How hard is it to learn Chinese?

[kyrax12]

Anyone here successfully learned Chinese as a secondary language?

I heard that pin yin is very hard to adapt.

 

[zerocool84]

Probably the hardest language for a non Asian person to learn.

 

[kyrax12]

Probably the hardest language for a non Asian person to learn.

Well I am Asian so...

 

[Destiny]

I'm Chinese and I find it very hard to learn... harder than Spanish/Latin, French, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese...etc...

When I watch Chinese movies I still have to read the English Subtitles...

It is one of the hardest languages to learn (If you are going with the Chinese National dialect of Mandarin)... remember, there are about 50 different Chinese dialects/ethnicities too...

 

[kyrax12]

I'm Chinese and I find it very hard to learn... harder than Spanish/Latin, French, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese...etc...

When I watch Chinese movies I still have to read the English Subtitles...

Really?

What is the difficult part about it?

 

[Baked]

I see Bsians in this thread.

 

[phucheneh]

Well I am Asian so...

...I'm thinking he meant for someone who doesn't already speak an Asian language. Written word/vocal sounds are probably hard for a westerner.

Although it's not exactly like knowing a related language, e.g. knowing German and learning Finnish or Swedish, or knowing Spanish and learning Italian.

Are there any Asian languages that actually share root words or anything like that? Or are they all pretty damn unique? I somehow doubt Chinese would help you understand Thai, or Vietnamese would help with Korean, ect ect.

 

[GWestphal]

To speak it well, I'd say 12 hrs/day for 1 year. To speak it intelligibly but with bad tones, maybe 2 hrs/day for a year.

separating tone from emphasis will likely be the hardest part also the different grammar syntax, no a's, the's, other particles.

Dialect can vary significantly, shanghai vs Beijing is like Missouri vs New York.

 

[SKORPI0]

..
Are there any Asian languages that actually share root words or anything like that? Or are they all pretty damn unique? I somehow doubt Chinese would help you understand Thai, or Vietnamese would help with Korean, ect ect.

Nope. Note that most of the Asian countries have dialects too. Very little similarities if any at all.

 

[klinc]

Try a African language.

 

[z0mb13]

I am of chinese descent and I say Chinese is arguably one of the hardest languages in the world to learn just simply because of one reason: it is a pictorial writing system, thus no alphabet at all. there are 10k+ distinct (maybe much more) chinese characters and you need to memorize each and every one of them to be able to write them (before invention of pinyin system, which is a alphabet based on the sounding of the characters. But one sounding has MANY words attached to it). They say to carry a normal conversation you need knowledge of around 3000 characters. For business/university level, you need at least 7k-8k characters.

Grammar wise the language is actually very simple, no tenses and male/female/singular/plural pronouns. Its just the memorization of the chinese characters and the speaking system that stumps a lot of western people.

There are lots of chinese descents that can speak chinese quite ok, but they can't read and write chinese

 

[kyrax12]

I am of chinese descent and I say Chinese is arguably one of the hardest languages in the world to learn just simply because of one reason: it is a pictorial writing system, thus no alphabet at all. there are 10k+ distinct (maybe much more) chinese characters and you need to memorize each and every one of them to be able to write them (before invention of pinyin system, which is a alphabet based on the sounding of the characters. But one sounding has MANY words attached to it). They say to carry a normal conversation you need knowledge of around 3000 characters. For business/university level, you need at least 7k-8k characters.

Grammar wise the language is actually very simple, no tenses and male/female/singular/plural pronouns. Its just the memorization of the chinese characters and the speaking system that stumps a lot of western people.

There are lots of chinese descents that can speak chinese quite ok, but they can't read and write chinese

So like illiterate Asian red necks?

I am surprised even Chinese people that can Speak Chinese don't know how to read/write the language. The writing system for it must be really something. 0.0

Shit.. I wonder if I can become more artistic by learning Chinese.

 

[klinc]

Why can't my browser read or make Chinese signs? All I see is this

如果你可以看到这一点，你需要得到奠定

 

[Eug]

RE: Asian languages.

There is no Chinese alphabet. That makes things really complicated. Think of the Chinese written language almost like hieroglyphics. Now try to type a sentence in that. Furthermore, since it's almost like hieroglyphics, you can't actually sound out words. You simply have to know them.

