More Advice for Learning Chinese: Possibly Controversial

[Nathan Mao]

Which is easier to understand?

 

Example 1:

zhu3 chi2 ren2: zuo2 tian1 lian2 xu4 san1 tian1 de5 quan2 jun1 ju1 ji1 shou3 bi3 wu3 kao3 he2 zai4 jiang1 xi1 nan2 chang1 he2 yun2 nan2 kun1 ming2 jie2 shu4 le5; lai2 zi4 qi1 da4 jun1 qu1 hai3 kong1 jun1 he2 di4 er4 pao4 bing1 bu4 dui4 de5 ju1 ji1 shou3 men5 jing1 guo4 ji2 zhong1 xun4 lian4 he2 bi3 wu3 kao3 he2; ju1 ji1 li3 lun4, ji1 ben3 ji4 neng2, zhuan1 ye4 ji4 neng2 he2 zhan4 shu4 xing2 dong4 si4 ge4 bu4 fen1 de5 kao3 he2; kao3 he2 de5 cheng2 ji1 quan2 bu4 he2 ge2 le5, er2 zai4 bi3 wu3 kao3 he2 dang1 zhong1 de5 guo2 chan3 shi2 shi4 da4 kou3 jing4 fan3 qi4 cai2 ju1 ji1 bu4 qiang1 shou3 ci4 jin4 xing2 jiao4 xue2 xun4 lian4; zhe4 kuan3 xin1 ju1 ji1 qiang1 he2 mu4 qian2 bu4 dui4 pu3 bian4 shi3 yong4 de5 ba1 ba1 shi4 ju1 ji1 bu4 qiang1 you3 na3 xie1 bu4 tong2 ne5 ？ben3 tai2 ji4 zhe3 dao4 xun4 lian4 chang2 ti3 yan4 le5 yi1 xia4

 

Example 2:

zhuchiren: zuotian lianxu santian de quanjun jujishou biwu kaohe zai jiangxi nanchang he yunnan kunming jieshu le; laizi qi da junqu haikongjun he dierpao bingbudui de jujishoumen jingguo jizhong xunlian he biwu kaohe; juji lilun, jiben jineng, zhuanye jineng he zhanshu xingdong sige bufen de kaohe; kaohe de chengji quanbu hege le, er zai biwu kaohe dangzhong de guochan shi shi dakoujing fanqicai juji buqiang shouci jinxing jiaoxue xunlian; zhekuan xin juji qianghe muqian budui pubian shiyong de babashi juji buqiang you naxie butong ne ？bentai jizhe dao xunlianchang tiyan le yixia

 

Or to make it more stark, grab 15 syllables (characters) at random from the first line of each:

 

ju1 ji1 shou3 bi3 wu3 kao3 he2 zai4 jiang1 xi1 nan2 chang1 he2 yun2 nan2

vs

jujishou biwu kaohe zai jiangxi nanchang he yunnan

 

It is much easier to figure out which characters are being used in the 2nd example each time, no?  In the 2nd set, it is much easier to figure out you have a sentence fragment using the grouped, non-toned pinyin than the ungrouped, toned pinyin, right?

 

I'm not saying to completely ignore tones, any more that I would tell a Chinese person learning English to completely disregard the difference between "th" and "s", or that the difference in pronunciation between "ei" and "ee" is completely unimportant (my kids try to help my Beijing raised wife because she can't hear the difference between "grain" and "green", much less differentiate in talking...but context always makes the meaning clear, both ways).

 

Chinese has tones for a reason, so I'm not saying to ignore them.

 

I have two points:

1) getting tones wrong isn't as much an obstacle to communication as some people seem to think. So be clear on your goal: is it to understand basic Chinese communication?  Is it to communicate effectively in Chinese?  Then don't sweat tones that much.  Is it to sound exactly like a native? Or is it to be able to be able to know what someone is saying, even if you lack context?　Is it to be able to prevent as many misunderstandings as possible?  Then never stop memorizing, reviewing, and improving your knowledge of tones.

