Reading xiyouji without the dictionary!

[Johnny-5]

I was over on Billibilli looking up lectures on confucius (found one that was really quite interesting, though my daughter says it's boring...) by and by I looked up "Journey to the West" and found an audiobook. ( https://b23.tv/Z0ns9yp )

At this point I wasn't thinking "Now is the time to start reading the classic Chinese novels!". After all, according to the almighty Chinese Text Analyser I only know 79% of the words in 西游记, and I find anything under 90% tends to be too incomprehensible.

But I thought "hmm how closely does this version match the version on my e-reader?". I had a look and listen and found that they're nearly identical (except for a few "he saids" "she saids" omitted for smoother reading.)

The thing is that in spite of the old fashioned language I could still mostly understand what was going on, but I also found that the biggest reason for the 79% score was the tendency of characters to break into incomprehensible poetry that really has little impact on the narrative. 

 

My e-reader has a dictionary and translation functions built in, and I tried using those to understand more of the text, and while I could do that I found that slowed down the story way too much and sapped all enjoyment out of the experience. I found that I can get and enjoy most of the story without looking up anything and also the skillful voice acting does a good job of conveying what is happening even when I don't understand the words. (much like a child would listen to a story without understanding all of the words)

 

The experience of trying to look up all the unknown words actually reinforces my dedication to not worrying about that stuff and just enjoying compelling comprehensible input. It reminded me of the shortcomings I always experience when looking up words in Chinese since so many of the "words" turned into looking up a single characters at a time and didn't actually help in figuring out the meaning of the word or the phrase because the writer was using a fancy artful way to express himself which is not in the dictionary. 

 

I just don't see any utility to using a dictionary when reading it takes a book that is quite long and makes it interminable. By my calculations it may take a month or two to get through 西游记 at an hour or two each day, but if I spent the same amount of time and stopped to look up words it would take closer to a year to finish. In that same time I could go ahead and read 红楼梦，水浒传， and 三国演义 if I really wanted to and I probably wouldn't have to look up any words if I don't want to.

[Babylon]

Please cherish life and stay away from the ancient Classical Chinese(文言文), the PRC locals couldn't understand those extremely turgid, cryptic and overfastidious verbiage.

[TheBigZaboon]

@Babylon,  In one sense, you may be right,  obsessing over every word, turn of phrase, and classical reference in those novels may not be remotely worth the effort. However, EVERY Chinese person, anywhere in the world, knows in the deepest part of their identity, every twist, turn, emotion, brave deed, and betrayal in those four novels. If one can get even a shallow taste of that vast cultural heritage by approaching them exactly as the OP explains, understanding many things about China and the Chinese language (and even dealing with Chinese people) will be a lot easier.

 

At least that's been my experience...

 

TBZ

[Babylon]

Maybe I hadn't clearly explained my opinion yet. The four masterpieces of China are definitely treasures for the world, but we don't need to read the original works, to delve in those obscure words, there are so many derived TV serials, movies or translated versions which are worth appreciating. furthermore, especially for those foreign friends who are learning Chinese, to study well fluent and idiomatic modern language is far more important than to acquire a few unpopular, esoteric and obsolete words. I meant even if you have endeavored to remember some, you still neither can use them in normal life, nor to communicate to Chinese people with them.

 

[Johnny-5]

On 7/11/2023 at 6:16 AM, Babylon said:

to study well fluent and idiomatic modern language is far more important than to acquire a few unpopular, esoteric and obsolete words. I meant even if you have endeavored to remember some, you still neither can use them in normal life, nor to communicate to Chinese people with them.

Well I actually agreee with you, which is why I'm just lightly skimming the material and getting what enjoyment I can, not trying to dive deep into learning words and expressions that are 500 years out of date. Frankly I don't have any interest in watching movies or TV shows, and I think it's amusing to see how many different names they give to 孙悟空 throughout the story.

 

It's kind of like reading Shakespeare (though those are plays and not really meant to be read) in that you're not going to pick up a lot of modern English, but you could still get enjoyment out of it, and learn about the culture and history of the language along the way. I mean any educated speaker of English who does not have some familiarity with Shakespeare would not be seen as "well educated".

