Quote:
Originally Posted by charlesatan
In depends on the language, culture, syntax, etc.
Chinese writing is based on ideograms for example, and thus will have a different dynamic compared to Romanic languages.
The "read a lot" works for English because English is actually quite inconsistent, and a lot of proper usage is based on context/previous experience as opposed to hard and fast rules.
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Actually "read a lot" is much more important for Chinese than it is for languages with phonetic scripts. Learning 25-50 symbols and sounds only takes a matter of hours. But reading Chinese is definitely a skill that must be practiced all the time, writing by hand even more so. Even native speakers lose the ability to read at an acceptable speed fairly quickly (about 6 months) when they don't read anything at all --- if they immigrate to another country, for example, and don't have access to any reading materials. And non-native speakers, like myself, have to use it almost daily to stay up-to-date. Much easier this day, of course, with the internet.