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Thread: Learning Chinese

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    Default Learning Chinese

    How hard is it to learn to read (not necessarily speak it) Chinese? Are there resources that you would recommend for learning it? And would my slight knowledge of Japanese and Kanji help or hurt me?

    Thanks!

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    Quote Originally Posted by Catahn View Post
    How hard is it to learn to read (not necessarily speak it) Chinese? Are there resources that you would recommend for learning it? And would my slight knowledge of Japanese and Kanji help or hurt me?

    Thanks!
    http://www.hackingchinese.com/

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    Quote Originally Posted by olololo View Post
    Awesome link! Thanks!

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    Senior Member deathblade's Avatar
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    There are people who claim to learn how to read without speaking, but I'm not sure I really believe that. One of the main reasons I started learning Chinese was because of wuxia, and I can tell you that it is not an easy process, and I believe that the best way is to make it a complete process. I started without the goal of learning to read. I thought I would just need to speak and understand (so that I could watch wuxia movies and TV shows). But I quickly came to find out that understanding the characters really helps in understanding the spoken language.

    This is a link to a pretty popular way of learning characters without speaking: http://tinyurl.com/l7w9z9m

    My personal opinion is also that it is almost impossible to achieve a level of relatively fluent reading without first understanding and practicing how to write the characters as well. As such, you should consider the super-useful app Skritter.

    Here's a few more good sights:

    http://chinesehacks.com/
    http://carlgene.com/blog/
    http://sinosplice.com/
    Current Translation: I Shall Seal the Heavens
    Recommended Translation: Heroes Shed No Tears

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    Quote Originally Posted by deathblade View Post
    There are people who claim to learn how to read without speaking, but I'm not sure I really believe that. One of the main reasons I started learning Chinese was because of wuxia, and I can tell you that it is not an easy process, and I believe that the best way is to make it a complete process. I started without the goal of learning to read. I thought I would just need to speak and understand (so that I could watch wuxia movies and TV shows). But I quickly came to find out that understanding the characters really helps in understanding the spoken language.

    This is a link to a pretty popular way of learning characters without speaking: http://tinyurl.com/l7w9z9m

    My personal opinion is also that it is almost impossible to achieve a level of relatively fluent reading without first understanding and practicing how to write the characters as well. As such, you should consider the super-useful app Skritter.

    Here's a few more good sights:

    http://chinesehacks.com/
    http://carlgene.com/blog/
    http://sinosplice.com/
    Thanks for the advice and the links! I just went through a few Kanji at Skritter and it looks like my proficiency in undertanding Japanese Kanji and stroke order will help even if the Japanese Kanji themselves don't help me as much.

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    Last edited by Metazone; 02-15-15 at 12:32 PM. Reason: Added Link to PeraPera

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