Chinese not so hard after all?
I read a report in today's Taipei Times, but couldn't find it online so you get the link to the Xinhua version. The article claims Chinese is easier to learn than some think because, while it has over 50 000 known characters, only 900 of those are needed to understand 90% of what one reads. While I've no doubt this is true (I can understand 90% of what I read) it is slightly misleading. Ninety percent sounds like a lot to understand, until one actually reads a sentence and doesn't understand 10% of the important content. Then that 10% will seem mighty big indeed. For instance:
Just yesterday my #@$%* was not working properly so I decided to *#$*!. Have you ever done that before?
While you can understand about 90% of that, it doesn't help much as you still have no idea what I'm on about (nor do I, it's just an example). The commonly held consensus is that one needs between 2000-3000 characters to be functionally literate in Chinese. While 900 is certainly a good base, the holes in one's knowledge will still at times severly hamper communication.