Language Overflow

Captain Bohemian

00:51

do native-English speakers read English faster? why do some videos change their word display so fast?

why do quanta magazine often write so long articles with confusing expressions (metaphors unfamiliarto me)?

Anonymous

01:29

Generally speaking, yes. Reading is a highly overlearned skill, and how fast you can read depends on how quickly you can understand. The more practice you have using a language, the more linguistic knowledge you have and the quicker you can process it, and the faster you can read. That’s only true up to a point, though – reading speed trades off against comprehension, and beyond a certain point people who read faster simply understand less.

Anonymous

But there’s a fair amount of variation in reading speed regardless of whether or not someone is a native speaker. If you get enough practice reading, you may end up reading faster than many native speakers.

Captain Bohemian

but I read Chinese slowly because I haven't read it often for long though I am a native Chinese speaker.

Anonymous

That would make sense. There’s no such thing as a native reader – writing is technology we learn to use later in life, and not everyone learns to read at all in their native languages. Some languages are never written at all! But having the linguistic knowledge is a prerequisite for rapid reading, so being a native speaker certainly gives you an advantage.

Anonymous

If you’re interested in the science on reading speed, there’s a really good overview in this article: journals.sagepub.com/stoken/rbtfl/0GSjhNaccRKTY/full

Captain Bohemian

01:48

Chinese in junior and senior high school level has taught us a lot of Chinese literature, not usually proses, but also various literary texts as well as poems, but I really don't read Chinese often after entering university, because scientific texts are mostly in English.

Jasper

@CaptainBohemian Do you use traditional or simplified characters?

Captain Bohemian

02:09

@Jasper traditional.

Jasper

@CaptainBohemian Oh OK. I write simplified characters. =) Traditional is so hard.

Captain Bohemian

@Jasper I think traditional Chinese is the original Chinese and simplified Chinese is afterwards used after mainland China is occupied by the foreign regime.

Captain Bohemian

02:33

@snailboat actually I think reading speed also depends on one's interest in the contents of the texts.

userr2684291

It also depends on how soon the exam is, lol.

Captain Bohemian

what exam?

userr2684291

Any exam for which you haven't started studying early enough.

Captain Bohemian

I haven't read for an exam for long.

When preparing for exams in high school, I actually started to study subjects I am interested the most then moved towards subjects with lesser and lesser interest, and finally I often had no time to study the subject I had the least interest.

Anonymous

02:50

@CaptainBohemian Yeah, I think that makes sense.

userr2684291

For my previous exam I began studying around 10 days earlier. And I still somehow managed to learn the gist during the very last 20 minutes for which I decided I'd skip my lunch because the exam was right afterwards.

Anonymous

@Færd Nope! I have no particular reason to recommend Anki over other similar programs. I used Anki because a friend recommended it. I did like it, but other programs could be better. Let me know how you like it if you try out Quizlet!

userr2684291

Parkinson's law

Parkinson's law is the adage that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion". It is sometimes applied to the growth of bureaucracy in an organization. This law is likely derived from ideal gas law, whereby a gas expands to fit the volume allotted. == History == Articulated by Cyril Northcote Parkinson as part of the first sentence of an essay published in The Economist in 1955 and since republished online, it was reprinted with other essays in the book Parkinson's Law: The Pursuit of Progress (London, John Murray, 1958). He derived the dictum from his extensive experience...

Captain Bohemian

I would never skip a lunch for the following exam, because I think hunger is the biggest hindrance of my performance.

userr2684291

Me: inhales.

I got close to full points on that exam.

Jasper

03:00

@snailboat Have you taken a look at the Assimil Japanese course? Just wondering, since we talked about it years ago.

@CaptainBohemian LOL

@userr2684291 Not a good idea to skip lunch.

Anonymous

@Jasper I haven't really. I don't really know much about it.

Captain Bohemian

I have only skip lunch to catch the experimental report and preview for the following experimental courses, but I have to keep supressng the growling of my stomach to work and it may lead to stomachache.