2) Consider the possibility that learning Chinese by characters is actually an impediment.  You can study the following characters: 狙,击,手,比,武,考,核,在,江,西,南,昌,和,云,南,昆,明,结,束 and have their individual definition fully memorized, and still not understand the phrase 狙击手比武考核在江西南昌和云南昆明结束 in the slightest.  But if you studied and understood the following words: 狙击, 比武, 考核, 在, 江西. 南昌, 和, 云南, 昆明, 结束...you would understand the phrase perfectly. 

 

I have a mentoree (she's mainly self study, but I give study tips, language/grammar notes, authentic materials I seek out, tests, etc) who is trying to get to a 1/1 on the DLPT.  One exercise that really helped her make a leap in understanding was giving her an article and making her put slashes between words first.  She has to use Google Translate to check herself, because sometimes it isn't easy to see where the groupings are if you are just starting out.  But she reported it really helped her identify and learn the function words, and helped her to be able to puzzle out a sentence with multiple unfamiliar characters by reducing the possibilities through identification of the words she did know (reducing number of variables).

 

As a result of this, I'm beginning to think that studying Chinese by studying characters is like studying English by studying root words, prefixes, and suffixes.  Sure, it can help you to understand that flammable and inflammation have common root words. And if you learn the prefix im-, it might help you understand implode and impress and immerse...or it might cause you to waste valuable time trying to understand the variations of "in-" between "inflammable", "infamous", "inert", and "innertube" when you would be better off just learning to use "inflammable", "infamous", "inert", and "innertube" correctly.

 

I don't know. I'm too advanced to to go back and start learning as a newbie.

 

I also don't have a test group and a control group to see if focusing on words rather than characters would be helpful or harmful.  Maybe I can try it as my PhD dissertation, if it doesn't violate ethics.

 

But I'd like to hear the opinions of beginning, intermediate, and advanced Chinese students on this, as well as teachers and language mentors.

 

It won't bother me if you call me stupid for thinking this; on the other hand, I have some significant observation and self-reflection that led me to this conclusion, so I probably won't be persuaded back to individual character study very easily, if at all.

[Lu]

Your second point seems to be 'learn words, not characters'. That's actually a position that is very often advocated on this very site, I don't think anyone halfway knowledgeable here disagrees with this. I for one completely agree.

 

As to tones, ru2 guo3 ni3 zhe4 yang4 xie3 zi4, jiu4 hen3 nan2 kan4, dànshì rúguǒ zhèyàng xiě, tūrán róngyì duō le. I think the text in your first example hurts the head mainly because of the spaces and the numbers, can't really compare tones/no tones with so many other things going on. Personally I strongly disagree that tones are not that important, if you ignore them you'll sounds like an idiot at best and be unintelligable at worst.

[Nathan Mao]

Yes, that is my second point.  My apologies for expressing it badly.

 

I haven't been on the site long, so I don't know the history.  But I've seen lots of people talk about character counts, character totals, character repetition, character flash cards and such, so I didn't realize they actually meant character combinations.

 

Thanks.

[Shelley]

The best solution is to use pinyinput to type pinyin with standard tone marks above the words. There is info about it here http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/10274-pinyinput-type-pinyin-with-tone-marks/

 

I have always believed that you should learn the tones and the character as one, the pronunciation of a word is the word + its tone.

 

I found both examples hard going. There seemed to be no sentences, the punctuation seemed to consist mainly of colons and semi colons, it came across as single long sentence. Very difficult to work out what is with what.

 

Example 2 with tone marks and some punctuation would be the easier to read.

 

Go try pinyinput and then see how you get on.

[陳德聰]

There seemed to be no sentences, the punctuation seemed to consist mainly of colons and semi colons, it came across as single long sentence.

Haha sounds like Chinese to me! ;)

[Shelley]

Glad that amused you.    I understand what you mean, but this seem to be worse than your normal Chinese sentence

[Nathan Mao]

It was a news article.

The second version reads clear as a bell to me.  There are a few things that aren't clear without characters (like the "Type 88" and "Type 10"), but the rest all made sense.

Then again, I've been doing military news articles for nearly 2 decades now...

 

Point is, regardless of tones, there is literally nothing else jujishou can be but "sniper".  There is nothing else that makes sense as a character combination once you recognize it is a character combination.

