Steve,

I am still amazed how many new words and idioms crop up all the time despite the four years I have been at it. I still consider my comprehension relatively weak. At the same time I know I am no novice and have some accomplishments to show for when it comes to language learning. I also adhere to the holy trinity so there is nothing wrong with that. So when I hear other learners of Chinese saying that their comprehension is strong, like you said in the other thread today I either don't believe them or I think something must be wrong with me.

When I listen to the news in my weakest foreign language, Spanish, I have certainly better comprehension than in Chinese, even though I never specifically tried to master Spanish news. Here are two short clips (some 1,5 minutes each) from the CCTV evening news which I just sampled randomly. Can you understand virtually everything without major effort? Could you transcribe it? I know I cannot, at least not all of it and certainly not without listening very carefully, but in a way I think as a C1 one should be able to do that.

http://matonfan4842.posterous.com/chinese-news-...
http://matonfan4842.posterous.com/chinese-news

You are not alone. Listening comphrension is extremely hard. I still have not figured out why that is the case for Mandarin. I have never heard other Chinese learners say though they think this is easy. On the contrary, they mostly do not even attempt to listen to the news.

I recently had an outing with some Chinese people for a day and they just did not make any concessions, using idioms they knew (had they thought about it enough) I probably would not know.

I will have a listen to the piece you provided.

I think the news are a little hard to understand, a little stylized. I listened to the first of your links, and missed a few words at the beginning but basically understood the rest, about the good Samaritan who saved the girl, and the expressons of appreciation, including of course the Cantonese bit. I think that if I spent a little time with news articles at LingQ and did this for a few days I would bring my Chinese back up to speed.One has to get back into the swing of things.

I think you have to concentrate to get it. The words are pronounced very clearly. I probably could transcribe it using the keyboard but it would take a while but I could not do this by hand. I agree it would probably be C1 level.

I find the followig quite hard due to the fact this programme often uses idioms, colloquialisms and intellectual words, so sometimes I might miss entire sentences. Incidentally the host often makes minor tone mistakes. They say he is from HK but he has obviously spent ages living in Beijing.

http://phtv.ifeng.com/program/qqsrx/detail_2012...

Some other news I used to struggle with and still do. I tried transcribing this stuff by hand after having read the transcripts. The readers sometimes have strange accents. Might not be available in China this link:

http://www.rfa.org/mandarin/

I also got the gist of it but not the details. For example:

- What exactly happened to the girl so that it had to be rescued?
- How exactly did he rescue the girl?
- What nickname was our hero been given?
- How did he think he manage to rescue the girl?

If I were to hear this in Spanish I think I would have little troubles to get all those little details. The language in news may be more formal or stylized but again, in other languages I would have much less difficulties understanding them. I am always amazed by the compactrd nature of Chinese. For example: "The girl was hanging in the air suspended by her head that got stuck between the protecting fence on the fourth floor". In Chinese this becomes just nine characters (头卡在防护栏身悬4楼 ) and if you just hear the sound it becomes very difficult I find. "tou qia" (head stuck) I had never heard before. And if you havn't, you don't know whether it is a new two character word or something else. This is just the fuzziness of Chinese that I find such a challenge.

Marianne,

I really liked your first link, the Phoenix show, there are very few of these casual discussion shows on CCTV. I went to the homepage of this program but I couldn't find the transcript which you had in your link. Do you know where I can find it?

P.S: Found it! Thanks for the link!!

Friedemann, I just do no have the time to spend on these things. I do not live in China, am not surrounded by Chinese, rarely hear Chinese these days. I listened to your clip, did not get all the details but got the drift. I am not going to go back and listen again. I often miss details when listening in English. I find certain things easier or harder to understand in different languages. I don't worry about it. I just use the language and get on with life. I really don't get what you are driving at. You find Chinese more difficult that Norwegian. Big deal. I use Mandarin and understand it,better than some of the languages that I speak and not as well as others. It is about 4th on my list.

Steve - Friedemann is just frustrated that listening comprehension is hard in Chinese which it is. You spend so much time learning it and it seems the returns are so small. Whereas in other languages you can get more from less time invested. I have heard other people being frustrated about the exact same issue.

