[dak1]

Note that there's a large difference between learning characters and learning to read.

Simple examples: 可口可樂, 手機, 大哥大

If you just knew the characters, you would understand those as: 1) Can Mouth Can Happy 2) Hand Machine 3) Big Older Brother Big

Those are actually: 1) Coca-Cola 2) Cell phone 3) Cell phone (slang)

And those are just for simple nouns. There's also grammar patterns and characters like 把 that can modify sentence structure, to name a couple more examples.

[hangonhn]

The bit that helps me a lot with Chinese is that once you known the characters, you can deduce the possible meaning of the words, especially in the context of the sentence.

For example, 手機 is "hand", "machine", 飛機 is "fly", "machine" which you can guess means airplane. 鐵路 is "iron/metal", "road" which you can guess could mean railroad. 火車 is "fire", "chariot" which I guess can be a little confusing but it narrows it down to either a car or a train (it's train).

[_hao]

This is entirely correct and I don't disagree with it. I already have some basic HSK1-3 level readers bought as well as some grammars (AllLearning + some others) that I intend to use when I finish my character learning.

[saagarjha]

I'm guessing the last one is not an Orwellian reference?

[yorwba]

According to Chinese Wiktionary, it originated in the period when mobile phones where large, expensive bricks and were carried as an accessory by triad bosses ("big brothers") in Hong Kong movies. https://zh.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%A4%A7%E5%93%A5%E5%A4%A7

[knolax]

大哥大 dates back to at least the Sino-Japanese war. It's northern slang equivalent in meaning and connotation to "da boss" (eg. the term is mostly used sarcastically). I've never heard anybody use it as a term for cellphones. So no, the term predates Orwell.

[jack1243star]

For example, one Taiwanese cellphone service provider is called 台灣大哥大

[dang]

That somehow reminds me of how APL languages work. Operators with low-level meanings compose into phrases that act like higher-level operators. Eventually you read the language in phrases.