Why learning spoken Chinese as a foreigner is easy and hard

[beirne]

I've heard people describe Chinese as one of the hardest languages to learn for a non-native. Other people have said it is fairly easy. I've been thinking about both aspects and will list them here. Let me know if I'm wrong on anything. I'd especially like advice on dealing with the hard parts.

BTW, this specifically does not deal with the writing system, which has been beaten to death elsewhere, partly by me. I also want to reiterate that the topic covers learning Chinese as a second (or later) language. All languages are equally easy for people who grow up with them. Finally, I know that learning any language that you don't know can be difficult. I know that I've always thought that learning English would be hard. I'd be interested to read what people would say about English if someone wants to start a thread in the "Other cultures and language" forum.

What makes learning spoken Chinese easy:

1. No conjugation of verbs: Verbs remain the same in the present, future, past, and any other situation. This avoids the problem of irregular verbs because verbs always look the same.
   
2. No declension of nouns: Except for personal pronouns, nouns don't change when the become plural, possesive, etc.
   

What makes learning spoken Chinese hard:

1. Grammar: I suspect that this is the topic that will cause the most disagreement. It is easy to form declarative sentences using the STVO pattern. Things get difficult after that. Knowing when to use the topic comment construction or saying things like "I like corn more than peas" is non-trivial. On the plus side, a lot of these patterns can be learned by drills and practice.
   
2. 了: 了 is a multipurpose aspect marker. It is grammar but it is tricky enough I gave it its own entry. The first thing to learn is what it doesn't do. While it is often used in past tense situations, it is technically not a past tense marker. After that the trick is figuring out when to use 了 in its two forms, the perfective and sentence-final. These are technically two different uses, although sometimes they overlap or interact. Some usage cases are clearcut, but it seems like sometimes you just use 了 because you have to.
   
3. Tones: It takes some work getting used to a tonal language. Not only do you have to learn to pronounce words according to specific tones, but you have to learn the exceptions that arise from tone sandhi, sentence finals and the like. Plus when you speak with someone else they are probably speaking too fast for you to hear and process the tones.
   
4. Way of saying things. Often the problem when translating English to Chinese isn't grammar, but rather rephrasing the sentence into the way the Chinese speak. With its own rich history and idioms often things are just said differently. For example, I recently added the sentence "我等了很久可是没有等到他" to my flashcards because I would not come up with this phrasing on my own. This sentence roughly translates as "I waited a long time but I didn't succeed in waiting for him". Or in regular English "I waited a long time but he never showed up". I have run into this elsewhere but this is the freshest example. Knowing grammatical formulas does not help with this sort of thing.
   

There are other minor nuisances, like measure words, pronunciation, 把, etc. but I'm not going to whine about everything.

Let me make clear that none of this is meant a criticism of Chinese. I'm actually hoping to hear good answers why I'm wrong on the hard items, because they are all things I'm having to deal with.

[Meng Lelan]

I vote for No. 4: Way of Saying Things.

Until I saw Beirne's post, I thought I was the only person in the world with this problem and was totally unable to describe it. The flashcard idea is a good one. Also a Chinese friend told me to stop trying to mentally translate English into Chinese when speaking because it will result in stupid mistakes. So I have to think like a Chinese when speaking (and writing) Chinese and that helps.

[Green Pea]

None of the above.

The challenges to learning Chinese are:

1. Bad teachers. I guess there are some good ones out there, but have yet to meet them.

2. Bad materials.

3. Time. I estimate it takes 7 years of consistent study with at least 5 years in China.

4. Finding the right environment. You need to find a place in China that you can live for 5 years without speaking English much.

5. Money. I think it takes US$30-50,000 in tuition, materials, travel, living expenses, and opportunity costs (ie not working so you can study).

[geraldc]

The biggest problem in the West is that Chinese isn't offered as a language option until University.

In China and Hong Hong you meet people who moved around a lot as kids, and as a result they can speak quite a few dialects. Yet you meet adults who've moved regions in their adult life, have been there a good few years, but are still unable to understand any of the local dialect. Everything would be so much easier if we'd all started earlier.

If Mandarin was easy to speak, then surely everyone in Hong Kong would effortlessly be able to understand Mandarin. So I think learning Mandarin is just as hard for everyone.

[beirne]

None of the above.

The challenges to learning Chinese are:

1. Bad teachers. I guess there are some good ones out there' date=' but have yet to meet them.

2. Bad materials.

3. Time. I estimate it takes 7 years of consistent study with at least 5 years in China.

4. Finding the right environment. You need to find a place in China that you can live for 5 years without speaking English much.

5. Money. I think it takes US$30-50,000 in tuition, materials, travel, living expenses, and opportunity costs (ie not working so you can study).[/quote']

Since up up to 5-1/2 years of erratic study with two weeks in China and am still struggling, what aspects of Chinese do you think require the 7 years of consistent study with at least 5 years in China?

