native level

[aristotle1990]

If they know Chinese braille, sure.

[Chief123]

If they know Chinese braille, sure.

But from that site:

When Braille is used to write Chinese, it represents the sounds of the language rather than the characters.

When we're talking reading, we're not talking about sounds but characters.

[aristotle1990]

I don't really quite understand what you're arguing -- Pinyin and braille can be used just as effectively to read and write as characters (well, theoretically; we're excepting classical Chinese and all the classically influenced Mandarin you see nowadays). If you have the materials in Pinyin or braille, it doesn't make a difference as long as you're reading.

[gato]

Can a blind Chinese person speak and understand at a well educated, native level?

Yes, if that person has loving parents or teachers who are willing to soend a lot of extra resources and time to help him or her to learn. If a blind person has to rely on self-study, the chance of him or her getting to a college educated level is slim.

The problem is that learning by listening has its limit. A lot of what we mean by "educated" is more part of the written language than oral. You can tell George W doesn't read much by the way he talks. The same applies to learning a foreign language.

[Chief123]

I don't really quite understand what you're arguing -- Pinyin and braille can be used just as effectively to read and write as characters (well, theoretically; we're excepting classical Chinese and all the classically influenced Mandarin you see nowadays). If you have the materials in Pinyin or braille, it doesn't make a difference as long as you're reading.

I always assumed it was characters that was being discussed instead of pinyin or even zhuyin because several threads talk about avoiding those crutches and to learn the characters. That's been one of my frustrations - is that everyone keeps saying learn to read. I can read pinyin and zhuyin just fine but can't read too many characters. As you can imagine reading with characters versus pinyin/zhuyin is totally different.

Since I'm trying to get to the "well-educated native level" for my family, work, etc. in as little time as possible, I'm just trying to find the best route. Since I see myself in the quotes earlier about people living in country and not really being immersed in the language, I'm trying to change and trying to find the best route to get there as quickly as possible.

Thanks,

Mark

[roddy]

Chief123, in all honesty you'd be better served by starting a new topic about your actual circumstances, or using the one you already started. This one is more relevant to blind 19th-Century German linguists.

[mfgillia]

There is no Chinese person who can speak Chinese at a well-educated native level without knowing how to read, so I posit that there is no foreigner who can do this either.

Wow - there does seem to be quite an education bias on this thread! I'm guessing these are my fellow advanced degree holders. However, if one types in successful illiterate people in google then one will also find this list includes successful CEOs, famous actors, painters and many other occupations.

So lets compare myself to an illiterate successful CEO of a Fortune 500 company. I graduated high school, went on to get a B.S. in accounting then an MBA from arguably the best (according to BusinessWeek) graduate program available. If you met us on the street and had in-depth discussions on business issues could you really tell based on vocabulary, grammar and any other metric available from the two conversations which was illiterate and which obtained a high level of education capable of writing graduate level reports?

Another example, if you met an illiterate curator of an antique shop and proceeded to have in-depth discussions on French impressionist painters then tried to have a similar discussion with me I am quite confident you would strongly believe I was the illiterate one.

As just so happens to be in the last example above, this curator is a close friend, operates a successful antique business in Taiwan, is a non-native mandarin speaker and for all practical purposes is fluent without formal study and largely can't read and write. He does however have a noticeable accent but can certainly more than hold his own compared to his native, college educated peers in his field of expertise.

Again, though I think this topic is getting off track. As a general rule, if one is quite passionate about reaching a high level in their Mandarin studies then yes I personally believe they should probably invest time to learn how to read at some point.

Check out other Mandarin forums where those that teach Mandarin full time will argue passionately based on their research that this isn't necessary if one still truly doesn't believe there are other informed perspectives on this issue.

[Chief123]

Chief123, in all honesty you'd be better served by starting a new topic about your actual circumstances, or using the one you already started. This one is more relevant to blind 19th-Century German linguists.

This will be my last post in this topic. I apologize if I'm out of line.

However, my involvement isn't about me even though I've mentioned a couple times "this is part of my problem too". I think most of what I wrote was right in line with the discussion.

My involvement came from the quote about people living in country who are not immersed and never become fluent because, among other reasons, they read in English versus the local language.

This led me to question how a person gets immersed without being able to read which lead to the discussion about the need to read to be at the educated native level.

Then I asked the question about a blind person for the reason that they can't see the characters - they can listen but they can't "read".

Someone pointed out the Chinese Braille which only uses sounds which led to my question about if sounds do it then people don't need to read. The answer was reading in pinyin was just as good which was a shocker to me.

