I'd love some advice on how to proceed from here

[xiebing918]

I'd describe myself as intermediate, maybe "advanced" intermediate. I can have a conversation on a wide range of topics, express some pretty complicated things, and have a sizeable vocabulary. If I don't know a word or term, I can always use the words I know to express it otherwise.

 

However, for a long time now, I've found myself stuck and it seems I'm not moving forward. What exactly is my problem?

 

Well, for one, building even more vocabulary. But there are tons of mnemonics and techniques out there for that.

 

Rather, my big issue right now is getting past this invisible hump where I read something, I understand every character and/or word in the sentence, and still have no idea what it means. Whether it's a news article, song lyric, or something a friend wrote somewhere, I find myself constantly stumped and frustrated by this. Worse yet, when I ask a Chinese-speaking friend to explain, they never can.

 

I am not building any kind of intuitive "muscle" where these things slowly begin to "click" in any way. It's just a constant, dispiriting barrage of stuff whose meaning I simply can't grasp.

 

How have other learners of similar level gotten past this stage?

[Shelley]

There was a similar questioned asked not long ago, there might be some help here http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/48904-i-know-thousands-of-characters-but-can-read-or-make-proper-sentences/

[anonymoose]

We're good at explaining things. You can ask here.

[xiebing918]

Thanks for the link, Shelley. The OP's issue seems to have been somewhat similar but not quite the same. I have no problem forming sentences and, most of the time, my grammar is pretty spot on. I guess my issue is "contextual understanding." I think I'd better give a few examples.

 

Song lyric:

 

为寂寞的夜空画上一个月亮

把我画在那月亮下面歌唱

 

The first sentence is clear. The second throws me off. "I sang my drawing beneath the moon"? You cannot sing a drawing.

 

Song lyric:

 

等我搬到城里去

开着大奔来接你

 

"Wait until I move to the city I will..." what? 开着？开什么？What is he "opening"? I don't get the use of "开" here.

 

Good old news article headline:

 

国办：鼓励有条件单位夏季休周末两天半短假

 

I take it the first part is "national matters." The headline looks something like, "It is encouraged to institute a two-and-a-half day weekend vacation." I think.

 

From a website:

 

gmscrobber 的目标是提供一种简单的方法来将在线播放的音乐记录到 last.fm.

 

"gmscrobbler's aim is to provide a simple way to send your listening stats to last.fm." I get the meaning. But why is 将 there? This structure confuses me.

 

Another article headline:

 

习近平：彻查天津港爆炸事故责任并严肃追责

 

"Xi Jin Ping: Investigation into the Tian Jing port explosion accident responsibility and serious seeking responsibility". What does this mean? What is “追责"?

 

From something a friend posted on a blog:

 

"你的下班是你的追求还是你打卡机的不挽留?" I know every word but still have no idea what this means.

[Shelley]

Taking 开 for an example it has more than one meaning, not only to open but to start, to operate (as in machinery or vehicle) to boil, to turn on.

 

When I get to Beijing, start a big rush to receive you.

 

So more like When I get to Beijing , I will be rushing to receive you. (receive as in have you as a visitor)

 

Without more context I am sort of guessing here.

 

Now I must point out that I am still learning and have approached this as a bit of an exercise to teach me something as well. So I may have got the whole thing wrong, but my real point is there is usually more than one meaning for a charterer and sometimes it pays to try other meanings .

[Lu]

I think you're possibly just picking the most difficult things, so it's not so weird you have trouble with them. Song lyrics have to fit the song and as a result the grammar is not always very 标准. Headlines have to fit a space and usually employ a special shorthand.

 

In case of headlines, what you might want to try is reading the whole article (or at least the first few paragraphs). Look up all the unknown words - there will be a number of them, as news articles are news and as such they will use some words that nobody was talking about yet yesterday. Make sure you understand every sentence if at all possible. Once you get all that, return to the headline to see if you understand it now. You should then at least understand what it's supposed to say, which should help.

