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> Chinese reading education seems to work well despite the lack of phonics, From what I remember from taking Mandarin in college, Chinese students learn to rea

> Chinese reading education seems to work well despite the lack of phonics, From what I remember from taking Mandarin in college, Chinese students learn to read much slower than speakers of languages with phonetic alphabets. I did a quick Google search for the exact numbers and it looks like Chinese students are expected to recognize 3k characters by the end of 6th grade. While US students are expected to be able to read 20k words by that time and some sources I found said up to 40k.

seanmcdirmid 1y ago
Character aren’t words though, and many words are at least two characters. Heck, most given names are two characters. 3k characters covers most of the words frequently used in modern Chinese (the estimate ranges from 2K to 4K characters), the remaining 70k characters that you don’t learn by sixth grade aren’t as useful (well, 囧 can be used as an emoji in a pinch).
- sarchertech 1y ago
  That true, but I definitely remember my Chinese teacher (born and studied in China, did grad school here) telling us that it takes much longer for Chinese students to learn to read. Some more googling looking for something similar to compare is that Chinese students know enough characters to read simple newspaper articles at age 11 or so. While a 6 or 7 year old American student can read simple newspaper articles.
  - seanmcdirmid 1y ago
    Most Chinese in urban schools are mostly literate by sixth grade, and can probably read simple articles by 7-8 years old. The average time to read is probably brought down by rural schools, people forget China still isn’t all rich cities with college-bound students in public schools past the last compulsory 9th grade.
    - sarchertech 1y ago
      It’s likely that the rural students are bringing the average down, but it seems less likely they could bring the average down so far given that only 1/3 of the country is rural. Either way there seems to be a pretty strong consensus that one of the advantages of a phonetic alphabet is ease and time to learn. Obviously a phonetic language has other disadvantages compared to a logographic language.
      - seanmcdirmid 1y ago
        Kids going to trade school after 9th grade are fairly common in many lower tier cities, and many of the poorer provinces. Technically urban, but bringing the average down. But ok, Chinese is semi-logographic/semi-phonetic (many words are made just by characters with the right sound) at this point, which is a confusing hot mess and requires more effort to be completely literate, but only a year or two of more effort compensated for by a more accelerated math in elementary school (well, at least for city kids).
        giardini 1y ago
        To be followed by a life of trying to remember the f**ing classical Chinese character that you read once 30 years ago, used twice and now can neither remember nor find in a dictionary. I see this almost every time I meet with Chinese friends: they have forgotten one or more particular ideograms that have a particular meaning and simply cannot recover them w/o extensive discussion with their educated Chinese peers. They chalk it up to their faulty memory: I chalk it up to a faulty language.
        sarchertech 1y ago
        I’m talking about kids between 6 and 11 years old so dropping out in 9th grade seems not completely relevant. But if we’re talking about subsegments of the population bringing down the average, removing a few low performing states from the US would drastically change the average here too. >requires more effort to be completely literate, but only a year or two of more effort compensated for by a more accelerated math in elementary school I’m not sure what you meant by compensated for. I’m discussing the differences between writing systems. Not which country has a better education system.
Olreich 1y ago
US students are expected to be able to read 104 characters by the end of 6th grade. While Chinese students are expected to be able to read 20k words by that time. Characters in Chinese can be combined to make more words, and you need around 9k words in English to read a novel and 2k characters in Chinese to read a novel.
- sarchertech 1y ago
  I get that there are tradeoffs and that logographic languages have advantages and disadvantages. In this case specifically though there seems to be a pretty strong consensus that one of the advantages of a phonetic alphabet is ease and time to learn. In a completely phonetic language (which English is obviously not) once a kid learns the alphabet and around 50 phonemes you can represent with it, their auditory and reading vocabulary is roughly the same. So you can have 6 year olds with a reading vocabulary of 20k words. It’s not that simple, but clearly the more phonetic a language is the easier it is to learn for someone who can already understand the spoken words.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- giardini 1y ago
  It is wrong to compare number of characters in English to number of words in Chinese. The proper comparison would be words in English to words in Chinese. By 4th grade I knew enough English to proofread ycombinator posts. Of course, that is a low bar... And I think you're off by an order of magnitude about vocabulary size. Chinese vocabulary size around 6th grade is more like 2K - 4k words tops, not 20K. See https://www.guavarama.com/2015/02/06/chinese-characters-by-grade-level/ https://www.guavarama.com/2015/02/06/chinese-characters-by-g...

