Jump to content
Chinese-Forums
  • Sign Up

Most common chengyu patterns


Recommended Posts

Posted

Cool!  This is an answer to this question I posted at Stack Exchange years ago.  I encourage you to post an answer there too, if you feel like it.

 

Learning these structures can bolster your ability to infer unfamiliar chengyu: they come as a group.  Still, I was a bit surprised that e.g. 不可思议 无可奈何 不知不觉 didn't come up.  I guess the given examples are not necessarily the most common with a given structure (?).

  • Like 1
Posted
On 2/26/2024 at 1:53 AM, becky82 said:

I guess the given examples are not necessarily the most common with a given structure

They were supposed to but there was a bug, I have updated the list and hopefully they are now (according to a random chengyu list from the internet...)

  • Thanks 1
Posted

I think it's hard to list a full list of most common 成语? Also native speakers coin some “成语”(there is a term in Sino-Tibetan linguistics called 四字格 four-character structure to describe such expressions) in daily communication as well.

Posted

Here are the lists I used. I found them a while ago when I first started learning Chinese and was full of ambitions and dreams of knowing every single chengyu, but I don't remember the sources so I can't credit them, sorry. 

 

If you combine both lists, remove the repeats, and remove the long ones (> 4 hanzi), you get a list of ~10k chengyu.

chengyu_frequency_1.txt chengyu_frequency_2.txt

  • Like 1
Posted
On 2/26/2024 at 5:38 AM, lordsuso said:

Learning chengyu is very hard, but we can at least aspire to recognize them.

I'm not sure I agree with you there. I don't think they're all that hard and I don't think we need to concern ourselves overly with recognizing them.

 

I mean yes, trying to memorize a list of chengyu from a list is a hard task that verges on impossible. But in terms of encountering chengyu and being able to understand them, I don't think that's much trouble at all.

 

and when I say we need not worry about recognizing them it's because I was looking at this list and saying to myself "oh, so that's a chengyu? and that's a chengyu? Huh, didn't realize I knew so many."

 

I mean it's cool if you want to learn about the Chinese language and as a part of that you're studying chengyu, but if you're just interested in understanding and communicating in Chinese than you no more need to concern yourself with chengyu than my daughter needs to have heard of the "subjunctive mood" to be able to say "If I were taller, I could reach those cookies."

Posted

@Johnny-5 what I meant by "recognizing" chengyu is precisely that I don't want to bother learning them (other than the ones that are so common that you end up learning anyways like you say), but I wish I could spot and ignore them instantly in novels (specially wuxia) rather than getting caught up in them

 

Posted

@lordsuso makes perfect sense. I've run into enough people wanting to memorize their way to fluency I'm on a bit of a hair trigger (lookin at you Anki-bros!!!).

 

I can see where you're coming from, I've certainly had experiences where I ran into a phrase and after looking up each character and still not having a clue what it meant I realized it was a chengyu and I could safely ignore it. Of course there are still plenty of chengyu that have useful functions in communicating... so it's no good to ignore them all :D

  • Like 1
Posted
On 3/3/2024 at 2:49 PM, Johnny-5 said:

I ran into a phrase and after looking up each character and still not having a clue what it meant I realized it was a chengyu

yes! this is exactly what happens to me! and dont worry Ive been guilty of the memorization error in the past and I wish someone had slowed me down haha

  • Like 1

Join the conversation

You can post now and select your username and password later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Click here to reply. Select text to quote.

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...