<p>According to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/19388079909558298" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Lü and Zhang (2010)</a>, Chinese is indeed read at a measurably faster speed than English.</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Findings indicate that the Chinese readers (24.7 minutes) are faster than the English readers (26.6 minutes) by about 2 minutes on the same reading material.<br>
  <sub>Lü and Zhang, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/19388079909558298" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><em>Reading efficiency: A comparative study of English and Chinese orthographies</em></a>, Reading Research and Instruction, 2010</sub></p>
</blockquote>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-01-21T09:58:29.070Z
The abstract is very intriguing, maybe I'll cough up the 40 bucks for the rest of the article. Thanks for the relevant share.
tao
CC BY-SA 4.0
2014-01-09T03:14:53.853Z
2020-01-11T04:02:56.877Z
2020-01-11T04:02:56.877Z
HAL
<p>Adding a point to bytebuster's answer: from my own experience, "trackback cost" is another major factor. During fast scanning it is common that I need to go back a few words/characters to get the context or resolve ambiguity. In English, in most cases going back one word or two is not sufficient, I need to go further back or even reread the whole sentence which is much more expensive than in Chinese I only need to look back a few characters and with square characters my eyes can locate them quickly.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-08-24T22:27:09.130Z
2012-08-24T22:27:09.130Z
NS.X.
<p>Senseless question. You wouldn't acknowledge, but you scan 'images', too when reading English. You never read a word letter-by-letter, unless you encounter something that is not familiar to you, foreign names, etc.  </p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-01-21T09:53:56.787Z
I agree, when reading in English we do see words as images, but due to the negative influence of factors mentioned in the accepted answer, it slows us down more than we acknowledge.
tao
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-01-03T13:46:59.783Z
2014-01-03T13:46:59.783Z
Kovács Imre
<p>I remember there's a research about different ways of processing written information between Chinese and English speakers. Chinese readers have active spots in a part of the brain that deals with pictures, while a different place in the brains of English-speaking readers is responsible for reading. It might be possible that Chinese recognize all the characters on a page as a whole picture.</p>

<p>What's more, the Chinese translation of a book is usually shorter than its English version.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-08T19:43:41.620Z
Well, obviously the Chinese translation is shorter! You have a whole lot more characters/symbols than in English (just 26, compared to several thousands).
Igor Popov
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-11-21T19:51:28.650Z
Yep, its the comprehension speed that matters. Indeed, English translation can be smaller too if you would use a smaller font size.
Pacerier
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-09-12T15:42:14.053Z
2012-09-12T15:42:14.053Z
Li Lin
<p>In my experience, the speed of reading Chinese and reading English are just not comparable. I can read a long paragraph written in Chinese at a single glance, and get almost all the essential meaning. Also, I could scan and locate the information I need in a hell long article almost instantly, provided it must be written in Chinese. I am trying to find a way that can make me achieve this in reading English articles, especially huge amount of academic content. I can now apply some rapid reading tricks to reading English stuff, but still cannot read a whole page at once, which seems to be natural when I am reading Chinese content.</p>

<p>The most important issue that prevents fast reading should be Sub-vocalization, not information processing limit, for educated people. Chinese symbols, if you have been enough familiar and sensitive to them, would result in reading Chinese at the speed of light. The logographic writing systems in Chinese are essential for extreme fast, non-linear reading, which is mentioned in a Chinese idiom “一目十行” -- "reading ten lines at the same time"; literally, "one eye ten lines`.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-11-21T19:50:11.493Z
And is your native language Chinese or English?
Pacerier
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-12-30T19:22:44.107Z
2013-12-30T19:22:44.107Z
Eric
<blockquote>
  <p><strong>BEWARE of a research paper and bad statistic</strong>. Especially there is a lot of fancy P &lt; 0.10,
  P &lt; 0.05.  Don't stuff those things in your head just because the publisher is some "well-known bodies", or many citations from one or others.  </p>
</blockquote>

<p>Taking a glance at some "research paper" shown in the answer, the methodology is somewhat flaw, there is statistical bias in the research, especially failure to produce double blind test.</p>

