#I also feel like I remember some chinese webnovels that I ended up dropping like…

[obstinaterixatrix]

i know femslash feburary is over, but do you know any GLs where its old noblewomen/royalty? Because I kept reading like, villainess novels and they always have 2 pretty gay old women with something going on so i was wondering

[haggard] the closest match I can think of is the extras of her shim chong where the wife of the chancellor’s son runs off with the hot woman everyone in the village hates. not particularly old but I’m pretty sure they’re in their 30s. I wish I could say there were more. other closest match the adult women but not old woman criteria would be pdl’s chinese webnovels—ruzhui and female general eldest princess have then meet when they’re adults, clear and muddy loss of l… love? life? oops it’s love. has them meet when younger but follows them through life. I’m actually not good at reading stuff that goes all in on palace drama so I haven’t finished any of them

[rigelmejo]

Update; Read dmbj 1 chapter 1 last night, only used dictionary for a handful of words to double check I guessed the meaning (and hear the pronunciation). Took 20-30 minutes to read (so reading speed is still getting worked on ToT).

The main point though is, dmbj 1 is now within reading comprehension level. I can read it without a click-dictionary and did for the second half of it because I got lazy and was sleepy and wanted to get to the end. 

However, I should note I’ve read it before a year ago or more in english/chinese parallel text, so I probably already pre-studied the dmbj 1′s intro chapters vocabulary a long while back when I looked up unknown words during that first time. 

But as for actual reading ability of it right now, it is in a good range. It was also a bit easier to read than SaYe to be honest and I think that’s because I’m much more used to npss’s writing style and guessing his word choices, and in general I’m more familiar with tomb stories/shows than I am with daily life. 

SaYe is also within reading comprehension ‘without a click dictionary needed’ range. I notice my main issue when reading it seems to be similar to dmbj: 

1. If I’m reading along with audio, some words I just do not know as well in audio and I don’t have enough time to fully look at the hanzi that correlates and so I make more ‘vague guess’ on words I do actually know if I’d read slower, and end up having to re-read those chunks of text to realize I knew all the words I heard while reading-fast. 

2. If I’m just reading, needing to read slower sometimes because again I knew the words, but for some reason wasn’t expecting those words in that context, so I didn’t parse out the 2-hanzi word or 4-hanzi saying or multi-hanzi phrase I’m used to reading until I finished reading the sentence - then I needed to go back and re-read the sentence knowing better what I had been looking at that first time. This adds a bit of reading time, because I have to backtrack slightly whenever this happens - and its worth backtracking, since I knew the words and was capable of understanding the sentence, I just needed to backtrack to comprehend it all clearly. I’m not surprised by this as I do this when reading english print novels too (in english I backtrack more because a specific phrase of imagery or a detail I skimmed over, and I want to fully soak it in/contemplate it before I move on). And I remember when I first read dmbj in english, I did this a lot for details, so I’m not surprised I’m doing it with dmbj in chinese. However... it does slow down my reading speed, and I’m doing it even MORE often for these ‘comprehensible range’ chinese novels because its also just some actual words/phrases and meaning I don’t fully catch at first glance and need to backtrack for. Whereas in english its usually more only needed when something is phrased different than I’d put it, there’s a lot of description/imagery, or character/key object info/details are being mentioned. With chinese I’m doing it for all those reasons, and just because I didn’t clearly grasp a word/phrase during the first pass. Maybe this is how my english reading was at like age 9-12?

Right now the main books I am ‘reading’ through (not sure which I’ll drop but I’m reading a chapter in at least one of these a day):

Alice in Wonderland chinese translation - this one is a parallel text, has audio, and is also in my ‘comprehensible reading’ range where if I backtrack I know most words but if I listen alongside audio I ‘vaguely catch’ a lot more words I fully know if I was just reading at my comfortable speed

SaYe - using a click dictionary as needed or when I want to remember how a word is pronounced, playing audio when desired. This ones going fine (and written well!) its just not particularly my favorite genre. One benefit of reading in Idiom app specifically right now (over Pleco) is that Idiom app provides one literal word definition (which is sometimes right sometimes wrong unlike Pleco’s thorough word definitions - but the positive is it keeps me guessing actual word meanings in context), but it provides a FULLY translated sentence/paragraph every time. So I can read overall english translation of the content for context like a parallel novel to help guess new words/overall context of sentences, so grammar itself/phrasings are not daunting. The full sentence translation isn’t perfect, its wrong about as often as google just in different ways (curse words sometimes translated right and sometimes super wrong, some verbs I know well clearly translated wrong) but its enough to help me fill in any gaps I happened to have. I think this full-sentence translation feature might be nice if I try to read priest or 2ha. I keep considering just reading SaYe faster, not looking up unknown words/forgotten-sounds so much? I feel like I could just do one of these as full on ‘only extensive reading’ but then I keep getting perfectionist and want to full grasp Anything Moderately Unclear.

dmbj 1 - using a click dictionary as needed/when I want to remember how a word is pronounced. Reading in Idiom. It went very well, I read first in chinese then go over again while listening to the audio of each section. I learned 铲子， 耗子， 吆喝，匣子炮， 绳子， 挖出. Those are the ones I still remember by sound this morning anyway. Listening to audio at some point helps me reinforce the sound aspect of any new words. 

Zhenhun - still at chapter 23. Debating if I will go back to reading the print version extensively, or continue doing Listening-Reading Method with the webnovel version (which I’m at chapter 23 for). Just listening to the audiobook is all I’ve been doing lately, and I can understand that mostly, so I’ve been missing the print novel with all the added scenes ToT. Zhenhun is a case where last time I measured my comprehension (like a month ago) it was 95% or more depending on the page (about 95% for brand new chapters I had no context for). And so my extensive reading comprehension is a bit rough - I can do it, but it takes some effort. However, I know and love the story, and I’m used to priest’s writing to a degree, so even though comprehension is not up to 98% yet I do have a very good idea of when I’m reading additional description versus key information, a good understanding of the key information portions (and important details in the description portions), and I’m better at guessing the unknown words sometimes (because I know what kinds of words/imagery priest likes to use usually - so if I can make out most of the phrase I can usually guess the unknown word has to do with X at least). So despite a lower comprehension, its more like dmbj than SaYe to me - I have a better ability to guess what the author roughly meant when I run into less comprehensible parts. And yes... this is all probably me ranting just because I miss the print version of the book... even though it means no click-dictionary to pronounce words aloud that I don’t know. ToT In my defense lol, every time I read zhenhun I understand it significantly better, and its a really fun motivating feeling. I was just transcribing the Kunlun intro the other day for practice, and I translated that whole section twice before (once like 10 months into learning, once like 16 months in). And I’ve read it 3-4 times before in chinese. And every single time it gets clearer to me. (Also let me know if you’d like a link to the kunlun intro translation I did - its not great as its some months old, but I know that section didn’t get translated as much since its not in the webnovel version. A couple other people have also translated that intro if you go looking around).