Mandarin vs English - Which is more difficult?

[Guoke]

Most people seem to consider it an undeniable fact that Mandarin, compared to English, is a more difficult language to learn.

However, I feel intuitively that this could be a myth.

I've spent more or less the same amount of time on learning and using both Mandarin and English. Somehow, I feel that it seems to be easier and faster to learn Mandarin. This is contrary to popular opinion.

Yesterday, I figured out a way of estimating and comparing the levels of difficulty in learning the two languages.

Given two groups of Chinese concepts:

Group 1: 动/人/生/物 (consisting of 4 characters/字)

[动=move 人=people 生=live 物=thing]

Group 2: 动人/动物 /人人/人生/人物/生动/生人/生物 (consisting of 8 words/terms/词)

[动人=moving/touching 动物=animal 人人=everyone 人生=life 人物=character/figure 生动=lively 生人=stranger 生物=living thing]

***The terms/词 in group 2 are constructed of the characters/字 in group 1.

Let's assume that the level of difficulty for learning a new concept (i.e. a Chinese character or an English word) is 1 point.

Then, to learn the 4 Chinese characters in group 1, the level of difficulty is 4 points.

After learning all the characters in group 1, you can proceed to learn all the concepts/词 in group 2.

The level of difficulty for learning each of these group 2 concepts/词 drops significantly with the help of the four basic characters (动人生物) - for obvious reasons.

I would estimate the level of difficulty for learning each of the group 2 concepts to be lower than 0.5 points.

Let's assume that the level of difficulty is 0.25 points.

Then, to learn all the concepts in group 2, the level of difficulty is 2 points (8 x 0.25).

On the other hand, to learn all the concepts/words (in both group 1 and 2 ) in English, i.e. move, people, live, thing, touching, animal, everyone, life, character, lively, stranger, living thing (altogether 12 concepts), the difficulty level is 12 points (12x1).

Due to the fact that each English word has to be learned independently, the level of difficulty for learning each word remains the same, i.e. 1 points.

So we can conclude that, it corresponds to a difficulty level of 6 points to learn the same number of concepts in mandarin and a difficulty level of 12 points in English.

It seems that learning Mandarin vocabulary is half as easy or twice as fast as learning English vocabulary.

If this proves to be the fact, it will be easy to explain why some serious Mandarin learners often notice that once they've overcome the initial hurdle of mastering a certain amount of characters, their progress seem to accelerate and the learning becomes much more easier.

This also explains why, after mastering a certain number of basic characters (around 1,000 perhaps), one is able to read Chinese newspapers.

Some Mandarin learners may have noticed that in the process of learning the language, they are able to guess or know intuitively the meanings of some new terms(词) they come across for the first time. I suppose this is a unique feature that can only be found in a language like Mandarin.

[daofeishi]

I don't think you can assign points in that way, since how you assimilate a new language depends on a lot of factors. As a native Norwegian speaker, learning english vocabulary was never very difficult, as the two languages have a lot of roots in common. Take the following list of words in English (which I chose from random open documents in firefox):

house, husband, perverse, spherical, index, clearing

Compare them with the respective words in Norwegian:

hus, husbond (from old Norse - not in use anymore), pervers, sfærisk, indeks, klaring

Remembering these terms is relatively easy for me due to the phonetic/written similarity to Norwegian. In general, the phonemes in English and Norwegian are quite similar and the intonations are not too different. In addition, there was no new alphabet involved in learning how to read and write.

You argue that concepts in Chinese can be easily derived from each other, but this is also true for English. Pre- and postfixes, for example, are often used to create new concepts out of already existing ones: in- / un- / im- / anti- / post- / super- / trans- / sur- ...

And if you already know a language which has a lot of roots derived from latin and greek, chances are you will find them in English too.

cognitive/cognitioncognate/cognizant (to know)

intravenous/intracollegiate/intramolecular (between)

juvenile/juvenescent/rejuvenate (youth)

Now, for me studying Chinese has involved a lot more rote learning, and with less references to concepts I already now, it has involved more forgetting and re-learning than with learning English. I suspect what you find the easiest has a lot to do with your mother tongue and previous exposure to other languages.

[liuzhou]

Hilarious! Well done.

[muyongshi]

Well I agree with you...I think english is harder than madarin (they all have there difficult and easy parts). But I don't know about the reliability of your equations! Good job though (now retype the whole thing in Chinese and you're doing good!)

