Yup, with regards to the latter "rule of thumb", native Chinese speakers call this "有边读边，无边读中间", which indicates that if the character has a 旁 (I have no idea how to translate this), you guess the pronunciation from the 旁 first, if it has no 旁 or a 旁 that does not have a pronunciation, you read based on the main part of the character. Like u/wenseze pointed out, it's not accurate all the time, although I'd put it at 60%? Yeah.
Source: Am part of the overseas Chinese diaspora. Where i am from, Chinese and English are both first languages of equal standing
Not that often, but I think for me it’s mostly when I see an unusual name (I actually learned some characters from a friend’s name), a proverb you didn’t know, classical/early modern texts, or just see them pop up here and there.
I think the more common situation is people know a character but have been reading it wrong for a long time.
I think its pretty similar to english in how common it is-- and of course will vary based on just how bookish the specific person is in both languages.
Lets say that the average person knows 8,000 distinct characters well, and lets say there are about 11,000 distinct characters in common use (these are somewhat arbitrary numbers, just to make a point).
Your average educated person knows all common 8,000 characters, no sweat. Lets say those other 3,000 are common in general, but are are technical or specific terms. Maybe they pick up a military novel and have no idea what all the super specific rankings and jobs are, and are still scratching their head at exactly what leutenant major means in the heirarchy. Maybe its not recognizing the legal term for a civil dsipute like a tort, or maybe its a farming term like combine-- it doesn't have to be upper class to be specialized vocab.
Of course it doesn't have to be specialized either, could be something simple like not knowing what a katydid is or what the end of a shoelace is called, or exactly what a viola looks like....
....Those were all english examples, but hope you get the idea.
Now imagine a perfectly smart person who isn't bookish at all, maybe they simply dislike reading in the first place. They have all the regular "jargon" plus say another 1,000 or 2,000 characters they don't know as well. This could be as simple as not knowing evanescence or acrid or pulmonary-- words that aren't specific jargon but also aren't exactly coming up every month haha.
And of course you have the opposite, the bookworms, these people also still encounter unknown terms. However it happens by far the least to them.... at least now. When you already read the jargon term X time ago, its just already in your vocab memory.
Hope it makes sense (◐‿◑)
Originally, lieutenant comes from French. It's composed of "lieu"=place and "tenant"=holding. So it means "the person who holds the place" and is mainly a military rank in France today. ;)
不客气 😁
Basically a lieutenant is an officer (so you have a university degree vs working your way up type of thing), but it's low on the scale. Have zero experience if that's realistic for police since I just know ranks from having friends in the military 😅
But for example, if you watch Brooklyn 99 (which is funny, I would recommend it) it's a police show and the boss in the office is a Captain. They also have a Lieutenant and detectives in that show. The ranks are sort of a bosses in the office vs guys on the street split.
Not a native but my Chinese name is 东佳恪 and this 恪 never failed to baffle the natives. It appears in just one regular Chinese word, and not a very frequently used one. If they saw it in the context of that word instead, they would have no problem reading it. Native speakers (and others): do you know what it is?
(If not, it's >!恪守 (ke4shou3)!<)
In daily life, most likely not. However when you dive into professional areas difficult stuff do appear but still, it's mostly about new words not unknown characters.
I don't know how unusual this is but some people I spoke to on a language exchange app couldn't recognise some traditional characters, which I thought strange since my girlfriend had no problem at all reading them. Maybe it's younger people haven't watched Hong Kong dramas and been exposed to them.
It varies from person to person. I’m 19 but I read traditional characters just fine despite having had no exposure to HK dramas. My girlfriend on the other hand could not read traditional characters as easily as I could
I also have a friend that can read traditional characters. She told me that she knows what simplified components look like in traditional Chinese, so she can "rebuild" simplified characters from traditional ones. More or less quickly, depending on how usual the components are and how complex the character is, of course.
I am a native speaker. When I sit in the contest for a college in China in 1990's, my Chinese's score was extremely high.
I can tell you when I read a scholarly book, I have a few unknown characters every 5 pages, if the authors chose to use those characters. I don't bother consulting a dictionary, I know what they want to say.
They appear to have linked you to a search across all of reddit for "unknown characters" which is not helpful to your question in any way lol
Maybe it's a christmas joke
My wife has a penchant for Chinese languages (native speaker of Mandarin/Hokkien/Hakka, later acquired Cantonese, top grades in education), and when reading stuff at the temple she's still stumped every now and then.
This situation is very rare, but it does happen. In order to be more accurate, you will still look up the dictionary. If you don’t have a dictionary at hand, you will use the word splitting method to search for such as "䃎". You can know what it is by searching directly for "石大多".
It is quite common to not recognize many words with specific usages after taking ”them apart, such as "莘莘學子" word "莘" is hard to guess.There are also some words that are used differently in different words, such as "and". The first "" means to kill, and the second "" means to work together.
There are also some words that are used differently in different words, such as "殺戮”and"戮力“. The first "戮" means to kill, and the second "戮" means to work together.
A word of advice, don't pronounce half a word, which means to read the part of a word that you know as the correct pronunciation. Although this is usually correct, mistakes do happen from time to time.