<p>It is pointless to compare different language  "performance".</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-11-21T19:53:34.123Z
You kidding? Efficiency of a tool isn't pointless. Especially a frequently used tool that is used by 100% of a country's population. It has a direct relation to GDP per capita. If ants can talk more efficiently, humans will be extinct.
Pacerier
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-11-14T12:46:02.737Z
2017-08-08T10:40:22.563Z
2017-08-08T10:40:22.563Z
mootmoot
<p>"You maybe surprise how can Chinese find the information in this mess." To my opinion, Chinese has much more characters than English, each character is quite different form another, and when they consist of one word, it gets more different from other words, so we can easily find some key words in a text. You can practice. </p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-09-11T16:46:28.627Z
2012-09-11T16:46:28.627Z
raycamus
<p>Assume English is a text, Chinese is nearly an image. To differentiate whether a language close to image or text, see the grammar usage frequency within a language.</p>

<p>Considering that research has found it only takes about 0.013 seconds (13 milliseconds) for the brain to process an image, and that it processes visual information 60,000x faster than text. Please refer to MIT research on 2014 Humans see an image in just 13 milliseconds.</p>

<p>Base on this assumption, Chinese read faster.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-01-11T04:06:30.003Z
Could you please [edit] in a link to the research?
Becky 李蓓
CC BY-SA 4.0
2016-11-14T03:45:38.080Z
2020-01-11T04:06:22.890Z
2020-01-11T04:06:22.890Z
iamUFO
<p><a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1150863/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">This research</a> seems to be relevant.</p>

<p>Your question seems to be closely related to rapid reading techniques. Looking on those techniques, you may notice that many of them don't apply to Chinese, simply because logographic writing systems naturally allow rapid reading with no extra training.<br>
There is even an idiom, <code>一目十行</code> -- "reading ten lines at the same time"; literally, "one eye ten lines`.</p>

<ul>
<li><strong>Sub-vocalization</strong>, a process of associating a text with its phonetic representation. It slows down reading in any language, but Chinese symbols are always monosyllabic, and the majority of dictionary words consist of only two syllables.</li>
<li>Replacing a sequential word-by-word reading to <strong>seeing a whole page at once</strong> (or, actually, square blocks of text). Chinese text is naturally a grid by itself.</li>
<li>Related to above, but different, <strong>avoiding linear reading</strong>. Alphabetic writing systems imply the words aligned horizontally. Your eyes follow a word and it's difficult to follow several lines at once.</li>
<li>Seenig the shape of the wrods, not redaing them in detial. (how many typos did you see here?). In Chinese, you don't look at each stroke or radical, you just get the entire character at once.
Look <a href="http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/21252-techniques-for-increasing-reading-speed/#entry172609" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a>: someone can recognize 300-800 characters, but admits that he/she still needs 5-10 seconds to recall a single one.</li>
</ul>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-01-11T04:13:00.620Z
I attended a class with my aunt for speed reading, but I was too young to really appreciate that. It seems quite amazing though. Can't remember how fast the demo was.
sylvia
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-01-13T08:21:14.987Z
Oops!  Reflexive typo correction.  (:
Becky 李蓓
CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-07-07T08:13:25.233Z
一目十行是夸张，没有人真的可以做到。No Chinese take 一目十行 seriously, we are not superman ...
Spin Lee
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-08-26T16:07:56.983Z
Is there any information available about Chinese speed reader levels? I found a couple claims on baidu Encyclopedia but they didn't seem to have any foundation(including one claim of 200,000 wpm) China, with it's emphasis on intellectual acuity must have some form of standardized speed reading contest. My Hanzi reading is atrocious and the automatic translation is no help. Anyone have any ideas?
tao
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-08-31T10:29:59.050Z
Wow, I always feel that I can scan a page of Chinese and quickly locate the information I need, but not English. I thought it was because Chinese is my mother tongue.
Siyuan Ren
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-08-24T20:57:03.950Z
2020-01-13T08:20:41.993Z
2020-01-13T08:20:41.993Z
Be Brave Be Like Ukraine
<p>I was browsing one day and came across this comment in <a href="https://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/737/is-there-a-lot-of-value-in-learning-to-write-chinese-characters">this discussion</a>(italics mine):</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>I feel English is a reading language, if you are reading an English book, you watch the word and make sound in your brain. <em>But Chinese can be a watching language, take a Chinese book, I can watch over a paragraph and get the meaning of most part.</em> Well, you may not believe, but it's true. Compare Yahoo.com and Sina.com for example, you can see that Yahoo.com is simple and clear, but Sina.com like a mess. You maybe surprise how can Chinese find the information in this mess. Well, native Chinese will get the most part easy by scrolling down and take a glance. – Xiè Jìléi Apr 4 at 9:45</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Is there any science behind this? Or does the commenter just refer to scanning text. </p>

