is the chinese language real hard to learn for a 3rd language?

Answer 1

Depends upon what your first and second languages were.

If one of those was another Asian language like Japanese, it won't be too hard. If you've just done European languages to this point, there will be some things you might find you need to work at getting used to.

1) Pronounciation can be tricky. Some of the sounds are very similar to one another to an English ear.

2) Chinese is a tonal language. Intonation can affect the meaning of a word. It will require some discipline to remember to pronounce words properly and not letting natural English speaking patterns interfere with your intonation.

3) Written Chinese. This can be quite challenging because written Chinese is an ideographic language, not a phonetic one. The symbols usually have nothing to do with their pronounciation, so it's kind of like learning yet another language in itself, and there are a lot to learn (I'm told basic daily usage requires something like 1,500 symbols). However, it's worth noting because many Chinese words are homophones, so often learning spoken Chinese alone can be complicated by this.

However, there are things which are simpler compared to English.

1) There is no verb conjugation. No "I am/you are/he is/etc." The basic verb stays the same regardless of tense, number, person, etc. There are auxiliary words for all of those distinctions.

2) There are a few basic sentence patterns that are very broadly used. Better still, Chinese shares the basic "subject-verb-object" pattern English relies on, and in some ways more consistently than English (questions are indicated by tacking on a question marker at the end of the sentence, you don't change word order as in English)

Good luck!

Answer 2

Mandarin is difficult in view that it is totally distinctive than any western language. There isn't any alphabet AT ALL. I recognize the Korean language honestly has an alphabet and their characters are simply preparations of the ones letters, however Chinese characters are situated off of symbols with random meanings alternatively than letters. As for pronunciation, it's kind of harder in view that it makes use of yet another facet of the mouth and its extra targeted. Even the slightest difference alters the which means. But it is a valuable language :D If you took Spanish, then French, and Italian will all come readily. They're all romantic languages so all root in Latin. German is similar to English, so that are supposed to be handy for you.

Answer 3

It has difficult sounds due to the fact it is a tonal language and if you say one word with the wrong tone, it can change that word's meaning completely. I know somebody who studied Chinese for a while but gave up because of the difficulty in getting the tones right.

Answer 4

Yes and no - It depends on your ability to learn multi-lingually - If you already speak two languages, chinese shouldnt be to hard to learn. I speak 3 different languages and have learnt a tiny bit of cantonese and mandarin, just soz i could communicate to exchange students at my school when i went to school and i can still use it with confidence.

Its not that hard - give it a go! Good Luck!

Answer 5

I guess it really depends on individual's ability to learn and accept.

I know how to speak about 5 languages and 2 of them are Chinese. I guess you could figure what my answer is.