Friedemann - I hope I did not inadvertently post the wrong link:

http://phtv.ifeng.com/program/qqsrx/list_0/0.shtml

This link should provide a list of the programmes. When you open the teaser text you should find the transcript running over several pages below. The MPSans are here:http://qqsrx.zoomao.net/

I find the returns of learning Chinese enormous. I derive no end of pleasure from my ability to read, listen and understand, and communicate in Chinese. It gives me access to the vast treasure of Chinese history, literature and the possibility of interacting with Chinese people. I must say I am never frustrated by the greater difficulty of some aspects of Chinese. Yes, the lack of a phonetic alphabet, the number of homonyms, the different (from European languages) structure of the language, the frequent use of stylized language for news etc., regional accents etc. make it more difficult than Spanish or Scandinavian languages. It does not bother me in the slightest.

BTW re writing systems, I find that it is always easier to read in the Latin alphabet which I grew up with. Czech is easier to read than Russian , although I understand Russian much better than Czech. But these are the challenges of language learning, and these challenges are also part of the attraction and sense of achievement that I feel.

Sorry Steve, I won't bother you anymore.


@Marianne,

Yes, you summed it up perfectly. It is just so much harder to develop good comprehension skills in Chinese compared to many "mainstream languages". Maybe it is a character flaw of mine but yes, I find that frustrating at times But I guess if I didn't enjoy learning Chinese I wouldn't be putting in so many hours. It is just that I don't have friends or other colleagues learning Chinese, so I have very few reference points for what reasonable progress in the language is. Maybe I should post on the "Chinese-Forums", it is the largest Chinese learning community on the web that I know of.

I found the link to the transcript myself. It's always great to find good TV content with transcripts. What other video/audio content do you use? I am always on the hunt for new material. I myself used the CCTV content a lot in the beginning but now I like it less and less.

For example, you can create your personal page on Weibo in order to find friends.
http://www.weibo.com/

As for me, I don't listen to daily news or interview programs. I prefer to watch Chinese dramas or movies because they are easier for me to figure out what happens in real situations. However my tutors advised me to listen to news regularly to have extensive vocabulary, so I am going to listen to Radio Japan, which is relatively comprehensible because of many domestic topics.

@Friedemann: For someone with a European language background I would say comprehension is quite tough in Chinese. I never studied nearly as much French or English as I studied Chinese, still my comprehension for most topics certainly in English and sometimes for written even French is better than Chinese. And I have a certain feeling it will stay like this :)
In general just dont get frustrated about it, keep listening (it is harder than English, but certainly doable) and it comes around at some point. You have to stay on it though....good luck!

PS: in the office, so cant listen to the links, will do so later ;)

@zhou

Thanks for your comment. The two clips I posted on posterous are from 新闻联播. I know, for posterous you need a VPN, so here is the link for one of the clips directly to the CCTV website (you don't need a VPN for that): http://news.cntv.cn/program/xwlb/20120611/11354....

Amazing that after 10 years of studying Chinese you would still find your English comprehension better, but I can absolutely relate to that. Do you think that even Chinese native speakers will find their language somewhat more fuzzy and ambiguous? But then again, if they have no reference (another language) how would they know?

I have noticed many times that Chinese when communicating orally sometimes explain less common words to each other if the sound is not entirely clear. They would explain each character separately by referring to another use of that character.

Happy to continue this interesting discussion, next time I am in Beijing maybe I pay a visit to LTL and have myself evaluated (I'll gladly pay for that of course).

Friedemann - These are the two main sources I use (as above) as I think they are challenging and come with transcripts.

I recently purchased some books with dialogues that contained colloquial talk (not chengyus) which I found very useful. It contains dialogues packed with things like: 三寸不烂之舌(be persuasive), 在刀刃上 (where something is needed the most), 费口舌(do a lot of talking). I find it helpful knowing and be able to apply words like that. I am looking for a level that is a mix of colloquialisms and intellectual things. I think 锵锵三人行does that very well.

With regards to your example above on how compact Mandarin is I agree. I think Chinese people are always looking for the tones when deciphering stuff. If you think about it the pronunciation of consonants cannot be that important since sh, zh, ch can be pronounced so differently but can still be intelligible. I think it helps to try and listen out for the tones other people are using. I have found that has improved my level especially in the cases where I have picked Chinese people up on their tone mistakes (eg 必须 is one I have heard several times and recently I think I heard someone say 出来 but with the lai as neutral tone). I think developing an ear for listening to the tones really helps.