<p>I checked out a number of other search engines(eg naver.com(Korean); the-search.jp(Japanese)) and found no correlations myself.</p>

<p>Can Chinese readers scan large amounts of text faster/more accurately than their alphabet-using counterparts?
So if we placed a native Chinese speaker next to a native English speaker having the same education and literacy levels and gave them both a text of the same length and complexity in their respective languages, would one of them a) finish faster? b)comprehend more accurately? c)better retain read information?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-08-09T00:24:05.550Z
John DeFrancis describes the "[Ideographic Myth](http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/ideographic_myth.html)". To the following questions, "Aren't Chinese characters a sophisticated system of symbols that similarly convey meaning without regard to sound? Aren't they an ideographic system of writing?", his decisive answer is "no". While there may be many "intuitive" advantages of reading Chinese, I get the impression that reading basically comes down to recognizing words, once you are familiar with a particular system
haksayng
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-08-10T00:54:36.923Z
Most Chinese people don't accept Sina's main page, but it is our call. ^_^.
Daniel Yang
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-11-21T19:49:34.433Z
http://sinoglot.com/2010/05/a-reader-of-chinese-would-be-half-way-through-this-article-by-now/
Pacerier
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-08-25T16:34:40.290Z
As to Japanese, *the-search.jp* is not a correct comparison; it is just a zipcode database. [yahoo.co.jp](https://www.yahoo.co.jp) is what most Japanese people use, and it has an awful interface!
Blaszard
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-08-24T16:25:27.963Z
Written Chinese are logographs that convey semantics graphically rather than phonologically. I think it is quite difficult to compare the two just by looking at length and complexity. It would be interesting to look at some studies.
杨以轩
CC BY-SA 3.0
2012-08-28T05:36:01.060Z
Written Chinese represents semantics the same way that other written languages do: _mediated through the spoken language_.
Stumpy Joe Pete
<characters><reading>
Can Chinese readers scan large amounts of text faster/more accurately than their alphabet-using counterparts?
# Can Chinese readers scan large amounts of text faster/more accurately than their alphabet-using counterparts?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2012-08-24)

I was browsing one day and came across this comment in [this discussion](https://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/737/is-there-a-lot-of-value-in-learning-to-write-chinese-characters)(italics mine):

> I feel English is a reading language, if you are reading an English book, you watch the word and make sound in your brain. *But Chinese can be a watching language, take a Chinese book, I can watch over a paragraph and get the meaning of most part.* Well, you may not believe, but it's true. Compare Yahoo.com and Sina.com for example, you can see that Yahoo.com is simple and clear, but Sina.com like a mess. You maybe surprise how can Chinese find the information in this mess. Well, native Chinese will get the most part easy by scrolling down and take a glance. – Xiè Jìléi Apr 4 at 9:45

Is there any science behind this? Or does the commenter just refer to scanning text.

I checked out a number of other search engines(eg naver.com(Korean); the-search.jp(Japanese)) and found no correlations myself.

Can Chinese readers scan large amounts of text faster/more accurately than their alphabet-using counterparts?
So if we placed a native Chinese speaker next to a native English speaker having the same education and literacy levels and gave them both a text of the same length and complexity in their respective languages, would one of them a) finish faster? b)comprehend more accurately? c)better retain read information?

