Characters outside of familiar context: Problem, Solution, and RFC

[chrix]

*The word "bisyllabic" doesn't exist. The word should be "disyllabic".

insisting on "bisyllabic" being wrong is unnecessarily prescriptivist...

See what the Wiktionary says:

* Bisyllabic is often considered malformed by prescriptive language users, it being an etymological hybrid of Latin (bi-) and Greek (syllabic) roots; the term disyllabic is generally preferred by such commentators (it features di-, the Grecian equivalent of the Latinate bi-), and also occurs far more frequently in common usage.[1][2][3][4]

* However, some linguists use the term bisyllabic.

[renzhe]

Only in Mandarin. Not all dialects.

Most dialects are not written, so it doesn't matter much when it comes to learning to read.

About 99% of all modern written Chinese is highly disyllabic.

[Gleaves]

大豙奷. Thanks for some good study ideas in here. I'll be watching this space to see how strategies work out, because I find I am having similar problems. As I get better at reading, I think I am actually paying less attention to the details of each character. With English, words can be all jumbled and it still makes complete sense to me, like this great quote I saw on Sinosplice:

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer waht oredr the ltteers in a word are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteres are at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a tatol mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.

I'm worried that something similar is possible in Chinese. So in the same sense that you can be very well-read in English, but a horrible speller, I'm worried that as I naturally progess in my Chinese reading ability, my concrete knowledge of each individual character and all its components will not necessarily advance with it. 塮塮伱门.

[Glenn]

So were you running a similar experiment to the one done at Cmabrigde uinervtisy with the characters you wrote in your post?

[Gleaves]

Just my poor attempt at some 错字 humor, I'm afraid. Turns out 伱 is an old variant 你. I hate when I'm sorta right when I'm tryin to be wrong.

[trien27]

大豙奷.

Huh? "da yi qian".? I believe you meant 大家好, da jia hao.?

豙, yi = 立, li [to stand; to establish] + 豕 [pig; swine] = is only a part of Chinese characters now. One example is 毅, yì, resolute.

塮塮伱门

塮塮伱门? I believe you meant 谢谢你 门?

塮 = fertilizer

伱 = alternate to 你

I know it's a joke.

Edited March 20, 2010 at 07:30 PM by trien27

[phyrex]

trien27, he was making a joke.

Gleaves, for what it's worth, I thought it was funny

[valikor]

It has been almost 8 months since this thread was started. I'm wondering if the author has made any conclusions as to whether or not this method has helped him?

I have been thinking of doing the same thing for some time, and just curious to see if he's done this and --if so--if he feels it's worthwhile.