 

I see lots of people practicing individual characters and worrying about character count.  You can look up on the web how many characters you need to read a newspaper w/o a dictionary, but I've seen nothing about how many character combinations, i.e., actual words, that you need to know.

 

I'm really not trying to say that you must choose between recognizing combos or learning tones...you can do both.

 

But I think the recognition of character combos and the ability to know how to group characters in a sentence is rarely taught as an actual skill; I think it is worthwhile for beginners to make an effort to include it as part of their study, and part of their approach to any authentic-language sentence.

 

Practicing it in reading helps in listening, too, I bet.

[Ruben von Zwack]

You can look up on the web how many characters you need to read a newspaper w/o a dictionary, but I've seen nothing about how many character combinations, i.e., actual words, that you need to know.

 

Now that you mention this, I understand why you made that point against learning single characters. As Lu said, everyone here would agree to you.

 

I remember you wrote you took a specific American test in Chinese, while quite a few of the learners here take the HSK test from mainland China, and their vocabulary syllabus is in words. The 5000 word list from level 6 does consist of 5000 words, multi-character and a few monosyllabic ones too, of course.

I believe @alanmd even sorted these by frequency, at least I know he did so for level 3 and 4.

 

extract from official HSK6 vocabulary list:

爱  

爱不释手

爱戴

爱好

爱护

爱情

爱惜

爱心        

 

I just want to add that I cannot even read your example 1, it makes my eyes explode! If I have the choice, can I have pinyin with tone marks, grouped in words, please?

There is one thing that bugs me about pinyin without tone marks: It's no problem to read it when you know the words, but what do you do when you are looking at author's names, or when you don't know that vocabulary yet? You will have to attach a random tone to it for the time being, and whenever that happens to me, I find it a bit annoying, like something is itching (inside my brain) and I cannot scratch.

[lechuan]

I don't think there's many people who learn characters only, other than Mr. Heisig.

 

I think the "number of characters" benchmark can be somewhat useful, because the more characters one knows, the easier it is to acquire new "words", mainly because the you can read them on the first go, and look it up easily.

[alanmd]

Yes, I sorted all of the latest HSK word lists by frequency, they're on my website. The only tweak I made was ensuring that single characters were moved just before the compound words where necessary.

 

As Ruben implied, the original poster's example is unfair, comparing the three alternatives for the shorter sample I find the tone marks no more difficult to read. Removing the spaces imnproves the numbered pinyin a bit, but it's still quite awkward

 

ju1ji1shou3 bi3wu3 kao3he2 zai4 jiang1xi1 nan2chang1 he2 yun2nan2

jūjīshǒu bǐwǔ kǎohé zài jiāngxī nánchāng hé yúnnán 

jujishou biwu kaohe zai jiangxi nanchang he yunnan

 

For me the pinyin with tone marks takes up no more space than the untoned, and gives lots of extra information. Tones aren't essential, but as people often point out, "nthr r vwls!" (neither are vowels), many English sentences are still decodable even with certain letters missed, but it's a lot easier to read them with those letters in!

 

@lechuan a lot of people on Skritter seem to do it- there are lists of the top 1,000 characters etc.! It makes no sense to me. Skritter also calls only multi-word compounds "words", which incorrectly implies there are no single character words, and classes some phrases as words. All makes the already vague concept of a Chinese 'word' more confusing...

 

I agree with the original poster's point (as most of us would I am sure) about studying characters- my analogy is that 字 are a bit like English syllables - some English words are one syllable, some are multiple syllables. Some one-syllable words re-appear as part of longer words, and when they do they sometimes have the same meaning, and sometimes have a different meaning. Sometimes you can't work out the meaning of a single syllable, only the whole word.

[Hofmann]

Old news. Anybody who knows anything about modern Chinese will prioritize words over characters, but good job thinking it up on your own.

 

However, knowing the meanings of characters will help you decipher new words and clarify grammar and usage patterns for you. Also, Chinese morphemes are more discrete than English morphemes. The "in" or "im" in "invalid" and "impossible" would be written the same way (e.g. 非), and different from the "in" in "inner" (e.g. 內).

