Comments on: Language Thursdays: Parsing Chinese 1.0

By: Michael A. Robson

Michael A. Robson — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 01:38:37 +0000

“Good luck! It is almost difficult to believe that Chinese actually read their language at normal speeds (and believe me, they do).”

Yea, well normal is a pretty meaningless word here. I still hear tons of slipups on the radio, where the girl is obviously reading from a teleprompter/page, and trips over her words, stops and restarts again. Parsing words is huge, espcially since there are tons of examples where ‘how you parse the words’ depends on the context, its just more work for the brain/eye. Is Chinese the only language that doesn’t do it?

By: Jeff

Jeff — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 02:55:49 +0000

I see I am very late to this discussion, but seeing as you haven’t posted recently, I guess it’s okay.
I think you make some great points here, especially about the very different ways of approaching a written sentence in character-based versus alphabetic scripts.
One thing I’d like to bring up is your question about whether or not it is possible to increase your reading speed and built-in ability to parse, as you put it.
Fortunately the answer is yes, though you can’t do it just by reading a lot. It actually requires a rather structured approach. For native speakers, the ability is built up through the well-established practice of reading aloud and memorizing certain texts from various periods. Texts such as the San Zi Jing and whatnot. What happens here is that the students build up a mental database of sentence and phrase structures that actually becomes an intuitive (almost subconscious) awareness of the rhythm of the language. When a passage is well-written, it will adhere more or less to this rhythm or structure, allowing the parsing to be done automatically.
I have heard about certain sets of exercises in use at advanced language training facilities such as the Oberlin immersion program that try to replicate this and other aspects of these built-in reading habits. I haven’t tried it myself, but teachers who have been using this method say that it is highly effective, and doesn’t require years of recitations from Chinese primary school texts. When you’re posting again, maybe you can look into this and give it a try.

By: zzy

zzy — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 10:49:37 +0000

I am a chinese student
and it’s also hard for me to read english fluently with understanding words entirely

By: kailing

kailing — Thu, 13 May 2010 05:46:30 +0000

I now remember that in Taiwan, in many books, the proper names (mostly foreign ones or very specific-technical words) were usually underlined－or「」, something that I’ve seen too in some Chinese Mainland older books -maybe it was the way in the Republican time-, to help the reader to link characters (like personal names) that usually do not appear together, like 洛杉矶，旧金山，马德里，欧阳开泰等

By: kailing

kailing — Wed, 12 May 2010 04:54:59 +0000

Now I do not have any in mind, but I have experienced it when they read texts with very peculiar words. Of course, once they read it, they will remember this pairing for the next time.

By: Jason

Jason — Tue, 11 May 2010 15:30:25 +0000

(Very interesting post! Looks like I’m a bit late to the discussion)
@陈埃里克,
“We kept staring a Chinese character we picked up randomly until it looks unfamiliar, weird and even unrecognizable. It takes an average of about 2-3 minutes for us to feel that way. But I don’t have the same experience with English letters. I am guessing that’s probably due to the much more complex construction of Chinese characters than English letters.”
Interesting! I’m a native English speaker, and as kid, I played a similar game. (And I think many other kids have too) We, however, would speak a word until it became unrecognizable and ‘strange’.
Do you think you could do the same with a spoken Chinese word? I’m also curious if I could do this with a written English word…

By: Julen Madariaga

Julen Madariaga — Tue, 11 May 2010 10:24:22 +0000

What do you mean? Any example?

By: kailing

kailing — Tue, 11 May 2010 06:11:23 +0000

The only “comfort” is that sometimes chinese people also get lost with their own words when they “pre-pair” them in the wrong way, especially with combinations that are not so common in daily language.

By: Julen Madariaga

Julen Madariaga — Sun, 09 May 2010 11:51:33 +0000

Interesting link. In terms of characters I estimate my reading is betweem 100-200 cpm, I think closer to 200 when it is an easy text and I know all the words. The 2 Chinese people I tested where both above 500cpm.

By: Baide

Baide — Sat, 08 May 2010 19:40:30 +0000

I’d like to recommend one post on chinese-forums: . I’ve had some success following the methods in the post, although it’s a slow process.

By: 陈埃里克

陈埃里克 — Sat, 08 May 2010 17:30:32 +0000

Great blog post.
As a native speaker of Chines, I remember I used to play a game with my younger brother when we were bored. We kept staring a Chinese character we picked up randomly until it looks unfamiliar, weird and even unrecognizable. It takes an average of about 2-3 minutes for us to feel that way. But I don’t have the same experience with English letters. I am guessing that’s probably due to the much more complex construction of Chinese characters than English letters.

I think the reason why you haven’t progressed to the level of functional proficiency is that you haven’t got to the point where you can immediately detect if the combination of two Chinese characters is correct. In addiction,you haven’t lived in the context of Chinese long enough to fully grasp the subtlety of Chinese.

It is true that some Chinese can read English as fast as foreigners, because we don’t have to recognize the English characters which we have long been using in our pinyin system.

保持共产党员先进性教育活动, yeah you can understand it that way. Actually we often joke about some of the phrases used in Chinese politics. BTW do you know the translation of it?There are so many meanings popping up in my mind I don’t know which one I should choose.

I can read up to 600 to 800 characters per minute, but the speed varies depending on the contents of course.

One more interesting thing, if you are a big fan of Chinese TV drama, which I guess you are not, you will be surprised to find out that a lot of them have Chinese subtitles while American ones don’t. You may wonder what the heck are subtitles for when you can listen and understand all the Chinese conversation. But the thing is it is easier for me to read the Chinese subtitles than listening to them.

By: Wukailong

Wukailong — Sat, 08 May 2010 11:51:59 +0000

I still keep a pinyin transcription I did of a book once (160 pages, I think) and reread parts of it yesterday. The interesting thing was that it felt much more cumbersome to read the text than it had been to read something similar without tone signs. I’m mentioning this is because I believe it’s not just a Chinese character thing but a question of how much extra information is handled compared to the usual 26 letters.

Interesting test, btw. I love tests – will try it tonight! I have some bilingual books in the bookshelf, so it shouldn’t be too hard.