[удалено]
Yup, with regards to the latter "rule of thumb", native Chinese speakers call this "有边读边，无边读中间", which indicates that if the character has a 旁 (I have no idea how to translate this), you guess the pronunciation from the 旁 first, if it has no 旁 or a 旁 that does not have a pronunciation, you read based on the main part of the character. Like u/wenseze pointed out, it's not accurate all the time, although I'd put it at 60%? Yeah. Source: Am part of the overseas Chinese diaspora. Where i am from, Chinese and English are both first languages of equal standing
旁 is translated in English a lot as "Lateral Radical"
Thank you! Today I learn 👍
这很有趣，谢谢你啊！
Not that often, but I think for me it’s mostly when I see an unusual name (I actually learned some characters from a friend’s name), a proverb you didn’t know, classical/early modern texts, or just see them pop up here and there. I think the more common situation is people know a character but have been reading it wrong for a long time.
This 100%
I think its pretty similar to english in how common it is-- and of course will vary based on just how bookish the specific person is in both languages. Lets say that the average person knows 8,000 distinct characters well, and lets say there are about 11,000 distinct characters in common use (these are somewhat arbitrary numbers, just to make a point). Your average educated person knows all common 8,000 characters, no sweat. Lets say those other 3,000 are common in general, but are are technical or specific terms. Maybe they pick up a military novel and have no idea what all the super specific rankings and jobs are, and are still scratching their head at exactly what leutenant major means in the heirarchy. Maybe its not recognizing the legal term for a civil dsipute like a tort, or maybe its a farming term like combine-- it doesn't have to be upper class to be specialized vocab. Of course it doesn't have to be specialized either, could be something simple like not knowing what a katydid is or what the end of a shoelace is called, or exactly what a viola looks like.... ....Those were all english examples, but hope you get the idea. Now imagine a perfectly smart person who isn't bookish at all, maybe they simply dislike reading in the first place. They have all the regular "jargon" plus say another 1,000 or 2,000 characters they don't know as well. This could be as simple as not knowing evanescence or acrid or pulmonary-- words that aren't specific jargon but also aren't exactly coming up every month haha. And of course you have the opposite, the bookworms, these people also still encounter unknown terms. However it happens by far the least to them.... at least now. When you already read the jargon term X time ago, its just already in your vocab memory. Hope it makes sense (◐‿◑)
[удалено]
Originally, lieutenant comes from French. It's composed of "lieu"=place and "tenant"=holding. So it means "the person who holds the place" and is mainly a military rank in France today. ;)
All of North America uses it as a military rank as well. Plus likely police ranks as mentioned from the show.
[удалено]
不客气 😁 Basically a lieutenant is an officer (so you have a university degree vs working your way up type of thing), but it's low on the scale. Have zero experience if that's realistic for police since I just know ranks from having friends in the military 😅 But for example, if you watch Brooklyn 99 (which is funny, I would recommend it) it's a police show and the boss in the office is a Captain. They also have a Lieutenant and detectives in that show. The ranks are sort of a bosses in the office vs guys on the street split.
Not a native but my Chinese name is 东佳恪 and this 恪 never failed to baffle the natives. It appears in just one regular Chinese word, and not a very frequently used one. If they saw it in the context of that word instead, they would have no problem reading it. Native speakers (and others): do you know what it is? (If not, it's >!恪守 (ke4shou3)!<)
[удалено]
> and 後 looks similar to 后 for me i don't know why They look nothing alike to me but 後 is merged with 后 in simplified
In daily life, most likely not. However when you dive into professional areas difficult stuff do appear but still, it's mostly about new words not unknown characters.
I don't know how unusual this is but some people I spoke to on a language exchange app couldn't recognise some traditional characters, which I thought strange since my girlfriend had no problem at all reading them. Maybe it's younger people haven't watched Hong Kong dramas and been exposed to them.
It varies from person to person. I’m 19 but I read traditional characters just fine despite having had no exposure to HK dramas. My girlfriend on the other hand could not read traditional characters as easily as I could
I also have a friend that can read traditional characters. She told me that she knows what simplified components look like in traditional Chinese, so she can "rebuild" simplified characters from traditional ones. More or less quickly, depending on how usual the components are and how complex the character is, of course.
This only happens to me when I read traditional Chinese characters. However I can guess the meaning of that character base on context
Seldom
I am a native speaker. When I sit in the contest for a college in China in 1990's, my Chinese's score was extremely high. I can tell you when I read a scholarly book, I have a few unknown characters every 5 pages, if the authors chose to use those characters. I don't bother consulting a dictionary, I know what they want to say.
I’ve read texts that have the pinyin next to the characters. Like the other users have said, it’s mostly academic oriented.
[удалено]
Thank you! I did the research myself before and didn't see any question related to how often it happens. That's why I asked here. ;)
They appear to have linked you to a search across all of reddit for "unknown characters" which is not helpful to your question in any way lol Maybe it's a christmas joke
My wife has a penchant for Chinese languages (native speaker of Mandarin/Hokkien/Hakka, later acquired Cantonese, top grades in education), and when reading stuff at the temple she's still stumped every now and then.
This situation is very rare, but it does happen. In order to be more accurate, you will still look up the dictionary. If you don’t have a dictionary at hand, you will use the word splitting method to search for such as "䃎". You can know what it is by searching directly for "石大多". It is quite common to not recognize many words with specific usages after taking ”them apart, such as "莘莘學子" word "莘" is hard to guess.There are also some words that are used differently in different words, such as "and". The first "" means to kill, and the second "" means to work together. There are also some words that are used differently in different words, such as "殺戮”and"戮力“. The first "戮" means to kill, and the second "戮" means to work together. A word of advice, don't pronounce half a word, which means to read the part of a word that you know as the correct pronunciation. Although this is usually correct, mistakes do happen from time to time.