Jasper

@snailboat Oh OK, no need to bother then. Especially when the course for English speakers has not been updated for so long, compared to that for French speakers.

userr2684291

I wouldn't normally skip it, but I had a feeling I'd finally figure out what I was studying (I'd been studying all morning, frantically reading the same 30 pages of some stupid manual).

Jasper

I think I will switch to BBC for my daily news from now.

userr2684291

03:07

@Jasper I learned like 7 Chinese characters a couple of days ago. Interesting experience.

Anonymous

Did you learn to write them?

userr2684291

Yes, that's what I mean.

Captain Bohemian

I recall I did skip lunch in one of my entrance exams because I couldn't find where food was sold in that campus I was not familiar with, and the hunger did hinder my performance in exam in the afternoon.

Anonymous

A lot of people try to learn to read Chinese characters, but they skip the writing part because they feel like it's not going to be useful for them. But the people who put time into learning to write them have better recognition and retention.

userr2684291

Yes, I know myself and I knew that was the only way to learn them definitively.

Maybe I shouldn't've spent so much time on perfecting them, though.

Captain Bohemian

03:12

I don't think writing Chinese characters difficult even I haven't written them often for long.

userr2684291

I found it difficult because other than some random resources here and there that I stumbled upon, I couldn't find anything with handwritten characters. Or with just thinner lines, I suppose, instead of calligraphy.

Captain Bohemian

@Jasper actually apart from characters, there are also differences between traditional and simplified Chinese for a lot of terms used to refer to the same things.

userr2684291

I couldn't trust computer fonts because they make the characters look a bit different; they connect some lines that otherwise (in calligraphic script) aren't connected, etc.

Captain Bohemian

@Jasper I find simplified Chinese terms are more vulgar.

Though I can't write simplied Chinese characters without a copy nearby for me to follow, I can understand simplified Chinese speakers.

Anonymous

"Simplified Chinese speakers"? But you can't speak Simplified Chinese characters. It's merely an orthographic convention.

Anonymous

03:23

That's orthogonal to the differences between the Chinese languages.

Anonymous

It's important not to conflate the writing systems with actual language differences.

Captain Bohemian

@userr2684291 I don't quite understand your problem, because I don't learn Chinese characters from computer but from books and don't find any difference between Chinese characters from books and computer.

@snailboat well, I can speak simplified Chinese, but I can't write their characters. Simplied Chinese users and traditional Chinese users have no problem in oral communication though their accents are different.

though we use some terms for the same things differently, I have no problem undersatnding what simplied Chinese speakers.

for example, the traditional Chinese and simplied Chinese call keyboard differently.

userr2684291

@CaptainBohemian dict.naver.com/linedict/zhendict/#/cnen/entry/… If you click on the "strokes" button on the right you'll see how that big character differs from the one written underneath, in a smaller, computer font.

Anonymous

@userr2684291 In Japanese, there's a font used in textbooks called 教科書体, and children learn to write with that font as an example. I think FangSong is a similar font for Simplified Chinese.

Anonymous

Not exactly the same thing, but the same sort of font.

userr2684291

03:35

@snailboat Thank you, I'll look it up.

Anonymous

@userr2684291 Yeah, you should learn to write the one underneath. Compare 人 and 入.

Anonymous

I suppose you already know that.

userr2684291

Hm, really?

Anonymous

The big one at the top is more of a printed style than a handwritten style.

Jasper

amazon.com/Reading-Writing-Chinese-Characters-Compounds/dp/…

@userr2684291 I recommend you the above book.

It has all the characters used in the 6 levels of the official Chinese proficiency test.

Anonymous

03:46

bihua.51240.com/e4baba__bihuachaxun

Anonymous

I like the little animated GIFs on this site.

userr2684291

@snailboat That's closer to what I call calligraphy than the font thingy.

Captain Bohemian

@userr2684291 I am not familiar with simplied Chinese characters, so don't know if they are orinially wriitten this way or the computer fonts therein are differnt from written ones.

userr2684291

Because the right stroke is supposed to be straight.

But in the book Jasper recommended they teach it the computer font way.