**Tags:** characters, reading

> **Comments:**
> **username_5**: Written Chinese are logographs that convey semantics graphically rather than phonologically. I think it is quite difficult to compare the two just by looking at length and complexity. It would be interesting to look at some studies.  
> **username_6**: Written Chinese represents semantics the same way that other written languages do: _mediated through the spoken language_.  
> **username_1**: John DeFrancis describes the "[Ideographic Myth](http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/ideographic_myth.html)". To the following questions, "Aren't Chinese characters a sophisticated system of symbols that similarly convey meaning without regard to sound? Aren't they an ideographic system of writing?", his decisive answer is "no". While there may be many "intuitive" advantages of reading Chinese, I get the impression that reading basically comes down to recognizing words, once you are familiar with a particular system  
> **username_2**: Most Chinese people don't accept Sina's main page, but it is our call. ^_^.  
> **username_4**: As to Japanese, *the-search.jp* is not a correct comparison; it is just a zipcode database. [yahoo.co.jp](https://www.yahoo.co.jp) is what most Japanese people use, and it has an awful interface!  
> **username_3**: http://sinoglot.com/2010/05/a-reader-of-chinese-would-be-half-way-through-this-article-by-now/  

---

## 9 answers

### Answer by username_17 on 2012-08-24. Score: 23 | Accepted answer

[This research](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1150863/) seems to be relevant.

Your question seems to be closely related to rapid reading techniques. Looking on those techniques, you may notice that many of them don't apply to Chinese, simply because logographic writing systems naturally allow rapid reading with no extra training.  
There is even an idiom, `一目十行` -- "reading ten lines at the same time"; literally, "one eye ten lines`.

* **Sub-vocalization**, a process of associating a text with its phonetic representation. It slows down reading in any language, but Chinese symbols are always monosyllabic, and the majority of dictionary words consist of only two syllables.
* Replacing a sequential word-by-word reading to **seeing a whole page at once** (or, actually, square blocks of text). Chinese text is naturally a grid by itself.
* Related to above, but different, **avoiding linear reading**. Alphabetic writing systems imply the words aligned horizontally. Your eyes follow a word and it's difficult to follow several lines at once.
* Seenig the shape of the wrods, not redaing them in detial. (how many typos did you see here?). In Chinese, you don't look at each stroke or radical, you just get the entire character at once.
  Look [here](http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/21252-techniques-for-increasing-reading-speed/#entry172609): someone can recognize 300-800 characters, but admits that he/she still needs 5-10 seconds to recall a single one.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: Is there any information available about Chinese speed reader levels? I found a couple claims on baidu Encyclopedia but they didn't seem to have any foundation(including one claim of 200,000 wpm) China, with it's emphasis on intellectual acuity must have some form of standardized speed reading contest. My Hanzi reading is atrocious and the automatic translation is no help. Anyone have any ideas?  
> **username_20**: Wow, I always feel that I can scan a page of Chinese and quickly locate the information I need, but not English. I thought it was because Chinese is my mother tongue.  
> **username_18**: I attended a class with my aunt for speed reading, but I was too young to really appreciate that. It seems quite amazing though. Can't remember how fast the demo was.  
> **username_16**: Oops!  Reflexive typo correction.  (:  
> **username_19**: 一目十行是夸张，没有人真的可以做到。No Chinese take 一目十行 seriously, we are not superman ...  

---

### Answer by username_7 on 2014-01-09. Score: 7

According to [Lü and Zhang (2010)](https://doi.org/10.1080/19388079909558298), Chinese is indeed read at a measurably faster speed than English.

> Findings indicate that the Chinese readers (24.7 minutes) are faster than the English readers (26.6 minutes) by about 2 minutes on the same reading material.  
> Lü and Zhang, [*Reading efficiency: A comparative study of English and Chinese orthographies*](https://doi.org/10.1080/19388079909558298), Reading Research and Instruction, 2010

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: The abstract is very intriguing, maybe I'll cough up the 40 bucks for the rest of the article. Thanks for the relevant share.  

