Is Chinese more difficult than European languages

[Shuang]

It depends on what your native language is.

If you are Japanese, you can understand 70% of written Chinese (mainly vocabulary) on your first day . But mastering speaking and grammar is a different story.

[zozzen]

yes if it takes my cultural background into considerations I always think that English is a very difficult language to live with, much more "difficult" than Chinese. It is irregular in terms of pronunciation, i learn to pronounce a 'car' as 'ar' but 'war' as 'or' and 'chaos' mysteriously with the sound 'k'. Even worse, news report today says a 1 millionth word will soon be put into a dictionary. English world seems not so keen on building a new word based on existing vocab in German or French way.

[atitarev]

I wouldn't be surprised to hear this from a Russian speaker, but to people whose mother-tongue language doesn't involve a lot of morphological encodings, Japanese grammar can be said to be complicated, especially at the beginning stage.

Politeness and respect language in Japanese can be difficult to remember too, because it's very easy for learners to confuse between these two separate aspects of the language. Even for native speakers, if they don't use 敬語 very often, it's also easy for them to make simple slips which can seem very serious purely because of the social situations in which they have to use 敬語.

Japanese pronunciation is very simple to master, so it's easy to say what you want in Japanese but it may be not so easy to differentiate, and therefore, to comprehend what's said. I hope this won't be a challenge for atitarev on his next trip to Japan but I'd be interested to hear what his experience on this will be like. Anyway, wish you a very pleasant trip, atitarev!

I am back from Japan, although I have a cold (not swine flu).

I enjoyed the trip greatly and had opportunities to use Japanese every day. I had no problem talking about directions, transportation, prices, accommodation, etc. Although, I am still not happy about my level. I still can't understand movies or news in Japanese well enough. Although, I enjoyed watching Terminator 3 dubbed in Japanese, where I could catch quite a lot - it's easier when you know the plot and the dialogues are not complicated.

As for politeness in Japanese and the language difficulty. You'll be surprised how much you'll be exposed to overly polite Japanese in the shops, train stations, even lifts, etc. because this is the customer service language. Slips always happen but the difference between neutral and honorific speech is often exaggerated. There is a short list of verbs, which replace "normal" verbs in honorific or humble speech, other verbs use simple patterns - o-machi-ni narimasu / o-machi itashimasu (honorific / humble).

Grammar. I say that Japanese grammar is not too complicated because the flexions are not too numerous, there are virtually no cases (only consistent particles), no gender and no personal verb endings. The morphological endings of verbs are quite predictable and not too numerous. What IS difficult is usage and patterns. The word order is unusual for a Western language speaker and you need to know a number of patterns how this or that idea is expressed in Japanese. It is very different from many other languages, the grammar of the pattern is not complicated, e.g. "hayaku itta hō ga ii desu" - you'd better go quickly. In this pattern, the past tense of iku (to go) is used, so there are no big verb changes, it's still confusing if you haven't seen this pattern before. I'd say if you want to learn Japanese quickly, you need a good reference on patterns with examples. Another one: "dō sureba ii desu ka/dō shitara ii desu ka" - what should I do?

[gilozoaire]

To me, the difficulty of chinese is really overrated. The main difficulties are learning a completely new range of vocabulary without the help of cognates. The grammar can be difficult is certain instances, but it is often quite straightforward and logical and just a matter of memorizing patterns. Recognizing characters is rather easy but a slow process. On the other hand, once you can recognize those characters, it's a much faster process than reading a language with an alphabet.

Compared to japanese, I have a much easier time segmenting sentences because of grammatical morphemes and verbs, which really stand out in sentences. And I won't even talk about the much higher number of readings that each kanji is associated with.

Understanding chinese words and expressions I already know and making sense of them in novel contexts has also been far easier for me that in japanese.

Actually pronouncing words is more difficult though.

Perhaps we can avoid much of the frustration by ignoring claims as to the difficulty of the language. Heck, in my native language, french, we say of something which is impossible to understand "c'est du chinois" ("it's chinese"). These kinds of believes are a sure way to limit our progress.

[renzhe]

To me, the difficulty of chinese is really overrated

I think that the problem usually becomes apparent after several years of intensive study, when people start burning out, and still have troubles with some native-level Chinese materials. Chinese is extremely rich in terms of vocabulary and grammatical patterns, both because of an extremely long written history and because of the richness of the dialects, which all contributed something to the modern written standard.

A popular analogy says that German (or some other morphologically challenging European language) is a sprint, while Chinese is a long-distance run. Very easy-going, less exerting than a sprint, but it wears you out over many years

[gilozoaire]

It's a bit like the bass guitar then, easy to begin with, hard to master ;)

But I really get the impression, which might be partly wrong, that a lot of vocabulary is repeated times and times again in everyday speech (dramas, variety shows, radio talk-shows and so on).