 

Anyhow, I've skipped out on the journey to the west because it became too bogged down for my liking and in the mean time I've been listening to lectures on confucius and a five volume study of 红楼梦 which is not a book I've ever read, but the author keeps the discussion compelling so I don't care.

[Explore Chinese]

@Johnny-5 curious about the use of Chinese Text Analyzer. How does the tool know which characters you know to give you the score of 79%? 

I've seen the results split by HSK etc, do you have a list of known characters for the tool to use, and if so where does it come from?

 

Curious mostly if there is an easy way of doing it, other than entering in all the characters you know   

[Johnny-5]

On 11/6/2023 at 6:45 PM, Explore Chinese said:

 

Curious mostly if there is an easy way of doing it, other than entering in all the characters you know   

Yeah, actually the developer pointed out that if you go take the books you've read and just tell CTA that you know the most frequent 95% of words it'll be approximately right. I took his advice and then used an app to put all the books that I remember reading and have the text file for into one file and then took all words that occurred more than 42 times (cuz it's a good number)... then I counted those words as known. (and he earned a purchase for sharing such a handy tip and making such a cool program  )

 

So then you don't have to try and figure out which words exactly you "know".

 

According to the work of people like Paul Nation you could count any word that occurs more than 12-20 times as "known", but I don't always read/listen carefully, so maybe I don't know the words.... and anyway I'm just looking for an approximate rating of what I should read next and not some kind of absolute final word.

[Explore Chinese]

@Johnny-5 thanks for the tip, definitely be looking into this!

[honglam]

first @Babylon here's a little mistake. I guess you are a native speaker according to your statement so I'll explain directly in Chinese. 《西游》所用的语言，至少绝大部分并不是文言，而是白话。至多只能说不是现代汉语，但决不能称之为文言。“文言文是以周秦語言爲基礎而在各個時代的語言的實際活動中所產生的書面語言”（见杨伯峻《文言语法》）。不止西游，四大名著主体所用的语言都远称不上文言，而是“古代的汉语的口语”。鉴于明清去今较周秦近得多，明清白话和今天的汉语口语相去不应很大（并且事实也是如此）。四大名著在中国古代文学史上也被归类为“白话小说”而非“文言小说”（后者典型为《聊斋志异》，如《聂小倩》一篇“……甯以新居，久不成寐，聞舍北喁喁如有家口……”）。

Let's come back to the original topic. @Johnny-5 I think you could find a translated version with enriched explanatory footnotes at the same time. For me it is to say that the difference of cultural backgrounds obstructs most foreign speakers while reading some Chinese classics like 西游. Seldom is original version of these books well footnoted since the majority of readers of those original texts are born Chinese and does not need the explanation of Chinese cultural common sense. I'd say reading a well explained translated version before the original text can offer you a preparation so that the original text will not be as painful. Or you can use it as a reference or a dictionary if you find some word or plot incomprehensible. That what I always recommend my overseas student friends to do.

[Johnny-5]

On 1/11/2024 at 5:51 PM, honglam said:

I think you could find a translated version with enriched explanatory footnotes at the same time. For me it is to say that the difference of cultural backgrounds obstructs most foreign speakers while reading some Chinese classics like 西游. Seldom is original version of these books well footnoted since the majority of readers of those original texts are born Chinese and does not need the explanation of Chinese cultural common sense. I'd say reading a well explained translated version before the original text can offer you a preparation so that the original text will not be as painful. Or you can use it as a reference or a dictionary if you find some word or plot incomprehensible. That what I always recommend my overseas student friends to do.

 

Fair enough I suppose. I have no ambition to actually read through it and pretty much reached the conclusion that it was not enjoyable anymore after I got through the beginning where sunwukong is fighting with the gods and getting to be the king of the monkeys and all that.