seanmcdirmid 1y ago

Character aren’t words though, and many words are at least two characters. Heck, most given names are two characters. 3k characters covers most of the words frequently used in modern Chinese (the estimate ranges from 2K to 4K characters), the remaining 70k characters that you don’t learn by sixth grade aren’t as useful (well, 囧 can be used as an emoji in a pinch).

sarchertech 1y ago
That true, but I definitely remember my Chinese teacher (born and studied in China, did grad school here) telling us that it takes much longer for Chinese students to learn to read. Some more googling looking for something similar to compare is that Chinese students know enough characters to read simple newspaper articles at age 11 or so. While a 6 or 7 year old American student can read simple newspaper articles.
- seanmcdirmid 1y ago
  Most Chinese in urban schools are mostly literate by sixth grade, and can probably read simple articles by 7-8 years old. The average time to read is probably brought down by rural schools, people forget China still isn’t all rich cities with college-bound students in public schools past the last compulsory 9th grade.
  - sarchertech 1y ago
    It’s likely that the rural students are bringing the average down, but it seems less likely they could bring the average down so far given that only 1/3 of the country is rural. Either way there seems to be a pretty strong consensus that one of the advantages of a phonetic alphabet is ease and time to learn. Obviously a phonetic language has other disadvantages compared to a logographic language.
    - seanmcdirmid 1y ago
      Kids going to trade school after 9th grade are fairly common in many lower tier cities, and many of the poorer provinces. Technically urban, but bringing the average down. But ok, Chinese is semi-logographic/semi-phonetic (many words are made just by characters with the right sound) at this point, which is a confusing hot mess and requires more effort to be completely literate, but only a year or two of more effort compensated for by a more accelerated math in elementary school (well, at least for city kids).
      - giardini 1y ago
        To be followed by a life of trying to remember the f**ing classical Chinese character that you read once 30 years ago, used twice and now can neither remember nor find in a dictionary. I see this almost every time I meet with Chinese friends: they have forgotten one or more particular ideograms that have a particular meaning and simply cannot recover them w/o extensive discussion with their educated Chinese peers. They chalk it up to their faulty memory: I chalk it up to a faulty language.
      - sarchertech 1y ago
        I’m talking about kids between 6 and 11 years old so dropping out in 9th grade seems not completely relevant. But if we’re talking about subsegments of the population bringing down the average, removing a few low performing states from the US would drastically change the average here too. >requires more effort to be completely literate, but only a year or two of more effort compensated for by a more accelerated math in elementary school I’m not sure what you meant by compensated for. I’m discussing the differences between writing systems. Not which country has a better education system.

Olreich 1y ago

US students are expected to be able to read 104 characters by the end of 6th grade. While Chinese students are expected to be able to read 20k words by that time. Characters in Chinese can be combined to make more words, and you need around 9k words in English to read a novel and 2k characters in Chinese to read a novel.

sarchertech 1y ago
I get that there are tradeoffs and that logographic languages have advantages and disadvantages. In this case specifically though there seems to be a pretty strong consensus that one of the advantages of a phonetic alphabet is ease and time to learn. In a completely phonetic language (which English is obviously not) once a kid learns the alphabet and around 50 phonemes you can represent with it, their auditory and reading vocabulary is roughly the same. So you can have 6 year olds with a reading vocabulary of 20k words. It’s not that simple, but clearly the more phonetic a language is the easier it is to learn for someone who can already understand the spoken words.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
giardini 1y ago
It is wrong to compare number of characters in English to number of words in Chinese. The proper comparison would be words in English to words in Chinese. By 4th grade I knew enough English to proofread ycombinator posts. Of course, that is a low bar... And I think you're off by an order of magnitude about vocabulary size. Chinese vocabulary size around 6th grade is more like 2K - 4k words tops, not 20K. See https://www.guavarama.com/2015/02/06/chinese-characters-by-grade-level/ https://www.guavarama.com/2015/02/06/chinese-characters-by-g...