A funny thing happened to me a few weeks ago. I realized that I can read Chinese. Granted I've been able to read Chinese for a long time now, I even put up a post last year talking about how I will read everything i come across from emergency instructions for fire extinguishers to words scribbled on somebody's helmet. But what I mean is that I've gotten to a point where I can read Chinese like I would read English.
You know how when you read something, you don't just read every single word at a time, but you read groups of words together. When you read you are really "seeing" sentence at a time, rather than making out each word like a child reading their first book. Well that's how I read Chinese now, I read it a sentence at a time.
Another big step is that I'm able to learn new words. Most words are two Chinese characters put together. In the past i didn't know enough characters to really figure out what a word means, but now I know enough characters that since I know what the two characters are, I can pretty much know what they mean together as one word.
Perhaps the best part is that I'm not longer translating things as I read, I'm comfortable just thinking in Chinese. I think a big part of this is that I now can know most of what a sentence is saying. When you only know or remember 40% of the sentence, you are busy translating it in your mind to try and guess what it could all mean, but when you know 90% of a sentence, the part you don't know isn't necessary to understanding. Especially with now reading sentences at a time, I can pull from a whole paragraph to figure out what the part i don't know means, rather than trying to figure out what one sentence says and guessing the part i don't know.
On top of all this, most of my friends now communicate with me in Chinese when they are writing. Whether it be through text message or email. A few months ago I said people could choose whichever was easier for them to use when typing to me. I say "easier" because Chinese typing is a laborious endeavor, especially on a phone (more in a future blog post about this) so sometimes people will just type in English as it's actually faster. But more and more people are typing to me in Chinese as they see that I'm able to understand them in Chinese. It's gotten to the point where with most of my friends, they only ever communicate "to" me in Chinese. I say "to" because I reply in English, again more on that in a later post.
What's all this bragging have to do with today's picture? Well this is the thing that truly let me know that I can officially read Chinese. It's one of a few free magazines that Taiwan has which are aimed at increasing entertainment sales. Target at those 18-34, they are basically glorified ads for movies, gadgets, clothing, and food; with information on which shops and restaurants you can go to around the city to get those things.
Getting back to the Chinese reading. I had to go to the bathroom and was looking around for some reading material and i took this. Yep my subconscious had me ignoring the ipad and a book. This confidence that I can read a Chinese magazine while on the can, was all the proof I needed that I can read Chinese.
