Is it me, or is scanning Chinese characters a big problem?

[drencrom]

Despite all the time I've sunk into learning to read, I still have trouble with Chinese web pages, and I'm always reluctant to read them. Today I think I finally figured out why: scanning is really difficult. Reading Chinese, that's one thing. Either I know it or I don't know it. But scanning the page for what you need, is this intrinsically harder for some reason? Brain chemistry? Or is it just me?

[li3wei1]

I have the same problem. Your eyes look for things they understand, and they'll jump to any meaningless English on the page rather than picking out what you're looking for in Chinese. I have to consciously look for headings and subheadings, and think 'where is this information likely to be on this page?'

[partner55083777]

I've encounter the exact same thing with Japanese (I only just recently started learning Chinese...). Scanning for information is really hard. It's almost like it's physically different than when I do it in English.

Although, I do feel like I've gotten much better at it. I'm more or less able to scan pages that aren't full of information (for instance, scanning a page when trying to reserve a hotel is much easier than scanning a page when reading wikipedia), but scanning pages of just text is more difficult. I think if I spent another couple of years forcing myself to use Japanese webpages instead of English ones then my scanning abilities would also improve.

I'm a programmer, and my Japanese is good enough to read about programming in Japanese, but I usually just cheat and look up everything in English because it's so much faster.

[Pingfa]

To be honest I think English is inherently easier to scan, due to the fact that there's less lines to wave through, there's spacing between words, and it's much less ambiguous than Chinese. Thus, it's easier to pick out individual words in English because they stick out more. Especially if you're looking for a name, place, title, etc as they'll be Capitalized.

I do recall reading something once about tests showing that Chinese people fixate their eyes on one spot for longer when reading Chinese than English people do when reading English. so I suppose Partner is right in that reading 漢字 is physically different to reading English. I personally find I read Chinese better when I read it at a slower pace than English (the compactness of Chinese makes up for the slower pace).

[msittig]

I remember having this feeling a few years ago. It gets easier with practice.

[count_zero]

Solution? Cheat.

Use Google translate for the whole page.

[lingo-ling]

Google Translate? Sure, if you want what's supposed to be "When I was in elementary school" to come out as "Country hour"... (國小時)

[heifeng]

No it's not just you....I think it's b/c of the high density of the characters. It makes me need to enlarge my fonts & try to squint my eyes enough to focus on the actual website text and simultaneously block the flashing ads & random links for pictures/stories about hot girls & miracle cures too.