---

### Answer by username_8 on 2012-08-24. Score: 6

Adding a point to bytebuster's answer: from my own experience, "trackback cost" is another major factor. During fast scanning it is common that I need to go back a few words/characters to get the context or resolve ambiguity. In English, in most cases going back one word or two is not sufficient, I need to go further back or even reread the whole sentence which is much more expensive than in Chinese I only need to look back a few characters and with square characters my eyes can locate them quickly.


---

### Answer by username_9 on 2014-01-03. Score: 3

Senseless question. You wouldn't acknowledge, but you scan 'images', too when reading English. You never read a word letter-by-letter, unless you encounter something that is not familiar to you, foreign names, etc.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: I agree, when reading in English we do see words as images, but due to the negative influence of factors mentioned in the accepted answer, it slows us down more than we acknowledge.  

---

### Answer by username_10 on 2012-09-12. Score: 3

I remember there's a research about different ways of processing written information between Chinese and English speakers. Chinese readers have active spots in a part of the brain that deals with pictures, while a different place in the brains of English-speaking readers is responsible for reading. It might be possible that Chinese recognize all the characters on a page as a whole picture.

What's more, the Chinese translation of a book is usually shorter than its English version.

> **Comments:**
> **username_11**: Well, obviously the Chinese translation is shorter! You have a whole lot more characters/symbols than in English (just 26, compared to several thousands).  
> **username_3**: Yep, its the comprehension speed that matters. Indeed, English translation can be smaller too if you would use a smaller font size.  

---

### Answer by username_12 on 2013-12-30. Score: 1

In my experience, the speed of reading Chinese and reading English are just not comparable. I can read a long paragraph written in Chinese at a single glance, and get almost all the essential meaning. Also, I could scan and locate the information I need in a hell long article almost instantly, provided it must be written in Chinese. I am trying to find a way that can make me achieve this in reading English articles, especially huge amount of academic content. I can now apply some rapid reading tricks to reading English stuff, but still cannot read a whole page at once, which seems to be natural when I am reading Chinese content.

The most important issue that prevents fast reading should be Sub-vocalization, not information processing limit, for educated people. Chinese symbols, if you have been enough familiar and sensitive to them, would result in reading Chinese at the speed of light. The logographic writing systems in Chinese are essential for extreme fast, non-linear reading, which is mentioned in a Chinese idiom “一目十行” -- "reading ten lines at the same time"; literally, "one eye ten lines`.

> **Comments:**
> **username_3**: And is your native language Chinese or English?  

---

### Answer by username_13 on 2016-11-14. Score: 0

> **BEWARE of a research paper and bad statistic**. Especially there is a lot of fancy P < 0.10,
> P < 0.05. Don't stuff those things in your head just because the publisher is some "well-known bodies", or many citations from one or others.

Taking a glance at some "research paper" shown in the answer, the methodology is somewhat flaw, there is statistical bias in the research, especially failure to produce double blind test.

It is pointless to compare different language "performance".

> **Comments:**
> **username_3**: You kidding? Efficiency of a tool isn't pointless. Especially a frequently used tool that is used by 100% of a country's population. It has a direct relation to GDP per capita. If ants can talk more efficiently, humans will be extinct.  

---

### Answer by username_14 on 2012-09-11. Score: -1

"You maybe surprise how can Chinese find the information in this mess." To my opinion, Chinese has much more characters than English, each character is quite different form another, and when they consist of one word, it gets more different from other words, so we can easily find some key words in a text. You can practice.


---

### Answer by username_15 on 2016-11-14. Score: -1

Assume English is a text, Chinese is nearly an image. To differentiate whether a language close to image or text, see the grammar usage frequency within a language.

Considering that research has found it only takes about 0.013 seconds (13 milliseconds) for the brain to process an image, and that it processes visual information 60,000x faster than text. Please refer to MIT research on 2014 Humans see an image in just 13 milliseconds.

Base on this assumption, Chinese read faster.

> **Comments:**
> **username_16**: Could you please [edit] in a link to the research?  

---

