{"id":819,"date":"2012-05-04T16:54:27","date_gmt":"2012-05-04T08:54:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saporedicina.com\/english\/?p=819"},"modified":"2019-03-04T03:12:22","modified_gmt":"2019-03-04T02:12:22","slug":"find-out-how-much-of-a-chinese-newspaper-you-can-understand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saporedicina.com\/english\/find-out-how-much-of-a-chinese-newspaper-you-can-understand\/","title":{"rendered":"Find out how much of a Chinese newspaper you can understand"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Click here to discover what Chinese courses
that we recommend at the moment!<\/a><\/div>\n

Two months ago I started to study Chinese (here my plan: How to learn Chinese fast: my (lazy) way<\/a>) and decided to share my progresses on this blog as an extreme attempt to keep motivated. However, a post only talking about me and my studies would be so boring for you to read! <\/p>\n

How much of a Chinese newspaper can you understand?<\/h2>\n

Thus I decided that every month I will share a useful resource to learn Chinese and only at the end of the post I will detail my progresses. Today I want to talk about Chinese Level, a website that promise to estimate how much of a Chinese newspaper you can read<\/strong> and then suggest you some stories in Chinese language that fit your current level so that you will not get bored reading a bunch of stuff you do not understand (the website is quite new and if I understood well this features is not ready yet). <\/strong> <\/p>\n

The author, Herman Schaaf, has a very good point when he explains how the common wisdom of knowing about 2,000 characters will allow you to read 95% of a newspaper is maybe true but still useless. And we poor Western trying to get along with Mandarin are all aware of this paradox.<\/p>\n

\"chineselevel\"<\/p>\n

The point is that modern Chinese doesn’t work with characters, conversely it is based on words and abstract concepts composed by two, three and, sometimes, four characters. This means that the same characters will assume a different meaning depending on the context. Don’t believe me? Here an example: \u5c0f means “small<\/em>” and \u5fc3 means “heart<\/em>“. However \u5c0f\u5fc3 means “be careful<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

You are not convinced yet? What about that: \u610f means “idea<\/em>“, \u5927 means “big<\/em>” and \u5229 means “advantageous<\/em>“. You put them together and get \u610f\u5927\u5229, which means… “Italy<\/em>“.<\/p>\n

See, since I know the most common characters I’m able to read panels and newspaper titles quite often. However I (almost) never get the meaning of that particular combination of characters. And I guarantee you this is pretty frustrating.<\/p>\n

You will agree with me then that to understand Chinese comes down to know words in a given context, not characters. <\/strong><\/p>\n

\"chineselevel\"<\/p>\n

Herman Schaaf crawled about 7,000 newspapers, finding about 60,000 different words. Those are the words you need to know to understand Chinese newspaper! Wait, don’t panic.<\/p>\n

The reality is you can get along with much less words as long as you don’t pretend to understand EVERYTHING Chinese people write. In particular, the most common 1,000 words represents 50% of newspapers. With 5,000 words you will understand 80% of a newspaper and with 10,000 words you will cover 90% of a newspaper meaning, which is probably more of what I get from English newspaper. The remaining 50,000 words cover the longtail, mostly composed by obscure words that not even Chinese people understand. <\/p>\n

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\nChinese Level promises to estimate how much of a newspaper you can read through a five minutes test.<\/strong> I just took it and learned that right now I can understand 58% of a newspaper, which means I know around 1,500 words. I will take the test again next month and check my progresses.<\/p>\n

Learn Chinese: my lazy way monthly results<\/h2>\n

Two months ago I’ve started to study Chinese. The idea is to spend only one hour per day on Chinese learning and yet be able to communicate in a decent way, understand Chinese television and newspapers within the end of February 2013. <\/p>\n

If you want to check my original plan, which detail HOW I plan to do it, read Learn Chinese fast: my lazy way<\/a>. <\/p>\n

What I did this month<\/h3>\n