Comments on: Reading aloud in Chinese is really hard

By: Student Q&A, March 2024: Reading aloud, finding word boundaries, and working actively with reading materials | Hacking Chinese | Hacking Chinese

Wed, 06 Mar 2024 23:00:55 +0000

[…] Reading aloud in Chinese is really hard […]

By: Recording yourself: A cheap and easy way to improve your spoken Chinese | Hacking Chinese | Hacking Chinese

Sun, 21 May 2023 13:59:30 +0000

[…] A text you’re reading or have read recently (pick something you’re familiar with, as reading aloud is hard) […]

By: Focusing on Chinese tones without being distracted by Pinyin | Hacking Chinese | Hacking Chinese

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 18:36:37 +0000

[…] Now, if you read a text without any annotation at all, this problem could in theory persist forever. You receive no feedback and no-one notices if you don’t know the tones of some of the characters, perhaps not even yourself. If you annotate the text with tones, you get the benefit of reinforcing your knowledge of tones while still avoiding the distraction of Pinyin. This is particularly useful for reading aloud, which is hard enough as it is. […]

By: IWTYAL 092: Is reading aloud helpful? - I Will Teach You A Language

IWTYAL 092: Is reading aloud helpful? - I Will Teach You A Language — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 08:39:12 +0000

[…] Hacking Chinese: Reading Aloud In Chinese Is Really Hard – an interesting article on this topic for those of you learning Chinese […]

By: Richard

Richard — Sat, 26 Apr 2014 16:19:40 +0000

“In synthetic languages (such as French), the burden rests mostly with the writer (or speaker). He needs to write clearly and use the right tense, number and gender and so on. In Chinese (an isolating language), the burden lies mainly on the reader (or listener), who needs to figure out all these things based on context. The information is still there, it’s just not encoded on the word level.”
This is why Chinese is a much more powerful language than most other languages. If something is too simple and too obvious then it must be in a low level. Same here. Any classical Chinese literature is not obvious. Readers must have enough language skills to understand and interpret the meaning of the writer. And there is a fact that I found: In Chinese there are many many 千古名句 that last for thousands of years. Such as:落霞与孤鹜齐飞，秋水共长天一色。(Just feel the 意境 of this sentence. I think this must be the best sentence in all languages.) However in other languages like English, you rarely see 千古名句. People remember books and plays more.

By: Karalli

Karalli — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 08:54:35 +0000

In reply to Sara K.. How long have you been studying chinese? You were able to read chinese quite fluently!! I am a beginner and I am really looking forward to do something similar. Thanks

By: Fearchar

Fearchar — Sat, 30 Nov 2013 13:38:31 +0000

Reading these comments makes me very aware of the significant advantage of using 注音符號 rather than pinyin: it’s possible to use a computer font that gives pronunciation beside the character. (This is quite apart from the “pinyin effect” well known to practised learners, and highlighted in the other link from the email that mentioned this article: If you look at that article, though, beware of the inconsistent spelling.).

Perhaps I should add that I haven’t used 注音符號, and also that, at the age of 54, I’m plugging away at learning Mandarin Chinese (so far as other commitments allow) and recently gained a distinction in the Open University’s course for beginners. (This wasn’t, however, the beginning of my Mandarin or even language learning in general.)

By: Deanne Wise

Deanne Wise — Sat, 30 Nov 2013 09:14:04 +0000

Well I am 60 years old. I have been on this journey for about 6months. I live in a small country town with no Chinese speakers anywhere. Its part of my Altzheimers prevention strategy. Will I ever be fluent. Who cares. Its as much about the fun of the journey as the destination.

By: Experimenting with reading aloud in Chinese | Hacking Chinese - 揭密中文

Experimenting with reading aloud in Chinese | Hacking Chinese - 揭密中文 — Fri, 29 Nov 2013 03:13:29 +0000

[…] hard, much harder than reading aloud in most other languages. Ever since exploring this topic in a recent article, I’ve been thinking about reading aloud in Chinese and what factors are involved. In […]

By: Olle Linge

Olle Linge — Wed, 09 Oct 2013 09:35:31 +0000

In reply to nommoc. I'm actually doing the same (almost). My goal is to record an entire novel before the end of the year and if I read 30 pages a week, I will finish it. Naturally, I read characters. I notice a significant difference between now and when I started, but I will wait with any kind of analysis until I'm actually approaching the end of this experiment.