[Meng Lelan]

Have to disagree with Green Pea.

1. Bad teachers: From my experience, learning Chinese is more of an out-the-classroom experience and it should be that way. If you expect teachers to impart everything important about Chinese, you have the wrong attitude. Teachers are a support but the key to learning is YOU.

2. Bad materials: Everyone has different needs. Materials cannot cover everyone's needs. You will have to decide on your needs and find what materials you need. With the Internet, this has become easier.

3. Time: Some people will need less time, some people will need more time. The key is committment. Are you willing to invest time and energy into this? How much time and energy do you have? These are important to language learning. Everyone learns at a different rate.

4. Environment is very important. Green Pea does have a point.

5. Money: May be somewhat important, but I have met Chinese people who learned English quite well on a minimum budget. I also have met non-Chinese who have learned Chinese quite well on a minimum budget. In fact one of them drives trucks for a Chinese food company in the US and his Chinese is excellent because of his job.

[Green Pea]

Bad teachers: From my experience, learning Chinese is more of an out-the-classroom experience and it should be that way. If you expect teachers to impart everything important about Chinese, you have the wrong attitude. Teachers are a support but the key to learning is YOU.

This is why teachers are not very good...because everyone believes languages teachers should impart knowledge. Good teachers should develop skills while the knowledge comes outside of class. Good teachers are critical because it is not easy to develop certain skills on the the street. For example, let's take pronunciation. Outside, most Chinese will not correct your pronunciation. They won't remember the words you frequenlty mispronounce, nor follow-up on it days later until you master it. A good teacher will. Bad teachers don't. Need more examples?

You're right, learning is ME, that is why I've actually taught my teachers how to teach. It's working, too. I took it as MY responsibility.

Time: Some people will need less time, some people will need more time. The key is committment. Are you willing to invest time and energy into this? How much time and energy do you have? These are important to language learning. Everyone learns at a different rate.

That's why I say 5 years in China. That to me is commitment. Most people don't have the time or can't make the sacrifices.

I also have met non-Chinese who have learned Chinese quite well on a minimum budget. In fact one of them drives trucks for a Chinese food company in the US and his Chinese is excellent because of his job.

How do you define excellent? Here are some examples as to how I would characterise it based on people I know in China.

1. Discuss capital reorganisation procedures with the company president.

2. Conduct a press conference and take hostile questioning from reporters.

3. Convince factory workers to accept yet another re-engineering plan.

4. Do interpretation for a major negotiation on-the-fly, because the normal interpreter got food poisoning during lunch.

[xuechengfeng]

From what I understand it is best to immerse yourself into the culture, and be in China to further your language ability, but 5 year minimum? I don't know about that.

[wushijiao]

The only thing I have to add is this...

1) Tones make Chinese easier to understand. I think there is less slurring of speech in Chinese because tones seperate syllables. Although, it makes it harder to speak, for me at least.

2) The lack of grammar, at least european-style grammar, sometimes makes sentences harder to understand.

Because of the grammar in many European languages, it is very clear what the verb is, what tense it is in, and who the objects and direct objects are. Sometimes I think it would be easier if Chinese had a more complex grammar, at least from a listening point of view.

[Meng Lelan]

Green Pea:

Maybe you should be a teacher yourself, it sounds like you know what should be taught, although you will find that teaching is a very difficult job, and I myself was a teacher of the deaf for a number of years. Language teaching is very challenging because you are teaching a skill in the classroom that is going to be applied mostly outside the classroom. Feedback from students may help, as in your case.

"Excellent" will vary to each person's needs. You may need language skills to deal with situations you described, but not every person coming into China has goals such as negotiating with factory workers, subbing for a sick interpreter, etc. It is fine if you want to aim for that standard. Those may be your goals and standards for excellence, but some people will set a certain, different standards for "excellence" and aim for that. That is okay too.

[Green Pea]

Those may be your goals and standards for excellence, but some people will set a certain, different standards for "excellence" and aim for that. That is okay too

One difficulty here is that most schools and teachers are still stuck in the 1980's. Programmes are designed for an overseas student to come to China for the first time to learn about teahouses and the Forbidden City. They will learn to speak conversational Chinese in 6 months or so and then leave. However, China has changed dramatically since then and teachers and textbook authors don't realise that average student now probably has different standards...they will live and work in China for many years.

[Haoqide]

I agree with Meng Lelan on all of her thoughts. Everybody has different needs and standards and abilities. I've been learning on my own for just over a year now, and I've attended one semester of Chinese classes, but I honestly learn better on my own than I do in the class because of the differences of learning styles and abilities of people in the class. I've never been to China, but I've been told that my pronunciation is excellent and that it's amazing how much I've learned in the last year. Of course, I still feel that I suck at the language...my point is that it's not necessary to spend 5 years in China to become "good" at the language. It all depends on what you feel "good" is.

