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I estimate I'm currently at HSK3, but I have not read any Chinese books or novels except childrens books. I would imagine that an adult Chinese novel probably c

I estimate I'm currently at HSK3, but I have not read any Chinese books or novels except childrens books. I would imagine that an adult Chinese novel probably contains a lot of idioms (成语）and these have to be recognized 4 characters at a time, the meaning won't come from just knowing the meaning of the individual characters. Think of an intermediate English reader encountering the phrase "piece of cake", or "cakewalk", or a phrase like "bite the bullet" Part of my difficulty learning Chinese is I taught myself, primarily by studying vocabulary, and learning characters, not practicing conversation with other people and I think this is a bad way to start. It's much better to put in far far more speaking and listening practice than reading/writing. I didn't do so, and now I can read Chinese text and communicate in chat, but have difficulty listening. And that's a shame, because I think once your listening skills gets reasonable good, you can start watching Chinese TV and Movies, and bootstrap a lot faster -- and in an entertaining way that seems less like mentally taxing work.

oh-kumudo 8y ago
Reading novel is always difficult. Having lived in an English-speaking country for many years, and communicated fluently with locals, even in certain cases passing their radar without being identified as foreigner, it is still pretty hard to read a reasonably popular English novel. The words they use, the rhetorics are all so different from everyday spoken language. In case of Chinese novel, depending on author's style, if you are not reading those period novels, the idioms will not be a huge problem. Although I do see that since the flexibility of the Chinese language, author tend to create new combinations of characters into their own vocabulary to keep the their language fresh, which might be low-effort to the local readers but might present great challenges to language learners.

oh-kumudo 8y ago

Reading novel is always difficult. Having lived in an English-speaking country for many years, and communicated fluently with locals, even in certain cases passing their radar without being identified as foreigner, it is still pretty hard to read a reasonably popular English novel. The words they use, the rhetorics are all so different from everyday spoken language. In case of Chinese novel, depending on author's style, if you are not reading those period novels, the idioms will not be a huge problem. Although I do see that since the flexibility of the Chinese language, author tend to create new combinations of characters into their own vocabulary to keep the their language fresh, which might be low-effort to the local readers but might present great challenges to language learners.