There are so many people saying this language is almost impossible to learn, and as a motivated beginner, it is not my impression at all.

[FadedStardust]

A popular analogy says that German (or some other morphologically challenging European language) is a sprint, while Chinese is a long-distance run. Very easy-going, less exerting than a sprint, but it wears you out over many years

I quite like this saying, though I've never learned any European language except my native English, so I can't personally compare. But from what I've learned from people who have studied European languages, this seems to be a very true statement.

Perhaps we can avoid much of the frustration by ignoring claims as to the difficulty of the language. Heck, in my native language, french, we say of something which is impossible to understand "c'est du chinois" ("it's chinese"). These kinds of believes are a sure way to limit our progress.

In America, there has been a long standing phrase very similar to this: "It's all Greek to me" and as of late, this has slowly been changed to "it's all Chinese to me" and I agree that if a person who says this were to try to learn Chinese (or Greek for that matter!) would fail simply because they expect to fail. It's a kind of mental block, so think positive thoughts!!

[renzhe]

There are so many people saying this language is almost impossible to learn, and as a motivated beginner, it is not my impression at all.

It's definitely not impossible, no language is impossible and the last thing anyone here wants to do is to discourage people from learning Chinese. But don't fall into the trap of thinking it's too easy, it certainly has its difficult points.

Being a motivated beginner with a good attitude is a great start. Just be prepared to keep chipping at it for a few years and to keep up the positive attitude. Many people start motivated, thinking it's easy, and then get disheartened and quit after a year. Those are the people later telling everyone it's impossible

Good attitude, realistic short-term goals you stick with, and steady everyday progress is the ticket, IMHO. Just like with long-distance running, it's the steady pace that brings the best progress.

[atitarev]

For automatic translators like Google translate Chinese must be the easiest languages to handle - the accuracy is better and more often makes sense than with other languages. Well, Google must have done a good job with it (including the grammar) but the sentence structure in Chinese really makes it less prone for errors. That means that the main difficulty in understanding written Chinese is the characters, and vocabulary.

German is much easier in vocabulary than English, as strange as it may seem because German reuses a lot of common vocabulary to make new words, although they may become long, they make sense if you break them into the parts that make it up.

Yes, keeping it up with Chinese is hard, even if you are motivated, staying motivated may become difficult after years of studies. As for me, I am motivated but sometimes upset about insufficient results.

[丽丽_Jinlei]

Ｄｅｆｉｎｉｔｅｌｙ，　Ｉ　ｕｓｅｄ　ｔｏ　ｃｏｍｐｌａｉｎ　ａｂｏｕｔ　ｌｅａｒｎｉｎｇ　Ｓｐａｎｉｓｈ．　Ｎｅｖｅｒ　ａｇａｉｎ．　Ｃｈｉｎｅｓｅ　ｉｓ　ｄｅｆｉｎｉｔｅｌｙ　ａ　ｋｉｌｌｅｒ　ｔｏ　ｌｅａｒｎ．

[HashiriKata]

Ｃｈｉｎｅｓｅ　ｉｓ　ｄｅｆｉｎｉｔｅｌｙ　ａ　ｋｉｌｌｅｒ　ｔｏ　ｌｅａｒｎ

Please give more information! I'd like to know how many learners have got killed so far and what measures are available to reduce the death rate, etc.

[丽丽_Jinlei]

There are just way too many things to remember. If you speak languages like Spanish, English, then Chinese might be quite difficult for one to learn. The grammar structure changes almost completely. For instance in Chinese the time comes before the rest of the sentence, but in English, it comes after. eg. Chinese: 8 dian kaishi, English: It starts at 8.

Then in Chinese you've got to remember a whole lot of characters, and I will guarantee you, if you don't learn the meanings of the radicals, the characters that most often gives meanings, reading and comprehending is going to be a pain.

Also got to remember pinyin, and when I say remember, you must remember with a super computer memory. Else you'll either be pausing a lot in your speech to remember the tones or you'll be rambling tons of incorrect tones.

There's no phonics on written characters, so if someone says a word, while you may be able to write the pinyin, you most often will have to look in the dictionary to see how the character is actually written. Some times you can guess the part of the character that relates to the sound, but that doesn't always pull through.

Like in English, there are occasions when the grammar rules are broken. Which is not cool for me, because I am a fan of rules, I like knowing what can and cannot be done. So grammar for me is the toughest.

My advise to anyone who is on the brink to learn Chinese is to first get your listening down, start with the 'abc' CDs and then gradually progress yourself. When you learn a vocabulary word, try learning a sentence on how to use that word too. (That should help with grammar, something I need to do myself--). Learn those radicals, that will help with reading and comprehending. Learning radicals allows one to guess the meanings of characters too. Once the meanings of those radicals are learned, the possibility of guessing correctly is high.