Japanese is kind of interesting because its writing system is based on syllables. Except that it has one syllabary for native Japanese words, and then another syllabary for foreign derived words, and they throw in Chinese characters to shorten things, except that the pronunciation of the Chinese characters can vary depending on context. WTF. To put it another way, think of writing English sentences some words using the English alphabet with some using the Greek alphabet and with Chinese characters thrown in, all in the same sentence.

Korean is efficient because it's based on an alphabet, but the "letters" are arranged in such a fashion so that they look like Chinese characters, so the "letters" don't have to be side by side like in English. They can be on top of others too.

As mentioned, the one benefit of Chinese is that the grammar is extremely simple. In English "You went to the store yesterday" but in Chinese "You go store yesterday". In English "You are going to the store tomorrow" but in Chinese "You go store tomorrow".

Why can't my browser read or make Chinese signs? All I see is this

如果你可以看到这一点，你需要得到奠定

That's in Chinese in Safari on Mac OS X here.

 

[z0mb13]

So like illiterate Asian red necks?

I am surprised even Chinese people that can Speak Chinese don't know how to read/write the language. The writing system for it must be really something. 0.0

Shit.. I wonder if I can become more artistic by learning Chinese.

Hmm these people are not illiterate as in dumb, it's just because you really need to put in a lot of effort to be able to write/read the characters (unlike english, where if you know the basic alphabets you can pretty much generally guess how to read/write the word)

So a lot of asian descents are born in western countries (like the US), and their native language is english, and only picked up chinese from their parents conversationally without formally learning how to read and write.

 

[z0mb13]

RE: Asian languages.

There is no Chinese alphabet. That makes things really complicated. Think of the Chinese written language almost like hieroglyphics. Now try to type a sentence in that. Furthermore, since it's almost like hieroglyphics, you can't actually sound out words. You simply have to know them.

Japanese is kind of interesting because its writing system is based on syllables. Except that it has one syllabary for native Japanese words, and then another syllabary for foreign derived words, and they throw in Chinese characters to shorten things, except that the pronunciation of the Chinese characters can vary depending on context. WTF. To put it another way, think of writing English sentences some words using the English alphabet with some using the Greek alphabet and with Chinese characters thrown in, all in the same sentence.

Korean is efficient because it's based on an alphabet, but the "letters" are arranged in such a fashion so that they look like Chinese characters, so the "letters" don't have to be side by side like in English. They can be on top of others too in the same word. So, it can be quite efficient as well in terms of space, like Chinese.

As mentioned, the one benefit of Chinese is that the grammar is extremely simple. In English "You went to the store yesterday" but in Chinese "You go store yesterday". In English "You will go to the store tomorrow" but in Chinese "You go store tomorrow".


That's in Chinese in Safari on Mac OS X here.

I never learned Japanese, but I thought the hiragana/katana is quite similar to chinese's pinyin system? I admit Japanese language is more advanced compared to chinese due to their hiragana/katana system, but for the kanji words its still basically same chinese characters (with japanese pronounciations)

 

[CottonRabbit]

I heard that pin yin is very hard to adapt.

Pin yin is the easy part, the training wheels. Before computers and keyboards, native speakers never bothered with it. Besides the difficult writing system, if you don't already know a tonal language and don't want to go live in China, you basically have no hope of getting the pronunciation down.

 

[klinc]

RE: Asian languages.

There is no Chinese alphabet. That makes things really complicated. Think of the Chinese written language almost like hieroglyphics. Now try to type a sentence in that. Furthermore, since it's almost like hieroglyphics, you can't actually sound out words. You simply have to know them.

Japanese is kind of interesting because its writing system is based on syllables. Except that it has one syllabary for native Japanese words, and then another syllabary for foreign derived words, and they throw in Chinese characters to shorten things, except that the pronunciation of the Chinese characters can vary depending on context. WTF. To put it another way, think of writing English sentences some words using the English alphabet with some using the Greek alphabet and with Chinese characters thrown in, all in the same sentence.

Korean is efficient because it's based on an alphabet, but the "letters" are arranged in such a fashion so that they look like Chinese characters, so the "letters" don't have to be side by side like in English. They can be on top of others too.

As mentioned, the one benefit of Chinese is that the grammar is extremely simple. In English "You went to the store yesterday" but in Chinese "You go store yesterday". In English "You will go to the store tomorrow" but in Chinese "You go store tomorrow".