 

In case of song lyrics... Sometimes you might get the end of the sentence wrong, and it actually goes on in the next line. Sometimes it's just unclear. In case of your first example, something else goes wrong: you read it as 把我画 / 在那月亮下面歌唱, but I think if you read it as 把我 / 画在那月亮下面歌唱 (draw me under that moon singing a song) it suddenly makes sense.

 

Blog posts often throw me too. What you could perhaps try is reading lots of them (either many by the same author or many different ones) and see if the way these writers use their languages starts getting a bit clearer. What you often see happening in English-language blogs is that a blogger and their readers/commenters start developing a special vocabulary over time, that a native speaker can make an educated guess at but which would be rather challenging for a non-native first-time reader. The same might well be the case with Chinese blogs.

 

And of course you can always ask here!

[imron]

Without more context I am sort of guessing here.

奔 here is short for 奔驰. Do a google image search for 大奔 and you'll see what it is

a big Mercedes

[Shelley]

oh, well I never would have figured that out. Just goes to show this is a never ending learning curve.

[xiebing918]

 

把我画 / 在那月亮下面歌唱, but I think if you read it as 把我 / 画在那月亮下面歌唱 (draw me under that moon singing a song) it suddenly makes sense.

 

Wooow! Thank you so much!! If only I had someone sitting on my shoulder to do just this for me every time. You see, this is the challenge: I too tried to look at it in different ways. "Is this used as a noun or a verb? Does this particle refer to this or that part?" But I just did not break it down the way you did. Specifically, I never stopped to think that 画 here is a verb instead of a noun, which is weird because it's pretty much used as a verb throughout, mostly. If it were a noun, he probably would've said "把我的画..."

 

Hm, it's true, I may be choosing particularly difficult stuff. Then again, I really want to get to that point where you've built enough momentum that now things you don't know finally begin to seem intuitive, and you can teach yourself. What is frustrating to me is not that I don't "know everything" but that, sometimes, I feel like I have no way to teach myself and am stuck.

 

Thank you also, Lu, for the very helpful suggestions on the different ways to approach articles. I had not thought of those. Too often I get stuck on the first sentence, become retentive and pedantic about it ("well, if I can't understand EVERY WORD then what's the point of goign through the rest?") and fail to take a big picture approach.

 

Imron, thank you! Hahaha. So he's going to go to the city, make the big money, then go back to the village driving that fancy Mercedes to pick up his lady. But it's also interesting that 奔驰 means "to run quickly." (The song is a tongue-in-cheek social commentary on poor people leaving their hometowns to find work in the big city, it's called 闯码头 and is very catchy). This I could not have figured out without someone pointing it out to me. Now I clearly see 开 here is not "open," but "drive," as in 开车.

 

Thank you very much for the explanations and suggestions.

 

Do we have a specific board where we can post "what does X mean" or are there any other places you can post these quick, repetitive short questions? 

[imron]

But it's also interesting that 奔驰 means "to run quickly."

Mercedes picked the right person to do their Chinese branding.

[Lu]

Too often I get stuck on the first sentence, become retentive and pedantic about it ("well, if I can't understand EVERY WORD then what's the point of going through the rest?") and fail to take a big picture approach.

In my experience (I read two newspapers a day for a few months), you do need to know every word, at least of the first paragraph(s), and by 'know' I mean 'look them up if necessary, don't coast on context'. In newspapers, the new words are the context. The good news is that if you do this regularly and consistently, after a while you need to look up less, because news often continues for some days. (Today a Japanese navy ship collides with a fishing boat [and you look up 'navy ship' and 'fishing boat' and 'territorial waters' and such], tomorrow China gets angry at Japan [and you see the same words], the day after Japan reacts to Chinese anger [same words], etc.)

 

What also helps with newspapers is cheating a bit and reading the English news first. Then you already have some clue what the article is probably going to say.

 

But it's also interesting that 奔驰 means "to run quickly."

Brands like to pick catchy Chinese names. See also 可口可乐.

 

Do we have a specific board where we can post "what does X mean" or are there any other places you can post these quick, repetitive short questions?

Yes we do!