Finished HSK 3, now onto HSK 4

[L-F-J]

6 hours ago, jgraham11 said:

I was pretty discouraged when I went to visit my friend in Suzhou. We went to high school and college together in the states and I started to learn Mandarin to interact with him in his own language and because I planned on visiting a lot. Only to find out that in Suzhou they barely ever speak Mandarin in social or personal settings haha. I mean obviously they can all speak it, but it just seems like they'd rather not 

 

Yup! Suzhounese is like Shanghainese. Both are 吴侬软语, dialects of Wu Chinese.

 

I've found that Shanghainese isn't that difficult to pick up, at least in listening comprehension, if your Mandarin is strong. You just have to get used to how the sounds change and it becomes predictable and much easier to understand.

 

For example, anything like tian, dian, mian, bian, xian, lian, nian in Mandarin is going to become ti, di, mi, bi, xi, li, ni in Shanghainese.

 

I guess the same goes for Suzhounese, the predictability of sound changes from Mandarin, as it does for Cantonese to a large extent as well.

 

Of course, if your Mandarin is weak, you have no idea what Mandarin sounds commonly change to in Shanghainese/Suzhounese/Cantonese, and aren't good at noticing, then it's going to be unintelligible.

[imron]

3 hours ago, jgraham11 said:

5000 words seems like some level of fluency. So you're saying level 6 is just considered fluent? Nothing more

It's not even close to what I would consider fluency.  Plenty of people complete HSK 6 but will still struggle reading books and newspapers, or watching films and Television.

[somethingfunny]

11 hours ago, jgraham11 said:

Maybe this will be make me sound bad to the people who value knowing how to write hanzi. But to me unless you're planning on translating, working for a chinese company, being some sort of diplomat or something alone those lines then it seems a little impractical to spend too much time on knowing how to write it. But, if it helps someone learn the language more then more power to them

 

Please add also if you like, enjoy or find it interesting...

[jgraham11]

I can't quote you "Imron" for whatever reason, but that doesn't seem right. I'm not saying you're wrong, i'm saying the fact they can't understand what's being said in TV or film at that point is unfortunate. I mean i've been learning for a year and change, never taken any HSK exam because I don't focus on writing enough and I can understand a decent amount on Jiangsu or Hunan tv channels. That's pretty discouraging to read that there's people who are at a HSK level 6 and still have trouble with material like that. Because I definitely don't have 5000 words in my arsenal

 

[jgraham11]

@somethingfunny of course. I know it's an art form form for some

[imron]

1 hour ago, jgraham11 said:

I can't quote you "Imron" for whatever reason

Highlight the text you want to quote and a 'quote this' button will appear.  If the post you are quoting is only one or two posts above yours, you can probably even get away with not quoting at all (like you did just then).

 

1 hour ago, jgraham11 said:

I'm not saying you're wrong

As mentioned above HSK 6 comes in at B2 on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, which is classed as upper intermediate.

 

And while 5,000 words might seem like a lot, it's actually not really sufficient for reading general purpose content.  Keep in mind an educated native speaker will have a vocabulary in the 20-30,000 word range.

[jgraham11]

@imron fair enough. I think what I was trying to get at was how many words does it really take to have normal everyday conversations with people in Mandarin? While most english speakers on here probably have somewhat extensive english vocabulary skills, how much of it do you really use? 

 

I see your point with needing to know more for reading and writing for sure. It was just the thought of actually having 5000 words at your disposal in a verbal face to face situation, but I see that's not necessarily what it means

 

 

[imron]

A large number of the 5,000+ words at HSK6 won't be used for verbal communication anyway.  Quite a few will only be relevant to written material.

 

Also, the HSK doesn't place a very large emphasis on speaking and listening (though listening is better tested than speaking), meaning that you can pass the test with relatively poor listening and speaking skills.