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  • Dinkdink [none/use name]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Chinese is an absolute monster and will consume a decade of your life, easily. Traditional Chinese is even worse. Here's an internet classic that will spell out the magnitude of the task: Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard.

    The other day one of my fellow graduate students, someone who has been studying Chinese for ten years or more, said to me "My research is really hampered by the fact that I still just can't read Chinese. It takes me hours to get through two or three pages, and I can't skim to save my life." This would be an astonishing admission for a tenth-year student of, say, French literature, yet it is a comment I hear all the time among my peers (at least in those unguarded moments when one has had a few too many Tsingtao beers and has begun to lament how slowly work on the thesis is coming).

    A teacher of mine once told me of a game he and a colleague would sometimes play: The contest involved pulling a book at random from the shelves of the Chinese section of the Asia Library and then seeing who could be the first to figure out what the book was about. Anyone who has spent time working in an East Asia collection can verify that this can indeed be a difficult enough task -- never mind reading the book in question. This state of affairs is very disheartening for the student who is impatient to begin feasting on the vast riches of Chinese literature, but must subsist on a bland diet of canned handouts, textbook examples, and carefully edited appetizers for the first few years.

    Korean is a sensible writing system that you can pick up in an afternoon. Let's get you started: https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/LW1VWGvF46.jpg

    Do you want to do calligraphy? Handwriting is totally outdated and will consume huge amounts of time for little gain. Everyone uses computers and phones these days. Unless you want to do calligraphy.