2006-12-27 00:15:06 · 9 answers · asked by Candy 2 in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
It depends on how fast and well you can learn. Everyone is different, and what may take one person a year to master could take someone else a lifetime. There's nothing wrong with that at all---just go at YOUR pace! But most of all, have fun with it. That makes anything easier. I found that Chinasprout has a great deal of things that help with that, take a chance & look them up online.
2006-12-27 00:27:38 · answer #1 · answered by Danagasta 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
As with all things, the time required is proportional to the time and effort that you are willing to spend on it. I have been studing Chinese for five years now. I was a bit slower then others, and it took me about 5 months to become conversationaly fluent. I know people that have reached that in two to three months. As with any langauge, once you have the basics down, it is just learning new grammer and vocabualry. One of my teachers has been learning Chinese for 20 years now, and he says that there are still many words he learns every year. But one can get the basics from anywhere from two months to a year (depending on where you learn it, and how much you pratice). The quickest way to obtain that fluency is to learn it in a location where you will be forced to speak it every day (such as in China) or make sure you go pratice it with native speakers everyday.
2006-12-27 03:07:23 · answer #2 · answered by mike i 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
FOREVER!
I bet even the Chinese have a hard time with it.
It sounds like it if you see the their facial expressions when they talk. It's not very relaxing. THey concentrate a lot on what they say. When they say somehting funny, they can't start laughing until after they are finished talking.
They have over 40,000 different characters in their language. Imagine learning all those.
The English alphabet only has 26.
2006-12-27 06:45:39 · answer #3 · answered by argentina1989 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I studied it during 5 school years during the sixties, 4 lessons per week .
I got to a point where I was able to read the daily newspaper and carry out a college conversation.
I am sure today with AV techniques, the Internet etc... progress could be much faster. And of course today you can go to China to visit and practice. Enjoy , it's a fascinating language and civilization.
2006-12-27 00:28:37 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
About 1000 hours should make you fairly competent starting from scratch.
2006-12-27 00:34:45 · answer #5 · answered by JJ 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Same rate as building the wall of China
2006-12-27 00:24:42 · answer #6 · answered by timbo_boi15 4 · 1⤊ 1⤋
it all depends which languages you know currently, if you know only English right now then it may take somewhere around 4 months.
2006-12-27 00:17:47 · answer #7 · answered by Arif 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
20 minutes
2006-12-27 00:17:15 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 2⤋
I guess it also depends on how serious you are about it.
2006-12-27 00:47:17 · answer #9 · answered by kokoro_no_ureshii 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