Mandarin is now the hardest language?

[Nitemare]

link

Scientific study shows that it requires the use of both sides of the brain while English only needs one.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

I'd believe it.

= M4H trying to learn Mandarin

- M4H

 

[Nitemare]

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire
I'd believe it.

= M4H trying to learn Mandarin

- M4H

My brainiac cousin majored in international business and barely squeaked by in Japanese.

 

[Dragnov]

Thats not good. I'm taking Mandarin this upcoming school year...

 

[filmmaker]

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire
I'd believe it.

Ditto

 

[yukichigai]

Originally posted by: Nitemare

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire
I'd believe it.

= M4H trying to learn Mandarin

- M4H

My brainiac cousin majored in international business and barely squeaked by in Japanese.

Oh great, that's one of the courses I'm taking next semester.

 

[newbiepcuser]

Took two semesters of it, definetly one of the hardest classes I took. Learning to write and memorize the characters was the hard part.

 

[Kenny]

Hmmm....I took Mandarin for a couple years in high school. Seems a lot easier than other languages. But maybe I had a good teacher.

 

[richardycc]

no kidding, you really have to pay attention to what they are saying, a little change of tone is a totally different word.

 

[isaacmacdonald]

I thought it was hungarian. You'd think it would be tough to beat pronouncing 16 consanants.

 

[hawkeye81x]

I learned Mandarin for some 5-6 years while I was in Elementary-Middle-High school.
I didn't succeed to well.

It's very tough. The grammar structure was difficult to understand (teacher never made the attempt to explain structure).
Mostly memorization and repetition... Didn't help, forgot a great deal of it now.

This thread reminds of when Lisa was trying to type the fortune cookie slips for Homer on the giant typewriter.

 

[bcterps]

I'm Chinese and I think it's pretty damn tough. I think it all depends on what you learn growing up though. Most people in America aren't exposed to other languages and many never bother to learn another one because almost everyone speaks english. However, its the exact opposite in other countries, most people there grow up learning at least 2 languages. Also, english has a lot of similarities to spanish, french, and other european languages. The same can be said for a lof of the asian languages (mandarin, cantonese, japanese, korean, etc.)

I don't know about arabic, though, I think that would be a pretty difficult language to learn. Or some of the African languages.

 

[EvilYoda]

I feel so special. And the article doesn't say that Mandarin is the hardest language, it's just more tasking than English.

 

[brtspears2]

Mardarin is sure tricky. 2 yrs of trying to learn it slowly and I foul myself up everytime I listen to another speaker from another part of China.

 

[WinkOsmosis]

Originally posted by: yukichigai

Originally posted by: Nitemare

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire
I'd believe it.

= M4H trying to learn Mandarin

- M4H

My brainiac cousin majored in international business and barely squeaked by in Japanese.

Oh great, that's one of the courses I'm taking next semester.

http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~thoureau/japanese.html

 

[Nitemare]

Originally posted by: WinkOsmosis

Originally posted by: yukichigai

Originally posted by: Nitemare

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire
I'd believe it.

= M4H trying to learn Mandarin

- M4H

My brainiac cousin majored in international business and barely squeaked by in Japanese.

Oh great, that's one of the courses I'm taking next semester.

http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~thoureau/japanese.html

That is hilarious. I will be forwarding that to my cuz.

 

[kt]

Originally posted by: Gr1mL0cK
Thats not good. I'm taking Mandarin this upcoming school year...

You're taking it at UCI right? Enroll in Hsieh's class.. out of all the teachers, she's probably the nicest one.

 

[Eug]

The grammar is pretty simple.

The written language is very hard.

The sounds spoken aren't that hard to learn, but it's hard for some people to get used to tones - it's a "melodic" language. Almost sing song like if spoken correctly and clearly.

 

[Dragnov]

Originally posted by: kt

Originally posted by: Gr1mL0cK
Thats not good. I'm taking Mandarin this upcoming school year...

You're taking it at UCI right? Enroll in Hsieh's class.. out of all the teachers, she's probably the nicest one.

Are the others mean or something?

Thanks for the info. Asked around but all my friends that took Chinese are Chinese themselves so they didn't start off from 1A.

 

[GiLtY]

I'd say mandarin is pretty hard (though I do speak it)

There are 5 tones in Mandarin, a different tone in your pronounciation could have a completely different meaning, and that's probably the hardest thing about Mandarin. The symbolic character relies purely on memorization and practice, much like learning new vocabularies in English.

--GiLtY

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: GiLtY
I'd say mandarin is pretty hard (though I do speak it)

There are 5 tones in Mandarin, a different tone in your pronounciation could have a completely different meaning, and that's probably the hardest thing about Mandarin. The symbolic character relies purely on memorization and practice, much like learning new vocabularies in English.

Even if you screw up the tones, people will still understand you from the context. You'll just sound a bit strange.

By the way, it's 4 tones.