The difficulty of Chinese

Guest123   Thu Mar 25, 2010 5:50 pm GMT
Chinese is becoming a World language and some schools offer Chinese courses.

But the problem of Chinese is the difficulty of the tones and writting system.

Young people from Europe and the Americas prefer to study English, Spanish and French than Chinese, because they want to pass the subject. We can say the same with Arabic, Japanese or Russian.


If you see this webpage, you can see the difficulty of some languages:

1.A Spanish and French

1.B German

2. Turkish and Hindi

3. Russian, Arabic, Chinese and Japanese.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Language_Learning_Difficulty_for_English_Speakers


So, IMHO Chinese will never become a studied language in the Western World. What do you think about?
BULLSHIT   Thu Mar 25, 2010 6:02 pm GMT
That list is a crock of shit. Turkish is debatably much simplier than French and Spanish and to say Russian is harder for an English speaker than Arabic is pure nonsense.

Spoken Chinese is rather simple and once you get used to the tones is quote easy to learn I think, the grammar is simplier than English, and the word order is often identicle. Written Chinese is another thing, however...

I think this list has been compiled on stereotypes of languages rather than truth.
.   Thu Mar 25, 2010 6:17 pm GMT
<<Chinese is becoming a World language ...>>

Really?
South Korean   Thu Mar 25, 2010 6:32 pm GMT
You have to understand that English is as hard for Chinese, Koreans, or Japanese as Chinese is hard for English speakers. Yet every East Asian studies English, and some people become fluent. Whether Chinese will become as important as English is a different matter, though.
Guest123   Thu Mar 25, 2010 6:50 pm GMT
To South Korean

But it is hard not only for English speakers. Chinese is hard for Europeans, Americans, Latin Americans, Australians, Africans, etc.

At the same time if the World languages are English, Spanish, French, Chinese and perhaps Arabic, the last two are really difficult for ALL the World, but the native speakers.

English, Spanish and French are perhaps hard for a Chinese or a Korean but they are very similar. So, if you make the effort to study English, you can study at the same time Spanish or French.

So, a Korean or a Chinese with the same effort can study two World languages.
South Korean   Thu Mar 25, 2010 8:34 pm GMT
"the last two are really difficult for ALL the World, but the native speakers."

Chinese is relatively easy for Japanese, Koreans, and maybe Vietnamese, because their languages are related, as much as French, English, and Spanish are.
I know that English and other Romance languages are similar, but not to the extent that one can learn two by the effort of one. Many people in Korea speak English to a moderate level, but only a fraction of the population can speak Spanish or French.
confusing symbols   Thu Mar 25, 2010 8:48 pm GMT
There are over a billion Chinese people, it's a huge economic superpower, it bankrolls US debt - so we should all learn Mandarin or Cantonese, right?

The stumbling block for the world to become fluent in Mandarin is the ability to read 4000+ symbols and know what they mean. A 5-year old can read an English newspaper falteringly, but it takes just about ten years longer for a Chinese child to be able to read a newspaper [how convenient]. I think Chinese script looks great, but I'm never going to start learning it.

Japan reduced the problem somewhat by reducing the number of Kanji and introducing simple syllabaries that children can learn and use for cross-reference to the Kanji. This, plus lack of tonality, plus Japan being a free society, makes Japanese much easier to learn.

I can't comment on Korean, and I like the look of their script even better than Chinese. But I won't be learning that either. At least South Korea, like Japan, is a free society that you could visit without excessive paranoia.
Paul   Thu Mar 25, 2010 8:52 pm GMT
<<Chinese is relatively easy for Japanese, Koreans, and maybe Vietnamese, because their languages are related, as much as French, English, and Spanish are.>>

If I'm not mistaken Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese are not related at all, whereas French English and Spanish all belong to the IE group and have very similar grammar/syntax.
South Korean   Thu Mar 25, 2010 9:23 pm GMT
"Japan reduced the problem somewhat by reducing the number of Kanji and introducing simple syllabaries that children can learn and use for cross-reference to the Kanji. This, plus lack of tonality, plus Japan being a free society, makes Japanese much easier to learn."

While only one sound is attributed to most Chinese Hanzis, most Japanese Kanjis have multiple methods of reading, ranging from two to seventeen.

"If I'm not mistaken Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese are not related at all, whereas French English and Spanish all belong to the IE group and have very similar grammar/syntax."

English is a Germanic language heavily influenced by its Romance neighbor, French. As such, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese, although they do not belong to a same linguistic group with the Chinese, share a great amount of loanwords.


All in all, the Chinese characters(Kanji, Hanja, Hanzi) are as difficult for Europeans as English, French, or Spanish are for East Asians. I agree that it generally takes longer for an infant to achieve full literacy, but after that it becomes fairly easier in my opinion, because the higher vocabulary is consisted of mainly combinations of these characters, thus allowing students to increase their vocabulary faster than European students.
Guest111   Fri Mar 26, 2010 5:18 pm GMT
<<But I won't be learning that either. At least South Korea, like Japan, is a free society that you could visit without excessive paranoia. >>

To be honest when you're in China it doesn't feel like supressive society. I'm not saying its a free country, but it doesn't feel like a supressive dictatorship either. You're free to go where you want, when you want, and to be honest, it appears people are more or less free to say what they want. The Chinese don't seem particularly retrained in what they say.
.   Fri Mar 26, 2010 5:28 pm GMT
Although difficult to learn, the chineese characters look quite interesting. The tones are a nightmare for people whose mother tongues don't have tone. For me, the most striking problem with chineese is it's clumsy way of forming new words. There's a demand of new words for new products, concepts or ideas etc. This can't be met by a fixed small set of syllables, where every syllable already has dozends of meanings.
Shuimo   Sat Mar 27, 2010 12:18 am GMT
This is a pseudo-question!
Anything is difficult before it becomes easy!
Chairman Mao also famously put it in red little books:
Nothing in the world is difficult before hard-working folks with a mind to do sth!:-D

Shuimo understand why you guys in the West keep saying how diffciult Chinese is for you to learn, because you already scare yrself into nill and humility by these debilitating hearsays as preached by the OP that you dare not to embark upon the task to learn a tone language!

Once you overcome this infiority complex, you wud make swift progress in Chinese learning!

BTW, you guys have to learn Chinese whether you like it or not, as someone already points it out that China is a mighty ecnomice power along with its massive population with its rich cultural heritage, a country that is powerful enough to dethrone the USA, the current less than self-sure superpower of the world!


So stop deceiving yrself you can dismiss Chinese simply because of yr imagined difficulties to learn it! Chinese is and will be increasingly be a powerful presence you Westerners have to come to grips with!O(∩_∩)O
Dino   Sun Mar 28, 2010 2:58 am GMT
For me, the most striking problem with chineese is it's clumsy way of forming new words.

clumsy? Are you joking?
Dino   Sun Mar 28, 2010 3:01 am GMT
There's a demand of new words for new products, concepts or ideas etc. This can't be met by a fixed small set of syllables, where every syllable already has dozends of meanings.

Do you know there are characters?
doomsayer   Sun Mar 28, 2010 5:52 pm GMT
<<BTW, you guys have to learn Chinese whether you like it or not, >

Maybe yes, maybe no -- it depends on what China intends to do with us once it achieves complete world domination (assuming it does).

One possibility is that they eliminate all non-Chinese from the earth, and expand into the cleared-out areas. In that scenario, why learn Chinese, since our role is simply to be killed off?