Double vision

 It is curious.  Now having studied Chinese for of 9 days, I can see the characters in two ways. As meaningless syllables (as most are to me) or as words I know (as a few, very few are).  In a string of words I happen to know, I can read Chinese! In a string of words I don't know, I am looking at arbitrary symbols. 

Now, it takes effort to read, so a sentence that seems wholly unfamiliar, might be one that I can read if I simply stare at it long enough. So there is an intermediate level of difficulty. 

I haven't said why I want Chinese. I want to be unafraid of it, in the first place; unintimidated. It is conquering a fear (not real fear, like something will harm me, but a fear of failure). I want to get around to the T'ang Dynasty stuff eventually, after doing modern Chinese a while. 

Duolingo is perfectly fine for getting a start here. There are 70 lessons. Divided into three sections (10, 30, and 30). Each lesson has several parts, and to do one part, you must do 15 things, some very easy, some not so much. 

I ordered a Chinese character book, and now I realize that it is part one out of 10, with only 50 characters. It will cost 90 dollars to complete the set.