[Entropy_Rising]

I see the logic in your reasoning, but wouldn't your point system, which is based on learning new "concepts," get obliterated when you factor in learning how to write and recognize Chinese characters? When it comes to the vocabulary part you may have a point, but when it comes to actually internalizing Chinese characters, you have to deal with learning ideograms that may or may not have an internal logic to aid memorization. Granted, all Chinese characters are created from a number of radicals, moreover there are some vague rules about how certain parts aid with pronunciation and meaning, but I think overall in the OP's point system this would count for way more points than English which uses a phonetic alphabet (albeit poorly).

Furthermore, for a Chinese learner whose original language is not tonal, I think you should add an additional point or fraction of a point to learning a new character because you have to learn a tone as well, a tone which has no semantic connection to the concept represented by the character (in contrast to, say, masculine and feminine nouns in Romance languages which may be sort-of determined by the "nature" of the noun or by the way its spelled). You may be able to visualize the character in your head and know the toneless pinyin but if you don't know the tone you're going to say something completely different - in that sense, Chinese pronunciation is a lot more unforgiving than English pronunciation. When learning English words it's true you have to learn a completely new sequence of sounds but in Chinese although you're pulling from a limited set of a few hundred syllables this "benefit" also highly increases the chances of saying something completely different or completely incomprehensible rather than saying something awkwardly.

That's just my two cents. Frankly I think Chinese and English are both extremely difficult languages.

[ezpar]

I was a fluent English speaker by the time I was four years old, how hard could it be?

Just kidding. I really marvel at people that learn English as a second language, particularly since I started studying Chinese. It's not an easy language and I think, even as a native speaker, I've only mastered spoken and written English in the last few years as I've really studied its grammar and history, which can be extremely confusing.

But, boy, is Chinese hard to learn or what? Sometimes I wonder if I'll have to give up my hobbies if I really want to learn this language. So long, watching sports and playing video games. Casual reading might have to go, too. And I can forget about ever going to the gym again.

[heifeng]

It's a bit difficult to compare apples and oranges, but I think that both language are quite challenging.

In studying either language I think that there are definite areas that learners have a tough time dealing with to say the least. I think that with practice written issues can be overcome, but it is quite tedious. However in terms of pronunciation, I think this could be an interesting debate. In my opinion people really and truly underestimate the difficulty of English pronunciation, but on the same note, foreigners really jack up Chinese tones. So, to me it's a toss up b/t who does a better job in terms of pronunciation: English speakers studying Chinese ORRRR Chinese speakers studying English. However, if I ran the world (one day I'm sure....) I would burn all ESL text books in China and just make the whole country study hooked on phonics to fix vowels, consonants, consonant clusters, etc....before authorizing any additional English texts be removed from the banned books list. Yet I would also make corporal punishment mandatory in Chinese classes around the US, that country north of the US, UK, Australia, etc, etc basically any classes where English speakers where studying Chinese and ignoring tones **whip**whip**

Then, I would create the first 5 year plan which would call for a comparison of the progress in pronunciation of our lil' guinea pigs....I mean students made at the end of this term in order to determine which language just 'must' be more difficult....

--------------disclaimer

ahhhhh, ignore the madness brought on by drinking too much of the best coffee in the woooooorld

[gato]

I've spent more or less the same amount of time on learning and using both Mandarin and English. Somehow, I feel that it seems to be easier and faster to learn Mandarin. This is contrary to popular opinion.

But could you have written what you did above in Mandarin?

[atitarev]

...This also explains why, after mastering a certain number of basic characters (around 1,000 perhaps), one is able to read Chinese newspapers...

You wish...

[Entropy_Rising]

Bu could you have written what you did above in Mandarin?

Gato makes a good point; I'd like to see that.

[Rhubarb]

Have you noticed how much easier it is to machine-translate from Chinese to English as opposed to the other way round? I know why

[self-taught-mba]

This also explains why, after mastering a certain number of basic characters (around 1,000 perhaps), one is able to read Chinese newspapers.

Myth. Explained by my advisor:

Why Learning Chinese is So Damn Hard

[Guoke]

Gato & Entropy_Rising

I guess I could...

Let me try to rewrite this part in Madarin:

I've spent more or less the same amount of time on learning and using both Mandarin and English. Somehow, I feel that it seems to be easier and faster to learn Mandarin. This is contrary to popular opinion.

