Chineasy? Not (About what's wrong with Hsueh ShaoLan's Chineasy)

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/

Submitted by Olle Linge on 20 March, 2014 02:19

Beginner Intermediate Advanced Reading Review Information-and-Advice

Liked by Olle Linge, stefanwienert, Ah-Ke, Linus, and lazylink


In this blog post, Victor Mair explains what's wrong withe Hsueh ShaoLan's claims that learning to read and write Chinese is easy. That this is wrong should be pretty easy, but few can say it with more authority. To me, it seems very strange to claim that speaking Chinese is hard while the writing system is easy.


20 March, 2014 10:37

I agree, with Chineasy you can't learn Chinese. I also find the media coverage far too much. But as every resource on this website, it might provide one part, reading/writing characters. And it can be useful to give people a head start into learning chinese. The attitute "Oh this is easy, I really CAN learn Chinese" is much more helpful than "Chinese is so hard, you can hardly learn it".

20 March, 2014 11:18

Yeah, to a certain extent, teaching Chinese is about fooling people into believing that it can be done. If they believe it, perhaps it becomes possible. :)

22 April, 2014 12:05

I have now written a separate post about this topic here: http://www.hackingchinese.com/learn-to-read-chinese-with-ease/