Listen I can't even title a fanfic

Every time something about modern Chinese media or politics depresses me I get a bit meh and unmotivated about learning the language - which isn't anyone's fault unless I suppose they're one of the committee members who decided BL media should be verboten, but here we are. I don't know what any of it says about me or my reasons for learning and whatnot, but it's probably best not to worry too much: learning languages is such a long term and psychologically obscure and strange process that whatever you need to leverage to keep putting one foot in front of the other is probably fine even if it's a bit weird. 

Anyway I am and have been for some time pretty absurdly into Classical Chinese, so now that my eyes and neck aren't quite as bad as they were the last time I tried that, I've been wandering with reasonable dedication through A New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese, which is by approximately a million miles the best book on the subject that I've encountered. Actually, it's so good that I'm annoyed by proxy at all the terrible textbooks that exist. 

As a neat bonus, I'm losing my overwhelm/intimidation when faced with traditional characters very fast. Apparently what I really needed to do was just get up to my elbows in them and use them to make some sentences in the exercises.

Anyway I end up thinking a lot about the question "Can I read Chinese (yet)?" If you're feeling strict and impatient, the answer is "no". No, I couldn't just pick up a newspaper and read it fluently, dictionary-less. But like, what's the standard here? How many times am I allowed to consult pleco and still be able to say I can read? Do I get tested on a random bit of text or something in a subject area I'm familiar with?

Okay, some context: there are are 6 HSK levels*. I've been hovering at ~HSK4 - that is, the one *before* the one that actually gets you a useful  certificate, the HSK5 - for maybe 6 months, ish. Don't quote me on that I'm rubbish at time. I've got most of the HSK6 grammar, though, because grammar is vital for understanding, while you can always look up words. Grammar is the reason you sometimes look up words and still don't have a clue what the sentence means. Not quite HSK4 on the vocab, because much of the HSK4 vocab is the kind of vocab I can only be persuaded to care about if it's in a piece of queer media. There are words about parking and business I barely have any use for in English: I'm a civil servant and I can't drive. 

Meanwhile I know a *bunch* of wuxia related words, a bunch of official titles, and an unexpected amount of 文言文/wen2yan2wen2/classical chinese for a learner. Look, learning languages takes years, and you gotta follow your bliss. *Eventually* you come back around to caring about the words for, like, 'window' and 'stack (of books)', which I know entirely thanks to a modern AU mdzs fanfic in Chinese. The writer has lxc call university student lwj "A-Zhan" which makes my heart do a soft thing. 

I had to look up a bunch of words, though, so did I read it or did I study it? Sometimes I think, anyone can look up a bunch of words, it isn't hard. Other times I think: No, but just because you can look up the words doesn't mean you can parse the sentences. Can I read SVSSS? Chapter 1: absolutely not. The succubus extra: actually, yes? I understand now why it's common practise for bilingual-but-better-at-English-reading folks often seem to pick up a novel in English then switch to the original 5 chapters in. It gets easier when they've finished the exposition.

Just something I'm thinking about when I should be doing my flashcards. Or was, when I originally wrote this post: I'm caught up on my flashcards now, and feeling better about the whole thing, and also going to make a few bilingual documents for myself. So I can slide gently into reading novels in Chinese.

Well.

I'm leaving my previous entries (such as they are; I am overjoyed to let my earlier ones die a much needed death in obscurity on lj) here for posterity or something, but they're - yikes. Yeah. They didn't age especially well. Maybe, hm, ignore them.

These days I like:

- physiotherapy
- martial arts
- classical and modern chinese
- linguistics and languages in general
- (still) fandom and fanfic etc
- getting really excessively obsessed with things and doing a truly incredible amount of research in a short space of time
- the philosophy of mathematics??? Yeah this is a new one idk
- going for walks in the forest
- video games
- rambling about things at great, great length to get them out of my head

So, yeah. I truly cannot remember how I used to use lj. I suppose I'll figure it out.