I never had any clue that in all the threads here where it talks about learning to read that pinyin is just as good.

Over and out.

Mark

[roddy]

Wasn't saying you were out of line at all, this topic is just a bit long and messy and I suspect you might get more focused and practical advice elsewhere.

[anonymoose]

The importance of reading when it comes to learning a language is not in the skill of reading itself, and therefore it isn't important in principle whether one reads Chinese using characters or pinyin, but the resources that are made accessible to you if you can read.

If you grow up in a Chinese speaking environment, of course you will become fluent in the language even if you are not literate, as has been the case for the majority of people over the last 5000 years (!). But since this topic was originally about educated native speakers, how many of those illiterate people would you consider to be educated? I suspect that even among the successful illiterate people alluded to by mfgillia (even though he didn't actually provide any examples), their vocabulary would not be as broad as a well-educated literate person, even if this isn't evident from conversing with them. (After all, the range of vocabulary one uses in normal conversation tends to only be a small subset of one's entire repertoir.)

Anyway, I think this argument is a bit pointless. Surely if we're setting our goals that high, then we're just going to continue striving to the improve regardless of how good we get.

[mfgillia]

Wasn't saying you were out of line at all, this topic is just a bit long and messy and I suspect you might get more focused and practical advice elsewhere.

Unfortunately I think I'm one of the main reasons why the thread became messy :unsure:

Anyway, I think this argument is a bit pointless. Personally, I think the chance of any of us becoming really as competent as an educated adult native speaker is practically nil. But who cares anyway? I'll do my best and get as good as I get, and anything else is beyond my control. I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.

Agreed. For me personally, fixating on the exceptional cases and the greater results others achieved through unorthodox methods, especially those with more natural talent or other advantages, is counterproductive.

[roddy]

Check out other Mandarin forums where those that teach Mandarin full time will argue passionately based on their research that this isn't necessary if one still truly doesn't believe there are other informed perspectives on this issue.

Ah, now you can't dangle that in front of us without links . . .

I'm sure it's possible*, but I can't see why you'd do it, unless you have some ingrained aversion to Chinese characters. Being able to read just makes you so much more competent in daily life - it's all very well being able to speak well at a meeting, but can you follow the slides in the presentation, or even read the note on your desk about when to go to the thing? And it's a whole other channel for vocab input - there's a guy opposite me now reading a magazine entitled 登山车. It's got a picture of a mountain bike on the front. I now know the Chinese for mountain bike.

*actually I'm not, as I don't know what we're talking about any more.

[mfgillia]

Ah, now you can't dangle that in front of us without links . .

I was worried the admins here might be watching and not appreciate referrals to competing sites. Yikes - you are an admin! :blink:

I can post the name of that particular site I had in mind but suffice to say its a leading one in Taiwan with the main admin there being an accomplished mandarin teacher and strong proponent of CI based learning methods over traditional, reading intensive methods for basic to intermediate level learners.

The generally accepted views there are often 180 degrees in the other direction from the ones by the majority of posters on this thread. Again, I'm not advocating one approach over the other. I'm just acknowledging that these different views exist.

[roddy]

I'm assuming that's Forumosa. Stop teasing now, let's have a look at the discussions.

[mfgillia]

By the way that admin did personally help me a great deal and taught me the drill outlined here that I use with tutors.

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/31133-language-partnerstutors/

In my particular situation, that approached has helped me become much more functional in a relatively short time.

Edit: Yep! You are correct in your guess. B)

[roddy]

Are there prizes for this guessing game? Is it Ironlady?

[mfgillia]

No prizes because then I would have to pay up.

[roddy]

She posts on here also, albeit rarely. She told us about her tonal spelling a while back.

[mfgillia]

Yep, I did actually do a skype session with her awhile back. I'm not a big fan of tonal spelling though as I've been using normal pinyin for quite awhile and found that distracting.

[jbradfor]

Wow - there does seem to be quite an education bias on this thread! I'm guessing these are my fellow advanced degree holders. However, if one types in successful illiterate people in google then one will also find this list includes successful CEOs, famous actors, painters and many other occupations.

As a fellow advanced degree holder, I disagree with your definition of highly educated.

Getting a PhD does not make one highly educated as I think the term is being used in this thread. Rather, "highly educated" here refers to a broad depth of knowledge, understanding the basics of the world around you, both natural (sciences) and human (psychology and sociology). It involves understanding what made the world today (history and literature). It involves being able to reason and critically analyze information.

All that getting a PhD does is make you extremely knowledgeable in one very specialized field. And makes you too well qualified for the vast majority of jobs.