Is Chinese really a hard language to learn for the average brain?

Question

Pretty much just wondering

Answer 1

No, I don't think. It's just like learning new vocabulary words. How many words are there in the English dictionary? How many have you learned? I guess learning Chinese is the same way.

Answer 2

1 in 6 people on earth is using it, and believe me, they are really all pretty average. ( I'm amongst those 1 in 6's )
The writing is actually more straight forward and there are only 2 main format in use currently, the traditional and the simplified formats, which even the native chinese keeps on learning through adulthood.
But the spoken dialects, well, that is an entirely different can of worms. Mandarin would probably be the choice of non native learners as the tones are more compatible with latin based languages. It really takes a lot of listening to and practice to get the pronounciations correct as each word has 4 major tones and 4 minor tones. That is not even touching the other dialects like cantonese which has many words without official writings or vowels.

Answer 3

There are two different issues here. First, the language is not any more difficult to learn than any other. Second, the writing system is more complicated and takes some effort. If you want to learn to speak Mandarin (the usual form of "Chinese" which people learn), it is not that difficult for an English speaker to master. Learning to read is a different issue.

Answer 4

It can't be that hard - over a billion Chinese people speak it. The positive is that there are only about 400-odd utterances (including the 4 tones) in Mandarin so you get plenty of practice in pronouncing monosyllables correctly. The negatives include the written language (symbolic rather than phonetic) and how to analyze the sequence of monosyllables into something meaningful.

Answer 5

Chinese language and writings are extremely hard to learn and understand! I found out that it is easier for an average brain to understand Latin or Greek languages, that the Chinese language.

Except you were born and grow up in China, you may not be able to learn and understand the Chinese language as fast as you learn and understand other world languages!

Answer 6

Anyone can learn Chinese - as long as they are willing to put in the time and effort required. It is just almost completly different then english (or other latin based languages), that is what makes it harder, which will require more effort on your part to learn it.

Answer 7

it is. it's one of the hardest languages to learn. never mind all the different dialects. never mind how many characters they have when it comes to writing, the spoken language involves 3, and as much as 10 different tones that imply meaning! (in english, tone implies emotion of the speaker, and can be neglected; it doesn't imply meaning of a word...)

from wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language


A very common example used to illustrate the use of tones in Chinese are the four main tones of Standard Mandarin applied to the syllable "ma." The tones correspond to these five characters:

This article or section uses Ruby annotation. If you are using a Mozilla browser, you may need to install this support patch to view this correctly. Without the necessary support, you may see transcriptions in parentheses after the character, like this: 了(le), instead of on top of the character as intended.媽/妈(mā) "mother" — high level
麻(má) "hemp" — high rising
馬/马(mǎ) "horse" — low falling-rising
ç½µ/骂(mà) "scold" — high falling
嗎/吗(ma) question particle — neutral


if you're a right-brain person, then it might be worth a shot.

Answer 8

Perhaps for the average Western brain. I think most languages, like English, or learned and absorped by immersion.

Answer 9

An awful lot of Chinese people manage.

I think the larger issue is that it is hard for the already Western educated brain. (It is physically and conceptually quite different than what you're used to.)

On the other hand, it has some nice simplicities...plurals and verb conjugation are both basically unknown as I understand it. And, it's one of the most attractive written languages there is.

Answer 10

NO .... its not that difficult... but depending on your effort you can be pretty good in reading and writting in a time period of 1.5 to 3 years... best place to learn chinese is china... cuz if you learn chinese in your own country you will not use it alot and will forget what you learned but in china you will pick alot of vocabulary from casual talking ....