Ugh. But when I look online for examples of handwriting, that same character is written the calligraphy way...

Captain Bohemian

which character do you mean? I actually can't find that "stroke" button you mean, but I see some characters look unusually from I usually write, but I don't know if that's written simplied Chinese or due to computer fonts.

Anonymous

03:54

To be honest, I usually just search for 笔顺 and the character on Google when I need to check how a character is written.

Anonymous

For Japanese, I have an electronic dictionary I like a lot, but I don't have anything like that for Chinese because I'm not a very serious student of Chinese.

userr2684291

@CaptainBohemian Above the "Examples" label and under the "Share" button. In the same line as the little speaker icon.

Jasper

@userr2684291 Wait, I am not sure what you are talking about. That book is good because it has so many characters and is cheap, but I don't know this computer vs calligraphy thing you are referring to.

Captain Bohemian

for example, 马 in traditional version is 馬.

馬 is not much different from its written version.

Anonymous

@Jasper They actually talk about the distinction in the introduction:

Anonymous

03:56

Anonymous

But then the book goes on to show typeset forms.

Jasper

Oh, I never thought much about that, because I already learned the characters long ago. I see what you mean now.

Anonymous

Here's what my dictionary (for Japanese speakers) shows for 人:

Anonymous

Those are 楷書, 行書, and 草書.

Jasper

04:00

@snailboat If you ask me to pick one of the three closest to what I write with a pen, it is the third one.

userr2684291

(:

Jasper

Now I realise that a learner might want to look at many native speakers' handwriting to decide which version to write @userr2684291.

When I write the ren character above, it is closest to the third one, but the thickness would be the same across the two strokes.

Of course, in the version you see above, you can see that the thickness is different, because it is like calligraphy with a brush.

Anonymous

I love gel pens and do most of my writing with pens, but I think using brush pens is a really fun way to write characters.

Jasper

And no, I have never seriously done Chinese calli.

But I did experiment with a brush for a few hours long ago.

Anonymous

I have a bunch of brushes in different sizes and calligraphy paper. I think it's fun. I'm not very good at it, though.

Jasper

04:07

Full video: Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers 2019 New Year speech

►

@userr2684291 You might want to listen to this for fun. =)

Captain Bohemian

@userr2684291 you mean line dict?

Jasper

I can probably understand 80 per cent of the spoken form, but now I can only write about 40 per cent of those words.

But in terms of communication in everyday life and understanding the meaning of the speech, no problem.

userr2684291

@CaptainBohemian Yeah.

@Jasper I'll do that tomorrow.

Captain Bohemian

@userr2684291 but I can't type anything there. I don't know how to handwrite a word there.

Jasper

The books on the shelves behind him are arranged very neatly. =)

userr2684291

04:15

@CaptainBohemian upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5c/Jan_ren.svg/… vs. 人.

Jasper

@snailboat There is also pen ink or brush ink that can disappear after a while, so the paper is reusable. =)

@userr2684291 Yes, what you uploaded is exactly how I write it if the thickness is uniform. Of course, in the upload, it is not uniform.

userr2684291

Yes, I know (now).

When I first wrote that particular character I bent the right stroke a little, however.

Jasper

I would think that what is displayed on your computer might depend on what fonts you have installed.

And also, if you compare with writing English, no two people will write the letter in the same way!

So don't worry too much about tiny differences.

If I write A to Z now and you write it, our handwriting will also be different.

Anonymous

04:32

Compare the single-storey 'a' with the double-storey 'a', for example. The former is typically used in handwriting and the latter in typeset text.

2

Anonymous

Although the two are distinguished in IPA regardless of whether or not you're writing by hand.

Captain Bohemian

@userr2684291 are the two different? Do you mean you can't tell 人 from 入? I have never had that problem whether I read handwritten version or computer font.

actually I prefer to read typed words than written words in most cases because most people write too scribble to recognizable.

and actually in daily writing few people write Chinese in calligraphy, which is only taught in elementary and junior high school for fun.

Captain Bohemian

04:50

but I think I write Chinese faster than typing Chinese.

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