ALWAYS SPEAK WITH OR LISTEN TO THE NATIVES!!!!!

[Hofmann]

The grammar structure changes almost completely.

I find Chinese grammar very close to English grammar. Japanese grammar is quite different.

Also got to remember pinyin, and when I say remember, you must remember with a super computer memory.

Fortunately there isn't much to remember if you only want to read Pinyin (as opposed to write it).

Like in English, there are occasions when the grammar rules are broken.

Chinese has relatively few exceptions to grammatical rules, I think.

ALWAYS SPEAK WITH OR LISTEN TO THE NATIVES!!!!!

I recommend doing this when one is more advanced. In the beginning, it's better to speak only with a qualified teacher (who might not be a native speaker).

[aljensen]

The Defensive Language Institute thinks Korean is hardest.

No doubt in my mind about that. I tried learning Korean for two years while I was living in country, and I made very little progress. The problem with Korean is more pragmatics than anything else - even a minor error in using the honorifics system will come across as extremely rude (that's more a problem of pragmatics than grammar, right? the social aspect of language use...)

[eya323]

French took me 2 years of classroom study + 6 months total immersion to be a fluent speaker. I averaged about 8 hours of class time and 10 hours of study time per week for the classes. While in France, I took 30 hours a week of lessons and studied another 20 hours a week or so. Today I am advanced and "re-become" fluent when traveling in a French-speaking country or after reading a book, etc.

German took me one year of classroom study + 1 year total immersion to be a fluent speaker. I averaged about 8 hours or class time and 10 to 15 hours of study time per week for the classes. While in German-speaking Switzerland, I worked as a nanny and did an internship in a marketing firm. I spent about 15 to 20 hours a week studying independently while I was there. German was a bit tougher for me to learn than French because the grammatical structures are much more complicated. I am still an advanced speaker and have the opportunity to use the language when traveling for work or Skyping with friends (or reading, watching a German film..the usual).

I can speak the Egyptian Arabic dialect and understand a bit of written modern standard Arabic.

Chinese has taken me 3 years of classroom study + a two-week immersion to be able to really call myself an intermediate learner. I average about 10 to 15 hours per week of study time for my class. I wish I could do more, but work always gets in my way.

I feel as though I understand how to learn a language (or rather, how I learn a language), as well as language structure. Although these tools have helped with grasping grammar concepts and memorizing vocabulary, I am making much slower progress than with French or German (or Arabic, for that matter). Chinese adds another component: unfamiliar characters. It is not as simple as memorizing an alphabet with a series of sounds and sound combinations.

While each language has its unique features that can be troublesome for learners, Chinese has certainly been more difficult for me to learn than any language I have previously studied. It can be really frustrating... but those times when I can understand a scene in a movie without rewinding a million times, or the times when I can impress a waiter at a local restaurant with my mad take-out ordering skills, keep me plowing ahead.

[Artem]

Hehe, I'm the exact opposite.

4 years of classroom French and I wouldn't even call myself intermediate.

I think Chinese was easier to learn than French by far. It took about the same time for Chinese as when I learned English (well a little longer, but I had a longer immersion period for English).

[Lugubert]

For automatic translators like Google translate Chinese must be the easiest languages to handle - the accuracy is better and more often makes sense than with other languages.

That's not my experience with the three systems I've tried. Most of the time, I found the results more difficult to understand than the Chinese original. But I have to say that the worst results were on a fourth semester text that English speaking natives couldn't handle, and a professional translator mangled badly.

Starting a language when young and finding immersion in a language similar to your own will always help. Three years of school French without immersion don't mean anything like fluency for me. But at 24, after two months' immersion from nothing I was quite competent in Dutch on everyday matters.

Two academic years of Chinese plus really wishing to learn still seldom results in my being understood in China, and on the rare occasions that people get it, I'm helpless when they answer. I wonder if immersion will help at 67...

[valikor]

OP: Yes ;)

[BrandeX]

Yea, that Chinese is all Greek to me too.

[Shi Tong]

It depends:

I'm an English man who learned Chinese at the age of 23. I found French painful and difficult to learn.

So why was I better at Chinese than French? Because I am no good at illogical things in French (like masculine/ feminine), and I'm no good at grammar, I'm also no good at unclear sounds or Romanisation, so write a word in French and I'll struggle with how to pronounce it.

In Chinese, and to me, because I have a good ear- I can pronounce and hear the tones easily, I can reproduce strange hard clear sounds, like in Mandarin, and the grammar is easy.

Also, to me, Chinese is more logical than European languages.

But that's just ME.

So, if you can hold a tune, do impressions, hear tones and have a good memory for totally different things you'll probably do quite well!