I disagree a bit with the article. Chinese is hard, but it is not that hard. While it is true that it is a language in which you will probably never run out of words and expressions to learn, once you have reached a certain level, you can more or less understand around 80% of what you read/hear (if is not something super specific/technical). My current level is higher than HSK5, and for the most part, I can understand most texts I find around.
Another thing that I disagree with is the assertion that you can't "cheat" Chinese by figuring out the meaning of something just by looking at it. While this might be true for beginners, once you have reached a certain level of Chinese, you can kind of guess or figure out the meaning of many words by just looking at its characters. For example, you I might not know the meaning of 效益, but if you know 益 has an implication of benefit/interest (like in 利益), you can figure out 效益 most probably means that or something related.
On a final note, your level will depend on how much you study: some people might take one year to reach HSK5, and some people might take three years to reach HSK2. Chinese is hard, but not impossible.
About Classical Chinese... not even Chinese people understand that shit.
I disagree a bit with the article. Chinese is hard, but it is not that hard. While it is true that it is a language in which you will probably never run out of words and expressions to learn, once you have reached a certain level, you can more or less understand around 80% of what you read/hear (if is not something super specific/technical). My current level is higher than HSK5, and for the most part, I can understand most texts I find around.
Another thing that I disagree with is the assertion that you can't "cheat" Chinese by figuring out the meaning of something just by looking at it. While this might be true for beginners, once you have reached a certain level of Chinese, you can kind of guess or figure out the meaning of many words by just looking at its characters. For example, you I might not know the meaning of 效益, but if you know 益 has an implication of benefit/interest (like in 利益), you can figure out 效益 most probably means that or something related.
On a final note, your level will depend on how much you study: some people might take one year to reach HSK5, and some people might take three years to reach HSK2. Chinese is hard, but not impossible.
About Classical Chinese... not even Chinese people understand that shit.
I had my first one of those yesterday.
I figured out 花园 means flower garden, because I knew 花 was flower, and I knew garden from 公园.
It’s not much, but after a year of slow burn learning, it’s nice to recognise a word without explicitly learning it.
spoiler
Never mind I can recognise words in Romance languages on day 1.
Yeah, but it's just a guess, though. No matter how much you know, you're only taking a guess.
It can be pretty straight forward depending on the word (for example 无力), but yeah, sometimes it's just a guess