To follow up on my previous post I decided to check on books in Pinyin and immediately found one written in 2010.
This book of short stories is entirely in Pinyin. It does not contain even one Chinese character.
The entire book is available for free on this site. LINK
I read the first chapter - Dàshuǐ Guòhòu. I could read and comprehend the entire chapter. Anyone who has attained HSK level 4 will be able to read it.
What is this
nonsense that one can read only if the material is written using Chinese
characters? LINK
Now, let us see if this can be explained to those having an open mind.
If you understand Mandarin and I read something from a book written in Traditional or Simplified Mandarin will you be able to understand? Of course, you will.
If I read the same material written in Pinyin, will you understand? The answer again is yes.
Assuming there is a Chinese character which is not in my vocabulary, will I be able to read it? No! All I have to do is copy-paste the character into an online dictionary and I will get the meaning of the character.
Similarly, to find the meaning of an unknown word in Pinyin, copy the word into an online dictionary to obtain its meaning.
While reading the chapter I mentioned above, assuming you do not have the following words in your vocabulary the online dictionary will provide the meaning.
Here is one of the main online dictionaries I use. LINK
Example: chōng kuǎ. If you copy this word onto the dictionary you get 冲垮 v. (of water or army) burst, shatter, sweep away
Example 2: mó fàn. If you copy this word onto the dictionary you get 模范 n. exemplar, model
So, don’t listen to the uninformed Chinese who tell you that Pinyin is not for comprehension. We can use it to read anything written in Pinyin.
No comments:
Post a Comment