[Jasper May]

Also, how many native Chinese could

1. Discuss capital reorganisation procedures with the company president.

2. Conduct a press conference and take hostile questioning from reporters.

3. Convince factory workers to accept yet another re-engineering plan.

4. Do interpretation for a major negotiation on-the-fly, because the normal interpreter got food poisoning during lunch.

?

I'm a native Dutch speaker, but there's no way I could do these things in Dutch.

[Meng Lelan]

Jasper May:

Me too, my native language is English and I could not do any of those tasks in English either heh heh!

[Green Pea]

Of course, I still feel that I suck at the language...my point is that it's not necessary to spend 5 years in China to become "good" at the language. It all depends on what you feel "good" is.

I don't disagree with you. Everyone has different goals. The original question addressed characteristics that make Chinese difficult to learn. For my objectives, however, the complexity of language itself pales in comparison to the process required to learn it for the reasons I stated above.

You abandoned your class at a first year level. Doesn't that indicate to you how inadequate the teaching is? Even worse, the more advanced your skills become, the more deficient the availability solid training becomes.

Sounds like you are making great progress, though, keep it up!

[Haoqide]

I didn't really abandon my class. The semester's over, and I'll probably sign back up for the next semester. I'm mainly going to be able to practice my pronunciation more than anything, though.

It's not the teacher's fault that the class isn't what I need. It's more because the school is a non-profit school and the teachers aren't paid to do it...they're volunteer teachers who take a few hours of their Saturdays each week to help people learn Chinese. I think the problem is that there aren't enough teachers to go around and really find out where each student is with their skill level and individually help them the way they need to be helped. My teacher's great...I just need more one-on-one time because that's how I learn best, by asking lots of questions and by being really challenged. Also, the fact that I'm not getting actually graded on how well I do in the class kind of makes it easy to leave off doing some homework when I'm really tired or really busy...that's definitely my fault.

I'm making progress, though. Thanks for the encouragement!

[benotnobody]

I don't know how it is in London, geraldc, but in my school in Australia, there are three Chinese classes: standard, accelerated and background. (Although I go to a private school; it might be a bit different in the government-run schools.)

[chapka]

The answer to the OP is "both."

There are two ways of measuring how well someone speaks a foreign language: "fluency" and "accuracy." Most learners tend to be better at one than the other.

Someone with poor fluency will speak slowly, haltingly, and probably in a stilted or formal way; they won't have a normal rhythm in speaking or a good, consistent accent.

"I, do not waant, to go to ze, store."

Someone with poor accuracy will make actual mistakes, i.e., say the wrong thing.

"I certainly don't want to going to the store."

Most language learners have more trouble with one or the other of these processes.

For someone good at gaining fluency but poor at gaining accuracy (like myself), a language like Latin will be very difficult, because of grammatical gender, declensions, conjugations, etc. Chinese, on the other hand, will be much easier, because we won't have much problem picking up idiomatic ways of saying things, word order, etc. The lack of accuracy will show up in sometimes giving some words the wrong tones, forgetting special tone rules (like "bu" before 4th tone), forgetting particles like "le" and "ma".

For someone good at accuracy but bad at fluency, Chinese will be difficult. They'd probably have an easier time with an inflected language like German or Latin. They may be slower to get a good accent and sound like a native, but they'll be able to handle the complicated endings and inflections better than they will the tones, the word order and the different ways of saying things they'll find in Chinese.

Most people can become fluent and accurate in time; it's just a question of how long it takes and what you sound like in the meantime.

[Chunn]

Just want to add some points.

For Thai learners, spoken Chinese is easy, I think because the way of forming sentence and words order of Thai and Chinese are quite similar.

I agree that environment is a critical point of learning a good spoken Chinese. After learnt some fundamental lessons in classroom, the learners need to get a chance to use the language in their daily life.

[Guest KuifjeenBobbie]

Green Pea wrote:

"One difficulty here is that most schools and teachers are still stuck in the 1980's. Programmes are designed for an overseas student to come to China for the first time to learn about teahouses and the Forbidden City. They will learn to speak conversational Chinese in 6 months or so and then leave. However, China has changed dramatically since then and teachers and textbook authors don't realise that average student now probably has different standards...they will live and work in China for many years."

When I learnt Chinese in Beijing in 1997 I found that a lot of the teaching materials were full of dialogues with topics which were bland and irrelevant to everyday life. Of course that was almost a decade ago so things will have changed.

I also agree with Green Pea in that certain skills are very difficult to acquire on the street. People who have been living in a country for more than a decade sometimes still make quite basic mistakes (although they are understandable) beacuse they have learnt only by listening to others without learning the rules of the language. If they had been formally instructed in the language they would have learned the fundamentals better and not made such mistakes. On the other hand, if they had really wanted to get to grips with the basics, they would have made more of an effort to learn them.