我花在学习和使用中文和英文的时间大致相同。然而，我总觉得学习中文比起学习英文似乎更加容易和快速。这和一般人的想法是背道而驰的。

But please... don't get me wrong. I have no intention of showing off here. I'm not in the least content with either my English or my Mandarin.

Anyway, I consider myself lucky to be able to communicate in English and Mandarin. These are the two most spoken languages of the world after all.

I hope all the Mandarin learners here will keep at it and don't simply give up.

[gato]

Let me try to rewrite this part in Madarin:

I've spent more or less the same amount of time on learning and using both Mandarin and English. Somehow, I feel that it seems to be easier and faster to learn Mandarin. This is contrary to popular opinion.

我花在学习和使用中文和英文的时间大致相同。然而，我总觉得学习中文比起学习英文似乎更加容易和快速。这和一般人的想法是背道而驰的。

Not bad, but not quite the same level as your English.

[Loriquero]

Anyway, I consider myself lucky to be able to communicate in English and Mandarin. These are the two most spoken languages of the world after all

wikipedia may argue that

[fireball9261]

I have more problems with English because you need to remember all those spellings for words and keep track of plurals and tenses. The Chinese grammar is much more simpler. You could also guess at what the words mean with their radicals and the meanings and context around it.

[muyongshi]

Fireball you hit the hit the nail on the heads! I mean head!

[82riceballs]

This also explains why, after mastering a certain number of basic characters (around 1,000 perhaps), one is able to read Chinese newspapers.

On the website yellowbridge.com, I used the flashcards (1,000 most commonly used characters, and I knew all of them... However, I STRUGGLE to read the newspaper!!! True, Chinese is based on individual characters, but the actual writing/speaking/etc of Chinese is based on combinations of 2+ characters (e.g. 2 word ci, 4 character chengyu, etc)

[atitarev]

I have more problems with English because you need to remember all those spellings for wars and keep track of plurals and tenses. The Chinese grammar is much more simpler. You could also guess at what the words mean with their radicals and the meanings and context around it.

IMHO,

Time required to master the following skills (roughly), let's say native English speaker learning Chinese and native Chinese speaker learning English:

The Pronunciation:

A few weeks maximum (whatever language), including tones. The pronunciation of new words should be easy if all major sounds, patterns, tones (and combinations). In my opinion, pronunciation of both English and Chinese might be equally difficult. The Chinese is probably easier but tones need an extra care.

The Grammar

A few months, could be learned with simplest words and combinations, using known words is easier than new, unfamiliar words. Applies to any language. The Chinese grammar is admittedly simpler than the English one.

The Vocabulary

A few years. Chinese will take longer than English because of:

The Writing system:

English: From few weeks to a few months

Chinese: a few years.

There are a lot of difficult in any language but learning pronunciation or grammar only takes weeks to months, not years, same with the English writing system. When you say difficult, it depends HOW difficult. Does it really take many years to understand the English grammar?

The bulk of the time spent on learning languages will be spent on acquiring the vocabulary (any language) and learning how to read and write in Chinese. Since learning to read is a slow process, then learning vocabulary in Chinese will double or triple.

[fireball9261]

IMO, English vocabularies is still harder to master than Chinese. I was barely understand my Chinese words, but I could start understand the Chinese vocabularies. With English, I couldn't do this. I have already remembered many vocabularies when I took my SAT exam, and most of the English words in the exam was like stranger to me!!! In addition, I couldn't understand some of the English writings even though I understand the words due to their grammar and certain usage of words. When I just learned about couple of hundred Chinese words, I could puzzle out a simple Chinese story.

I agree for pronunciations Chinese is probably harder. I have troubles with that sometimes because I learned my Chinese through reading and not really through speaking. Sometimes, I would understand what a word means but not how a word should really be pronounced (but I could guess at it also, not necessarily correctly!)

Grammar is the most easy part of the Chinese. My husand did not live in China or Taiwan or any Chinese communities. He is not a Chinese and have never learned a Asian language. However, he is able to construct very simple Chinese sentence with the few words and simple grammar he learned to very good effect. Btw, his pronunciation is so good that over the phone, he tricked some Chinese to think he is a Chinese. He also caused a lot of my Chinese cousins' confusion when he said one or two Chinese phrase with perfect pronunciation and thus caused them to say a whole long string of Chinese to him and caused his confusion! Anyway, I don't know whether I am a perfect teacher or he is a perfect student? His American roommate also learned how to pronunce the perfect Chinese tones from me without even learned any Chinese words.