That's in Chinese in Safari on Mac OS X here.

What does it say? Cause all I see is squares

 

[kyrax12]

Hmm these people are not illiterate as in dumb, it's just because you really need to put in a lot of effort to be able to write/read the characters (unlike english, where if you know the basic alphabets you can pretty much generally guess how to read/write the word)

So a lot of asian descents are born in western countries (like the US), and their native language is english, and only picked up chinese from their parents conversationally without formally learning how to read and write.

So would you say it is better to be born in China then move to the U.S?

People that came to the U.S as around the age of 6 usually tend to be fluent in both languages (reading/writing/speaking) when they enter highschool year.

 

[hans007]

I actually am Chinese but i can't speak it at all. I can sometimes recognize words my relatives speak but yah basically zero proficiency.

Anyway I took the intro Chinese class in college for fun even though it wasn't required for my major. It was incredibly difficult much more so than my computer science classes especially since most of the people were native speakers trying to get an easy A. So much rote memorization after ten weeks you barely had learned anything I figure it'd be really difficult to learn

 

[z0mb13]

So would you say it is better to be born in China then move to the U.S?

People that came to the U.S as around the age of 6 usually tend to be fluent in both languages (reading/writing/speaking) when they enter highschool year.

It is very hard to define "fluency" in Chinese writing and reading. If you just want the ability to speak daily conversational chinese, you just need to know around 3-5k characters. But if you want to speak/write business chinese (or chinese literature), you need to know way more than that.

Heck even in Chinese university exams, the students are allowed to bring in chinese dictionaries because they don't even remember how to write certain words!!

It doesnt matter where you are born, if you are exposed to the china education system (where everything is in Chinese) then yes your chinese will be good/better. But a person can easily learn formal chinese also in the US

 

[kyrax12]

It is very hard to define "fluency" in Chinese writing and reading. If you just want the ability to speak daily conversational chinese, you just need to know around 3-5k characters. But if you want to speak/write business chinese (or chinese literature), you need to know way more than that.

Heck even in Chinese university exams, the students are allowed to bring in chinese dictionaries because they don't even remember how to write certain words!!

It doesnt matter where you are born, if you are exposed to the china education system (where everything is in Chinese) then yes your chinese will be good/better. But a person can easily learn formal chinese also in the US

Do Chinese Descents even use their Chinese language skills a lot?

Would you say ABCs have a distinct accent when speaking it?

 

[Eug]

I never learned Japanese, but I thought the hiragana/katana is quite similar to chinese's pinyin system? I admit Japanese language is more advanced compared to chinese due to their hiragana/katana system, but for the kanji words its still basically same chinese characters (with japanese pronounciations)

Pinyin is roman characters to spell out Chinese words. Katakana/hiragana are syllabaries.

Except nobody uses pinyin when writing Chinese, say for a newspaper article. Katakana/hiragana are part of the daily written language in Japanese.

What does it say? Cause all I see is squares

"If you can see this..."


BTW, Vanessa Branch speaking Chinese.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGlNdtK20Yo

Mira Sorvino also speaks Chinese.

 

[z0mb13]

Do Chinese Descents even use their Chinese language skills a lot?

Would you say ABCs have a distinct accent than original speakers?

Well usually chinese descents retain their chinese by speaking to their parents/relative/other chinese friends, but most of the time they don't really learn how to read/write. So conversationally they are ok

Hmm ABC it really depends where they are from. If they are from taiwan, then they would have taiwanese accent, if from China mainland, it depends on which region they come from (and they might actually speak dialect instead of the Mandarin Chinese)

I personally find Taiwanese accent to be the easiest to understand/listen among the others

 

[kyrax12]

Well usually chinese descents retain their chinese by speaking to their parents/relative/other chinese friends, but most of the time they don't really learn how to read/write. So conversationally they are ok

Hmm ABC it really depends where they are from. If they are from taiwan, then they would have taiwanese accent, if from China mainland, it depends on which region they come from (and they might actually speak dialect instead of the Mandarin Chinese)

I personally find Taiwanese accent to be the easiest to understand/listen among the others

Do you use the language besides speaking to your relatives?
I thought ABC's are born in America therefore how would they be from Taiwan or China Mainland?