinctly any usage differences while still being pretty accessible. Pleco is also great for this, and there’s even an experimental Thesaurus database (free!) on Pleco that helps.
I don’t always read comment sections, but Hacking Chinese guests and yourself (Olle) often further the discussion enough that it should be mandatory.
Thanks!

By: Olle Linge

Olle Linge — Sun, 31 May 2015 08:51:42 +0000

In reply to Leyla. Chinese-Chinese dictionaries are quite difficult to use, the definitions are often much harder than the words they describe. I think it's a great idea to try in Chinese first and then use English if that doesn't work. If you're after example sentences in Chinese, though, any good C-E dictionary should have those as well.

By: Leyla

Leyla — Sun, 31 May 2015 02:46:15 +0000

Yknow just last week I had the feeling that I was relying too heavily on english translations to understand a word. It’s kind of like my crutch. So I started to stop myself from doing this by readign the description of new vocabularies (in chinese) if it’s still unclear I look it up. But I think I’ll download a C-C dictionary so that I can look at sample sentences.

By: Olle Linge

Olle Linge — Sat, 30 May 2015 06:38:37 +0000

In reply to Daniel. Not much, really, but it can be helpful for long or weird sentences. Sometimes, straightening out the structure of the sentence is enough to understand it. If you encounter sentences where you understand all the words without understanding the meaning, then it makes sense to look more at the sentence structure.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Wed, 27 May 2015 09:43:05 +0000

Thanks Olle,

Question about grammar…have you ever experimented with sentence diagramming in Chinese? If so, do you recommended this approach for long, complicated Chinese sentences?

Thanks in advance

–Daniel

By: Gustavo

Gustavo — Wed, 27 May 2015 02:06:10 +0000

I think this is true for any languague, it’s important to inmerse yourself in your target language so you can practice it from day 1.
The more you use it the more you learn.