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Comment by dmix | Hacker News Reader

> The second phase is mostly reading

Is that really practical with Mandarin and the crazy amount of Chinese characters?

I always assumed learning to speak/understand Chinese alone would be sufficiently difficult.

There is a huge asymmetry between learning to recognize characters and learning to write them. I've found that learning to read a basic repertoire of Chinese characters is surprisingly doable and a very helpful skill as a learner, to the point where I quickly found it easier to decipher the subtitles than to understand the audio when watching even children's movies. So, to answer your question, yes: it's practical, and a good idea.

Writing, on the other hand, requires truly knowing each character, every little stroke in the right place. Totally different beast. It takes many years to master and constant practice to keep up (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_amnesia).

Learning to writing characters is now largely unnecessary, since most the writing is done in computer/mobile phone/etc, where Pinyin is ubiquitous.

I think it's necessary. At least my strategy is to memorize the characters and words first. I've used "decipher chinese" to read simple texts, and that is also a great method.

The thing about reading is that it is the fastest way to review and reinforce vocabulary and grammar.

You can read at your own pace and look up anything. You can't do it that easily when listening, speaking or writing. And with a certain minimum level of theory under your belt, reading will be faster than spaced repetition of vocabulary you mostly know already.

Of course, there are different levels of proficiency in Chinese you might want to achieve. If you want to be able to interact while traveling, you wouldn't need the full complement of HSK Level 4.

However, if you want to have more interesting conversations or you want to understand technical texts...

As a bit of an introvert I learned to read and type Mandarin before speaking. Just didn't talk to people, but absorbed what I saw in the cities I lived in. Reading menus led to signs led to comics led to books. In fact, my reading is still better than my speaking or listening skills.

Have you found much rewarding Chinese content? In terms of tv shows they don’t bother translating for the west and books/literature?

I feel like there are so many great books in English where it probably wouldn’t provide much value to fully commit. But I’m a big fan of China and Chinese. I even watched a stupid Chinese soap opera about rural people moving to Shanghai and was totally fascinated by the lifestyle and growth of the city. But only a few episodes were translated. It was called something like Narrows or living in small quarters.

There are some alright dramas that come out of Taiwan.

Yeah from there and Hong Kong there's a lot of more western friendly content (see: translated). But I'm interested in mainland Chinese content that day-to-day people watch there. Like I want to know what their very of "Friends" or even serious stuff like "The Wire" would look like, even if the industry hasn't yet fully matured creatively.

Most of the most popular Chinese sitcoms I've read about seem to be a strange bunch as an outsider. Very much about boy-meeting girl following standard Chinese traditional get a job -> married + boy supporting girl and families. Which I find interesting from a cultural perspective of a maturing middle class economy. That plus a hundred awful period pieces about ancient China, which seems like 50% of their output, especially movie-wise - an easy way to ignore the tough realities of modern China.

But I don't know Chinese and only have a superficial grasp of what they are really like. So I've been interested in learning mandarin.

Exactly. Hence the suggestion. Just watch the Taiwanese stuff.

I've found close to nothing culturally worthwhile from the mainland.

Edit: actually, now that I think about it... I could never find anything when I was outside the mainland but I went there for a 3 month business trip one time and I signed up to various local services (Spotify / Netflix equivalents) and there f;r the first time I felt I had access to a decent amount of content I enjoyed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_to_Survive is a good movie

I've just started learning Mandarin and would say that the characters have been easier than I've expected. Within a week of starting, I could read a dozen characters from Mandarin-language packaging of food items. Learning the characters at the same time as the sounds for words seems to take about the same amount of time as just the sounds for me. And recognizing the characters is easier than recognizing syllables from audio unless the speaker is intentionally speaking clearly and slowly.

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