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\tThe hardest part of Chinese is that it feels arbitrary. It has its own logic, but it takes trial and error to figure it out.Wouldn’t it be great if there was a shortcut?A way that you could almost learn from your mistakes before even making them?<\/p>\n
\tThe good news is that you can. Have you heard of sentence mining?<\/strong><\/p>\n \tGoogle “sentence mining” and you’ll find a community of hardcore sentence miners who engage in passionate debates on the subject.<\/p>\n \tSentence mining is studying a language by collecting, saving, and reviewing sentences. This is in contrast to a more typical approach of memorizing words individually.<\/p>\n \tSentence mining is a shortcut to Chinese fluency, because definitions are rarely sufficient for you to really understand what a word means and how it’s used.<\/strong><\/p>\n \t <\/p>\n \tFor example, take the Chinese idiom \u8f70\u8f70\u70c8\u70c8 (h\u014dng h\u014dng liè liè).<\/strong> Online Chinese Nciku’s definition is “vigorously, dynamic.” Bing’s definition is better: “on a grand and spectacular scale.” But in neither case do you feel equipped to use \u8f70\u8f70\u70c8\u70c8 with your Chinese friends. If you do use it, I bet you’ll brace yourself as soon as \u8f70\u8f70\u70c8\u70c8 leaves your lips. Based on your friend’s reaction, you’ll figure out whether you used it correctly or not. This is, of course, just trial and error.<\/p>\n \tBy contrast, if you sentence mined, you’d have a much better sense of what \u8f70\u8f70\u70c8\u70c8 means and how it’s used.<\/strong> You’d realize it’s really used for grand undertakings that are public and usually awe-inspiring. You’d also know that “\u90a3\u90e8\u7535\u5f71\uff0c\u8f70\u8f70\u70c8\u70c8\uff01” is not something people say – it sounds awkward at best and is totally incorrect at worst.<\/p>\n \tHere’s a metaphor. Chinese words are people, and English definitions are their names.<\/strong> You don’t know someone because you know their name, and you don’t know a word because you know its definition. By seeing a person in different contexts, you know them better. And by seeing words in different sentences, you know them better too.<\/p>\n \tSo that’s what our blog tries to do. Here’s our post on the Chinese idiom \u8f70\u8f70\u70c8\u70c8 (h\u014dng h\u014dng liè liè).<\/p>\n \tThis part is rather straightforward:<\/p>\n \tIf you want to explore the subtleties of sentence mining more deeply, we recommend these articles:<\/p>\n \tWhat is sentence mining?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\tHow will it improve my Chinese fluency?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\tHow to do sentence mining?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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\tOther resources on sentence mining<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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