learning chinese

[mush999]

im thinking of learning chinese. has anyone ever tried i heard it the hardest language to learn. i already know french english and spanish.

[usxhe190]

Originally Posted by mush999

im thinking of learning chinese. has anyone ever tried i heard it the hardest language to learn. i already know french english and spanish.

yep heard about that too...to me, french and spanish are probably the two languages easiest to learn for us English guys...

[b0redom]

It's pretty tough. The Mrs and I did a RTW trip, and I had a stab at most languages - did a course in Spanish, and I already know a smattering of French and German.

We were in China for 6 weeks and I had a go, but it's complicated by the fact that there are many different dialects and intonations - add to the fact that in a lot of places they don't bother with the Pinyin accents, and you're in for a challenge.

[Barrichello]

With Mandarin spoken by over 1 billion people - and China fast becoming a financial super power all by its own - i have thought about learning it myself, but i am sure it is a tricky one to master. At the moment i am still trying to improve my Danish to a more advanced level before taking on another language - damn there never seems to be enough time in the day :|

[Stoo]

I like the sound of some of the Chinese dialects - the "swishy" ones in particular

I also wouldn't mind learning enough Japanese to watch Anime without the subtitles

[HyeongSeong]

Chinese is not that difficult to learn really . The mistake lots of people had made is by learning Chinese using Pinyin . You are better off lean how to write and speak each character at the same time.

[Hans Voralberg]

I gave up learning chinese and japanese cause i just cant remember the character, now i learn french and german

[TooNice]

Originally Posted by b0redom

We were in China for 6 weeks and I had a go, but it's complicated by the fact that there are many different dialects and intonations - add to the fact that in a lot of places they don't bother with the Pinyin accents, and you're in for a challenge.

In the UK, you probably only hear Cantonese and Mandarin (I suspect more of the former as I think there are still more Chinese/Chinese born British with their roots from Hong Kong than mainland China). However, Mandarin is the 'official language' in China, is seeing more adoption even in Hong Kong, so it might see more practical use if you go to a Chinese speaking country in the future. The plus side of that, is that spoken mandarin is regarded as the easier of the two: you only need to deal with four tones in Mandarin versus seven in Cantonese. However, written Chinese is not that different... save one major difference: traditional and simplified. I always found it a bit ironic that the written Chinese found in mainland China is the 'simplified' version (Singapore also adopted this system). As far as I know, most Chinese speaking places outside the aforementioned two are still using the 'traditional' version.

Anyway, in my opinion, the grammar itself is not too complicated. Definitely no more than French. Homonyms is as much of an issue as any other language. So for me, much of the difficulty comes down from writing. French and Spanish adds a few diacritic marks but for most part use the same character set as English, whereas you'll have to memorise a couple hundreds characters from scratch before it's much practical use.

[mush999]

Originally Posted by Barrichello

With Mandarin spoken by over 1 billion people - and China fast becoming a financial super power all by its own - i have thought about learning it myself, but i am sure it is a tricky one to master. At the moment i am still trying to improve my Danish to a more advanced level before taking on another language - damn there never seems to be enough time in the day :|

this is very true for me....... "damn there never seems to be enough time in the day "

[Mithrandir]

To start off, you can download free podcasts and try and learn from them: HERE


Also HERE


Interactive 'flashfile' learning: HERE


A load of resources from this Squidoo page: HERE


Hope these help! Might have a look myself.

[Kezzer]

Basically, yes it is hard to learn. Chinese is a tone based language, therefore the same word can have ten different meanings dependant on a) the context you use it in and b) the tone of your voice.

My other half works in a Chinese and takes Chinese lessons. I don't much about the language to be honest.

[mush999]

http://chinesepod.com/ looks really good, Thanks for the link

[Whalefish]

Always thought Icelandic was the hardest language to learn. A billion people speak chinese so it can't be that hard.

[midzt]

I speak Catonese natively, although not amzingly, as I've grown up in the UK. But what makes chinese different from many languages is that you can't guess how to pronounce words, like with languages that use the alphabet. So it really is learning each individual character. It definately helps learning it in a country that speaks it, as if you don't use it often, you will definately forget it. I reckon you need to learn a good 100,000 characters for you to be able to read.
I would learn Mandarin if I were you, for the above reasons (emerging market etc). And also the fact that spoken Cantonese and written cantonese is completely different.

[Kumagoro]

at least 100,000 characters... I think that is a smidgen of an exaggeration surely..
More like 3000 for basic everyday use. I reckon you could learn two a day everyday without trouble.
The easiest way to learn them is to write them several times, they have specific stroke orders which
is what makes it easy to remember in my opinion.

[Kezzer]

Originally Posted by midzt

I speak Catonese natively, although not amzingly, as I've grown up in the UK. But what makes chinese different from many languages is that you can't guess how to pronounce words, like with languages that use the alphabet. So it really is learning each individual character. It definately helps learning it in a country that speaks it, as if you don't use it often, you will definately forget it. I reckon you need to learn a good 100,000 characters for you to be able to read.
I would learn Mandarin if I were you, for the above reasons (emerging market etc). And also the fact that spoken Cantonese and written cantonese is completely different.

They use an English system too, y'know? It's a taught standard in China.

For example, to say hello, there's Chinese characters for it, but there's also "Ni hao" which is what the Chinese use, and understand too, meaning "you good", primarily used as a form of greeting, or in English terms "Hello". If you wanted to make it a question then you the common form is to place "ma" on the end. So to ask someone how they are you say "Ni hao, ma?" using specific tones. If I were on MSN to a Chinese person and said "Ni hao ma?" they would typically understand what I'm writing.

Chinese characters are okay, if you learn all the individual characters and learn how they make a word then it becomes much easier. If you learn the culture behind Chinese then the characters are easy to understand. Also, they actually make sense when you start to get a grasp on the initial ones.