I was wondering, that if I were to learn every character and it's meaning in English (or my first language) would it be possible to be able to read Chinese text and understand it simply based on the characters alone in an other language?

Because Chinese is so tonal I don't think I'll be able to learn to speak it sadly, but if I could at least read Chinese text that could prove to be a pretty useful skill and worth learning.

I have my doubts obviously, but I guess it's worth asking!

I don't think that would be possible. First off, there are no books out there (that I know of) that teach things this way. Second, learning the meanings of individual characters is not enough to figure out the grammar, sentence structure, and vocabulary.

You can certainly focus on reading Chinese and not so much on speaking, but I don't think you could learn Chinese purely through character meanings.

(But don't give up on tones before you even try...)

Yeah, I was wondering what else would be required to learn the language this way, and understanding grammar would be pretty high up in that list.

Although I wonder if that could be picked up naturally as you read more and more Chinese text. In the end it would be like English with a different grammar and sentence structure. Unless it would make absolutely no sense without proper understanding of grammar. I'm sure the languages are not exactly similar.

What is the problem with vocabulary exactly?

I'm a newbie at this. But why would you want to cripple yourself like that? The tones are not a big issue for me, I don't bother much getting them right: Because Chinese is very musical. After repeated listening Michael Jackson song Bad "I'm bad, I'm Baad..." You can't possibly get the tones wrong, and you certainly don't overanalyse the verses, you just know. I guess it will be the same with Chinese after a while, it just takes more listening practice.

Also the Chinese media is very generous, compared to other languages when it comes to combining listening/reading media. Basically everything is subtitled, and if you really get to the point of being able to read fluently, why wouldn't you want to focus on listening to whatever is being said in what you're watching?

Also the grammar will confuse you if you don't know how to read it. Fun how much it is Yoda style reading? Add to that several annoying particles that makes much more sense when it's read out loud.

Learning what the kanji mean to the Japanese is a start towards Chinese, but it's not nearly enough to read anything. Anything. Learning what the hanzi mean to the Chinese is better, but still not enough.

See, the Chinese use hanzi for everything, even grammar, not just nouns and verbs.

You can learn to read without speaking the language, but you can't learn just by learning the characters. I don't recommend it, however.

I tried to learn Japanese without learning to speak it. It has been a long uphill battle that I think would have been much shorter if I had just started practicing speaking from the start, instead of avoiding it because I thought I didn't care about it.

In the end, I am learning all parts of the language and things are going faster and smoother.

Betelgeuzah Wrote:What is the problem with vocabulary exactly?

Vocabulary cannot be learned through character meanings -- you can't just take Character Meaning A + Character Meaning B = the meaning of AB.

Aye, I would never think of learning Japanese this way, since you can't exactly pick up the meaning from hiragana. In that way since Chinese do use hanzi for everything, I figured it would be easier when there is always a pictograph involved (with only one meaning, as far as I'm aware).

In the end, my logic here was to try to find a way to 'skip' the parts of the language I am very uncomfortable with while still learning something valuable. Much like Japanese (and even more-so), my mother language has absolutely no tonal differences so it would be one uphill battle either way.

If the only issue was to get used to Yoda-style reading I don't think that would be an issue, but if the language is full of grammar structures that are impossible to translate that would end up being a problem indeed.

Quote:Vocabulary cannot be learned through character meanings -- you can't just take Character Meaning A + Character Meaning B = the meaning of AB.

So are you saying that if I were to learn the hanzi for "chicken" in Chinese, that would be useless if I do not know the Chinese word for "chicken" as well?

I think I will give it a try at some point and see whether it works or not (and report here, of course!). Thank you for all the replies so far.

I think that:

1) It would not be possible (read: feasible) to learn how to read Chinese purely from English meanings of characters

2) It would be feasible to learn how to read Chinese learning everything other than how to pronounce the characters

3) It's silly to attempt to do either, because your resistance to tones and pronunciation now are temporary things that will vanish if you practice them, and at that point, it will be a billion times easier to progress in the language when you also have audio sources to learn from and assist your memory.

Someone else asked this same question two months ago:
http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?id=7635

Can I ask what are these Chinese texts that are so awesome you would want to learn to read Chinese to the exclusion of listening and speaking?

I agree with others that the amount of effort this would require is close to or greater than the amount required to learn the pronunciation along with everything else.

Betelgeuzah Wrote:I figured it would be easier when there is always a pictograph involved (with only one meaning, as far as I'm aware).

Haha, yeah right. There's typically only one pronunciation for every character, but they often have tons of meanings. This is especially true for common characters, that often have one or a couple of common meanings and whole bunch of rare ones (e.g. used as part of a word or an idiom).

An example:
是 [shì]
1. 代[文] a)表示近指，相當於"這""這個""這樣"
2. b)復指前置賓語
3. 動 聯繫兩種事物。 a)表示等同、歸類或領屬
4. b)表示解釋或描述
5. c）跟“的”相呼應，構成“是……的”格式，表示強調
6. d)表示存在
7. 動 聯繫相同的兩個詞語。 a)連用兩次這樣的格式，表示不含糊、夠標准或兩種事物不能混淆
8. b)單用這種格式，表示強調事物的客觀性
9. c)單用這種格式，表示讓步，含有“雖然”的意思
10. d)聯繫兩個相同的數量結構，用在動詞後，含有“算作”的意思，表示不考慮其他
11. 動 用於名詞前，含有"適合"的意思
12. 動 用於名詞前，含有"凡是"的意思
13. 動用於形容詞或動詞性的謂語前，"是"重讀，表示堅決肯定，含有"的確""實在"的意思
14. 動 用於句首，加重語氣
15. 動用於選擇問句、是非問句或反問句
16. 形 正確
17. 名 指正確的論斷或肯定的結論
18. 動 [文] 認為正確；肯定
19. 嘆 表示答應