[li3wei1]

I think a lot of the reason we talk about character counts is because they are easy to count, and they give a reasonable proxy for the difficulty of a text or a course. Many graded reader series are ranked by the number of characters they use, so you have a pretty good idea of which one you're ready for. Counting words is of course possible, but it isn't as easy to automate, and there is some debate over what constitutes a word, so people will arrive at different numbers.

 

While you read word by word, you write (at least by hand) character by character, so if you want to produce text by hand, you need to know how to write characters, and it makes no sense to talk about how many words you can write. Granted producing text by hand is a bit of a niche market these days, but it's still required on some tests.

[renzhe]

I think that ignoring tones and skipping characters are things which help in the short run, making your job easier, and giving the impression of faster progress.

I also think that they make it extremely hard to reach a good level of Chinese later, because they will instill every possible unbreakable bad habit into you early.

So, in a way, it is a matter of what you're trying to achieve. If you are adamant that you never want to reach a high-level in Chinese, then the best thing to do is to ignore tones and characters, IMHO.

[anonymoose]

If you ignore grammar too it makes it even quicker.

[renzhe]

Chinese has no grammar. Only characters and tones, and both of those are optional. No wonder it's easy.

[Nathan Mao]

Woah, people. That was one of the more impressive defeats of a strawman I've seen in a while.

[renzhe]

No offence intended, but this particular topic is very old.

You can always ignore a complete aspect of a language and still be able to communicate. Tones are no different from grammar in that sense.

[Nathan Mao]

I agree: that strawman was completely in the wrong to suggest completely ignoring tones.

 

If only he had said something different, something like, "tones are overrated", or "study them hard for 2 years, but at some point it might be helpful to pay more attention to flow than worrying too much about tones" or even just used an example to highlight an interesting discovery that grouped pinyin without tones can actually be less ambiguous than ungrouped pinyin with tones!  If the strawman had only said/done those things then maybe we could have had a good conversation in which everyone could have learned something. 

 

But no.  That jerk just had to say, "Never study tones, ever!"  The nerve of that guy.

 

 

Okay, on a more serious note: I guess this is just the curse of being a newbie.  I don't know all the old arguments, the old advice, the old disputes that have already been hammered into the ground.

 

I had very formal schooling for 15 months, and then I've had 17 years of self-study, with an additional two semesters of school crammed in 15 years ago. Clearly, the state of the art of teaching Chinese has vastly improved since I was a student.  Maybe my way of thinking/learning has helped me to achieve levels of success other methods wouldn't have...or maybe all I've done is hold myself back from where I could be if I hadn't been so ignorant/stubborn.  Dunno.

 

I thought I had an interesting and helpful point of view, but clearly I didn't.  I do promise to try to avoid beating dead horses in the future.

[OneEye]

study them hard for 2 years, but at some point it might be helpful to pay more attention to flow than worrying too much about tones

 

I can get behind this, but only if the person's tones really are solid after the two years. That won't always be the case.

 

The problem with such advice is that in my experience, most newbies will read it and go "oh, so I can ignore tones and still communicate." That's what they take away from that sort of advice, unfortunately. I hear people say that all the time. "My teacher said we don't have to worry about tones because people will still understand us." They jump at the chance to ignore tones because they perceive it as being hard.

[imron]

to highlight an interesting discovery that grouped pinyin without tones can actually be less ambiguous than ungrouped pinyin with tones!

I disagree.  What you showed was that grouped pinyin without tones is easier to understand than ungrouped and untoned pinyin mixed in with numbers (I say untoned pinyin because numbers aren't really tones and they come at the end of the syllable, not over the vowel that has the tone change).

 

If you split the untoned pinyin in to syllables it's also annoying to process:

 

ju ji shou bi wu kao he zai jiang xi nan chang he yun nan

 

Adding numbers in to the mix just makes it even more annoying.

 

Writing the pinyin correctly (e.g. with tone marks and splitting on words rather than characters) on the other hand is even more readable (to me) than the other version you posted.

 

jūjīshǒu bǐwǔ kǎohé zài jiāngxī nánchāng hé yúnnán