Learning Chinese

Serbo-Canadian in China   Sun Nov 19, 2006 6:51 pm GMT
Studied Japanese at the undergrad, 15-or-so years ago, and am forced to learn basic Chinese now (living for the second year in a weird province where Mandarin is pronounced with Cantonese sounds, but Cantonese has fallen out of use, and where 38 of Chinese 55 minorities live and speak each their own language).

Japanese grammar is indeed slightly harder than Chinese -- but easier than English, not to even mention French or Russian, perhaps at a par with Scandinavian -- but the pronounication of Japanese with its 5 basic vowels that can only be short or long, never umlauts, never rising or falling, but flat, is much much much easier than Chinese.

BTW, I want to study European Portuguese. With my native French, good Italian and basic Spanish (plus Norwegian, Dutch, Serbian and the language this is written in), will it be a piece of cake?

Or just easy but not very much so?
Arthur   Sun Nov 19, 2006 7:47 pm GMT
Serbo-Canadian in China,

spreek je ook nederlands en noors? hvar har du bott eller hvorfor snakker du også norsk? :-)
Gringo   Sun Nov 19, 2006 8:12 pm GMT
Serbo-Canadian in China:
««Or just easy but not very much so?»»

If you know French grammar the verbs will be a piece of cake :)
The accent.... probably you have it already...
The vocabulary is very close to Castilian.

Yes, I think you can call it it a piece of cake.


I think you don't mind if I give you some links to Portuguese language. You can have an idea of how easy will be for you and learn a lot of vocabulary if you wish:

http://homepage.mac.com/mikeharland/dtup/godtup.html
http://www.learningportuguese.co.uk/


A Portuguese -Portuguese dictionary:
http://www.priberam.pt/dlpo/dlpo.aspx

You can download a free vocabulary sample here:
http://www.byki.com/fls/port

Have fun!!
Presley.   Mon Nov 20, 2006 3:51 am GMT
«Japanese grammar is indeed slightly harder than Chinese -- but easier than English.»

English is my second language with Japanese and Korean being my first, and I find the grammar to be much easier than Japanese (or Korean, for that matter). I am complete and utterly fluent in Japanese and English to the same extent, and I must disagree with Serbo-Canadian in China's comment.

«Japanese with its 5 basic vowels that can only be short or long, never umlauts, never rising or falling, but flat, is much much much easier than Chinese.»

Japanese does indeed have umlauts and rising and falling tone.