 

I'm on the "no pain, lotsa gain" learning path and have been watching lots of silly stuff on bilibili lately... like dashcam vids with commentary, and dudes commenting on Indian cooking... where I got a good joke that goes something like this: 食品中毒有四类型，情毒，中毒，重度 和印度

heh.... that's a joke you can't tell in English 

[Rajesh Koothrappali]

@Johnny-5

I could not understand Shakespeare without a teacher and a book with lots of footnotes and explanations. I am leaning toward reading the classic Chinese books in English first. And a version with lots of footnotes. But I wonder if it might be more worthwhile to read Mo Yan's novels instead? I've already watched the 1970s TV show of The Monkey King yet I am sure the actual book is even better. Still, Mo Yan was born in 1955 and maybe some ideas in his books are more relevant to modern China and culture? Although someone could learn a lot about rock music and history from listening to The Beatles there would still need to be a lot of explanation reagarding the lyrics. I don't understand the meaning of many of their songs yet they sound good.

[Johnny-5]

On 1/13/2024 at 7:10 AM, Rajesh Koothrappali said:

I could not understand Shakespeare without a teacher and a book with lots of footnotes and explanations.

 

On 1/13/2024 at 7:10 AM, Rajesh Koothrappali said:

I don't understand the meaning of many of their songs yet they sound good.

I kinda think that there's a certain threshold of understanding that you need to enjoy Shakespeare that is not the same with music.

At the same time I think that too many footnotes and explanations can ruin the fun of reading something. i.e. I was recently reading "Crime and Punishment" in Chinese and as I don't know a lot about 19th century Russia I began by reading the footnotes, but found like they took me out of the experience of the story so I quit reading them... turned out that the story is perfectly enjoyable without the footnotes and explanation.

Now obviously that's been translated into modern Chinese, so there's no archaic words and phrases to deal with, and Russian culture is more western so I don't really need too much explanation to enjoy the story...

 

On 1/13/2024 at 7:10 AM, Rajesh Koothrappali said:

I am leaning toward reading the classic Chinese books in English first.

I actually tried reading an English translation of "The water margin" many years ago, and it was really good but I couldn't keep track of all the characters with Chinese names and gave up on it 

Anyhow, reading a book in English first is a good strategy, many people read Harry Potter in their target language cuz they've read it already in their native language and it's easier that way. 

 

In the end I've read a lot of books in Chinese and come to the conclusion that you should only read it if you enjoy it, and most modern enjoyable books written in Chinese won't have an English translation, but once you get good enough that won't be a problem.... and then after you've reached that point maybe you can begin to enjoy the classic Chinese novels without treating them as an object of hard study. 

[Rajesh Koothrappali]

@Johnny-5 How do you go about learning vocabulary? You said in your OP that you like to have 90% comprehension. Have you read any of these 4 classic books as graded readers?

 

I wonder if anyone else read them as graded readers I wonder how enjoyable they would be? There is a version by Imagine8 Press and Sinolingua.  Graded reading can be a drag at times as I try to read them multiple times. However, I do think they are effective and more enjoyable than doing textbook exercises.  

[Johnny-5]

@Rajesh Koothrappali I never used graded readers. The idea of reading a graded reader has never really appealed to me, it seems like a good idea, but the English ones I've seen have terrible writing. But I'm at the stage where I'm just reading whatever seems interesting . I was on Bilibili and some channel I follow published an audiobook called 庆余年 and I was hooked and just decided to read it and didn't have to consider what percentage of the words in the text I knew.

 

I've a friend who is using some app to do reading on and I think they've got simplified versions of some books, probably that includes the classics.

 

I've actually been meaning to think through exactly all that I've done to get to the current stage... I'd say it was a lot of listening and reading along with long gaps where I didn't do much because I thought I needed to use flashcards to learn... so I'd do something like make flashcards and then never use them because I find the process too excruciating and tedious.

 

Honestly I don't think the online/Youtube space is the place for people learning a language because it's all about talking and not doing. The foreigners I know who speak Chinese well all did it by making friends, watching TV, reading books, listening to audiobooks... podcasts.. whatever... not a single one has said "oh yeah I spend all day watching XiaomaNYC videos on youtube!"