"If you think about it the pronunciation of consonants cannot be that important since sh, zh, ch can be pronounced so differently but can still be intelligible."

It's interesting what you say there. The other day I talked to a Chinese colleague and he said that he finds the "g" at the end sometimes difficult to make out, such as in chen/cheng, zhan/zhang or zhen/zheng. Again, tones and context are important. Another observation is this: sometimes I am not sure whether it is actually stress and not so much tone that is often important, I mean stress like as in Spanish: "envió". But then again, the fourth tone especially at the end of a word often sounds like a stress on that syllable.

I think you may be onto something. It is probably more, as you point out, the stress and intonation of the whole sentence that sheds light on any word that may not be clear. In such a situation you would have several cues. I am going to ask specifically about this when a situation arises so that hopefully a Chinese can explain his thinking process. I would like to understand it too. But I think if you are a native of any language and you did not understand a word someone said, would you not go through the sentence again in your head and then try to decipher from context what he may have meant? I would replay the sentence and the specific word in my head and then deduct what I think he might have said. And if I was satisfied that is what he said, I would not ask. But in Chinese I would definitely ask eg did you say 机会 or 集会 just to make sure I had understood the tones。

"I am looking for a level that is a mix of colloquialisms and intellectual things. "

The following is one of examples.
http://www.lingq.com/learn/zh/store/79299/20374...
(including tutor's note)

(I type all the subtitles in order to look up new words, idioms called 成语 or others in dictionaries, then I watch the same stories again and again to learn them. Some are easy to memorize because of similarity of Japanese Kanjis, others are hard. I also watch other dramas, then I pick up interesting stories.)


"The other day I talked to a Chinese colleague and he said that he finds the "g" at the end sometimes difficult to make out, such as in chen/cheng, zhan/zhang or zhen/zheng. "

Yes, me too, I have a certain difficulty in distinguishing the difference between "an" and "ang" when someone speaks very fast although I know how to produce these sounds slowly.

"I would definitely ask eg did you say 机会 or 集会 just to make sure I had understood the tones。"

The Chinese are unbelievable! Here is another relatively high frequency word, of course with a completely different meaning, which to us almost sounds the same: 忌讳 (taboo); or 击毁(attack and destroy). Sometimes I try to use synonyms in order to clearify things, for example I'll use ...有很多忌讳和禁词

Yes it is annoying. But in a way I also find it quite enriching. It is another way to look at a language. I have to sharpen my ears more.

If you say the word with the correct tones, I do not think there is any need to clarify though. Isn't the problem more on the listening front, ie as speakers we already know what the tones are when we are speak. That is at least control of one variable.

@Friedemann: Welcome, come over for a coffee/tea any time.
I dont think Chinese is more fuzzy than others (but then - I havent done any research on it, it is just my general assumption that "clarity" is always a matter of interpretation), but on rare occassions I see Chinese (and am myself) confused as a spoken sentence can have two different meanings, even with the tones right. In that case people might ask. The most obvious example are names, where people will always describe the character of their name, as there is no context and otherwise it is in most cases impossible to guess what the "real" name is just from the pronunication.
Mandarin has a lot less "words" (sylables) than other languages and even when mutiplying it by the tones (x4) there is more room for interpretation, which is why many words are actually combinations of two characters of the same meaning
both characters of 学习 mean very similar things (学 = study 习 = practice), but if you use them seperately it might often lead to confusion, as xue and shi have too many other meanings. Combined, it is obvious what they mean.

Friedemann - With regards to your example above 头卡 I had a similar example today:残住
(a pillar that lies amongst ruins). I specifically asked if this was clear to her what this meant and she said that without the visual cue (in this case a photograph was shown) she would not have known.

你看旁边那大理石多漂亮，你瞧这个残柱

I am thinking maybe the clip above originally had footage associated with it. Without it perhaps it is possible natives would have not immediately known what it meant. Anyway I will continue to ask whenever I struggle with a compact expression and find out how they decipher it :-)