Skip to main content

Study Chinese by using comics, novels, etc.

How to choose the perfect novel or comic to learn chinese 

Where to buy Chinese books 

To find books written in Chinese can be a bit complicated, there are a lot of websites that are usually recommended, for example: books.Taiwan, book depository, purple culture, cypress books and more; 

In my case, I opted for another option because I tried buying from books.Taiwan but for a strange reason the order never went through, I think the problem was that all of the cards I tried to pay with were from Mexican banks, so I decided to buy them from Amazon, but as you can imagine there's not a lot of variety, additionally Chinese novels, comics, etc. are hard to find in that platform, because a lot of them don't appear if you look up their title in Chinese, in my experience the way I found the most books, was by searching: the title of the book (Chinese edition), and also by searching for the author instead of the book, another thing that's important to mention is that I used the US Amazon because in the one of my country I couldn't find a book that was not meant for learning Chinese and the few novels I was able to find seem to complicated.

If you are really struggling to find books, I recommend you to read them digitally. In my case, I don't usually read digital books because I easily get distracted, but sometimes we need to adapt. But there's an upside to reading books digitally, the books tend to be cheaper, and it's more convenient.


How to choose the perfect book for you?

There are two roads you can take on, the first one is to select a book for your level, this will make the process of reading a lot faster, and it will go smoothly, if you choose this route your best option are graded books, they are easy to read, and you will already know most of the vocabulary, another option are children's books their plots tend to be easy to understand, and the vocabulary is not complex, also some of them even have pinyin, but you will probably encounter some words that you don't recognize because they tend to mention a lot of different animals, cities, dishes, etc. 


The second road is to read a book that's above your level; this one will be harder, but you will learn a lot of new vocabulary and grammar structures, and it can also be more motivating. If you have an HSK 3 or 4 I recommend you read a manhwa or an illustrated novel I like this type of books because they are not as intimidating as novel, and as for the plots I tend to buy the ones that are set in real life; by this I mean, school romances, mother-daughter relationships, a year in someone's life, etc. this type of plots are quite useful because the new vocabulary that you'll learn will be useful for your daily life.


Another thing that I have seen a lot of people do is to choose a translation of a book that they have already read in their first language, this way you don't have to worry about the plot, because you already know it. The books that most people use this method with are: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the little prince and Harry Potter.


Be careful with the following 


I don't recommend you to read a wuxia, the type of vocabulary they use tends to be a bit outdated because they are usually based in a Chinese dynasty, so all that new vocabulary that you'll learn you probably won't use it in real life. But this comes from the point of view of learning, if you want to read them for your own enjoyment, feel free to do it.


If you want to read Harry Potter, just be mindful of the following, I'm not an expert on Harry Potter, but I know it mentions a lot of spells, and houses and things like that, so when you read it in Chinese you will probably encounter a lot of strange vocabulary, that might be hard to find a translation for, and I think this may apply to a lot of books that are about magic and fantasy.


Finally, I just want to talk about motivation. I know that reading Chinese books can be quite intimidating, but I recommend you to try using a reading challenge so that you are more organized, also try to set small goals and take your time, the process will be a lot slower than reading a book in your mother tongue, but when you finish your first Chinese book you will notice your progress, and you'll feel really proud of yourself.




Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The key to remember characters

Chinese Characters Chinese language has something quite especial about it; you are probably already thinking about its main difference from other languages, and it's one of the differences that make Chinese quite different from western languages. This difference I'm mentioning is the fact that it doesn't have an alphabet; instead it has characters. There is not an exact quantity of Chinese characters, it's belief that there are around 7000 different characters. But in reality only 2500 to 3500 characters are used, which is still a lot, but there's no reason to fear them, because they are actually quite interesting and filled with history. How to remember characters  The following tips come from my own experience which might work for you, but it's important to mention that everybody is different, in my case I have a good memory which has really helped me, but as I move through the intermediate level I'm starting to need more study hours. Immersion, the reason...
Post a Comment
Read more

有面子什麼意思?

 The meaning of "Have face"  You probably have heard the question 你有沒有面子? or some variation of it. This expression is really popular, and it's often used in TV shows, videos, movies, etc. The direct translations of 面子 is face, but in most cases that's not the meaning that they are referring to. In most cases this expression refers to someone's reputation, honor or pride. But depending on the situation, the meaning can slightly change.  Common Phrases  To care about your reputation / have a reputation   - 有面子 : To have a reputation. This reputation has been giving to you because of the power you hold or your place in society.  -面子很大 : To be well respected by people (have a big reputation). Usually this expression refers to someone that's famous, rich or simply someone that's perceived positively by people. -愛面子 ： Someone who really cares about their reputation and they are constantly trying to protect it.  -要面子 : Someone who is constantly protecting th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Understanding a Native's Handwriting

 Chinese Native's Speakers Handwriting Everyone's handwriting is different, even in your first language you probably have encountered someone how wrote in such a strange way that you simply were not able to understand it. When it comes to Chinese writing, things are a bit more complicated, because we need to remember characters, which is not an easy task. Some people also know both traditional and simplified characters, which is also hard, but to all of that there's one more factor to add which is: deciphering someone's handwriting and in my experience this  can be quite tricky. Why is it so hard to understand a Native's Handwriting ?  The answer is quite simple, as we all know Chinese characters are complex. The main reason why learners are not able to understand someone's handwriting are strokes, a lot of learners (including me) don't know them all, so when a Native speak who knows all the strokes for most characters write their characters usually look dif...
Post a Comment
Read more