Is Chinese more difficult than European languages

[Artem]

I'm not too familiar with Japanese, but aren't the characters often written differently (variation of traditional vs simplified?). Aren't the words often have different meanings than what you would expect them if you read them like Chinese?

I think the Japanese speaker would have to re-learn a lot of things, and would have to deal with confusion that arises from misleading similarities.

I think it would be easier for a Japanese person to learn Chinese in Japan, then for an English person to learn Chinese in England. That's pretty obvious.

Like I said, it's my personal opinion on that matter. I could very well be wrong, but in my experience with other learners in China, I never found that the Japanese/Korean people were any more advance then their peers from Western countries with equal exposure to the languages. Of course, both group of people had a few people who stood out far and beyond the others.

[HashiriKata]

I'm not too familiar with Japanese, but aren't the characters often written differently (variation of traditional vs simplified?). Aren't the words often have different meanings than what you would expect them if you read them like Chinese?

I think the Japanese speaker would have to re-learn a lot of things, and would have to deal with confusion that arises from misleading similarities.

I'd say that the differences (for a Japanese learner of Chinese) are on the whole just minor refinements. The undeniable advantage is that s/he'd already know a lot of things that s/he has not spent any time on, and these things are already usable even in their crude forms.

I think motivation and "language-similarity" are both important factors in learning a foreign language. You'll progress very well if you've got one or the other with you, but you'll progress much, much faster if you've got both with you.

[Neil_H]

I have relatives in China who are around the 17-20 age and their English is almost non existent. They have supposedly been studying it for around 10 years and yet when asked to say something to me or my wife by their parents they refuse and go off in sulk.

Their parents are left confused as to why after all this time they can't put a sentence together. My wife tells me it is because they are not interested in English.

[Guest realmayo]

People whose native languages are related to Chinese will find it easier to learn Chinese than those whose native languages are not related (all else being equal etc etc). This much must be obvious. Whether Chinese would be harder than, say, English, or Spanish, for someone who only spoke a language completely unrelated to either ... that's trickier to answer.

[crazillo]

Well I had Latin at school, this certainly helped me A LOT learning French afterwards. When you come from Europe, a lot of words are similair in different languages, e.g. tennis. Chinese: 网球! I think the hardest part about Chinese is that if you don't know what it is, there's no way for you to guess it. When you have a certain background of indo-european languages however, this seems much more likely and new words seem to be much easier to you.

[valikor]

How could knowing thousands of characters not be an advantage? Sure there could be confusion at times, but even within Chinese most characters have many meanings... but it's still easier for me to learn new vocabulary with characters I already know.

Change of topic, back to what was discussed on the last page... has anyone else noticed that Chinese people sometimes make almost ridiculously simple grammar mistakes while speaking English? Among my Chinese friends (who speak English quite well), I've *regularly* heard them say "he" when meaning "she", for example.

The mistake is almost trivial, and one explanation is that Chinese has more simple grammar than English, so even once they know the rules quite well, they still have trouble remembering to apply the rules in conversation... (this would go against my previous point I suppose)

[chrix]

I think the "he"/"she" mistake is just a case of interference, after all, Chinese doesn't make this difference (except in writing)

[valikor]

crazillo: couldn't the exact opposite be argued? If you see the word 保留 (to preserve), you can quite easily understand *approximately* what the word means, even if you've never seen it before... since BAO means "protect" and LIU means to "remain"

I have also studied latin, and while Chinese is ridiculously difficult for me, I think that this aspect of Chinese is quite refreshing and easy.

This is possible in English too. But, while you could look at the etymologies of English words, and look at the latin roots to try to guess, I think the kind of "guessing" you describe is actually much easier in Chinese.

[chrix]

valikor, this is only valid if you already know the characters in question. And that's where the Latin metaphor comes in: if you're Japanese, you can guess right from the beginning...

[valikor]

Chrix: of course that's true. But, doesn't this apply more broadly? For example, Chinese doesn't make distinctions with tenses either, and consequently Chinese people have (in my experience) much more trouble with tenses than do my other foreign friends (Germans, Romanians, Nepalis, for example)

Thus, they have a harder time with sophisticated grammar in general.. No?

EDIT: Chrix, to your last post... I don't see your point. I studied Latin for four years and there are still many English words about which I wouldn't even be able to make anything like an informed guess. Surely this can happen in both languages?

[chrix]

That might be true, but calling it "sophisticated grammar" is a sign of Eurocentrism. Chinese has its own sophisticated grammar as well, it's just different from SAE (Standard Average European).

EDIT: it depends on what your mother tongue is. The better analogy would be someone learning French rather than English, as English is a Germanic language not a Romance one. Japanese borrowed lots of vocab from Middle Chinese, so that will help Japanese people when learning Modern Mandarin accordingly.

[valikor]

Why would that be Eurocentric? And if it is Eurocentric, what's wrong with that? I can't escape my background/perspectives. Unless you're saying that I'm assuming an air of superiority/condescension (which I certainly don't think I am. What's wrong with simple grammar anyways?)

I am still a relative beginner in studying Chinese.. but in my experience, Chinese grammar has been very easy... (it's the hanzi, pronunciation, tones, etc. that kill me)

Why is it not legitimate to say that having no verb conjugations, tenses, etc., makes it more simple? (I have read other posts here, where more advanced learners have argued that Chinese grammar is not easy.. but I can't speak to that. But, I can point to the many simple aspects that are readily apparent)

[chrix]

Modern Linguistics has been developed in Europe (and later, in the USA as well) and thus naturally has been influenced by European languages, taking certain phenomena for granted that are actually quite uncommon outside of the "major" European languages (called SAE).

One problem was that in Europe morphology was equated with grammar, in fact the very word morphology was quite a late coinage (sometimes even ascribed to Goethe, but he used it in a different sense). So, yes, from a morphological p.o.v., Chinese might have a simpler morphology than most European languages, but morphology is not everything.

[valikor]

Chrix: I have no doubt that the upper-bounds of Chinese grammar can also be very complex, and I've already stated that I am completely ignorant of these topics.

But, isn't it immediately obvious to everyone that Chinese grammar is much easier than English grammar insofar as what everyday communication demands? You cannot have even a basic conversation in English without a lot of knowledge of grammar (without making many mistakes), while Chinese requires much less for basic communication. Is this not so?

Don't forget that very high levels of English grammar are almost impossibly difficult. To support this, i'll point to the fact that even educated native speakers of English *regularly* say/write things which are technically not correct.. I would be interested to know if Chinese is similarly difficult (I'm not implying that it's not, as I already admitted I don't know)

A (I believe reasonably well-educated) Chinese person once told me that it for many years, she didn't think Chinese even had grammar...though maybe she was just stupid, I don't know -_-

[anonymoose]

Why is it not legitimate to say that having no verb conjugations, tenses, etc., makes it more simple?

From the point of view of a native English speaker, I think it can work both ways. Yes, learning languages like French and German is a hassle because there's a lot of grammar (verb conjugations and so on) to remember before you can start putting sentences together. But, in my opinion, once you have mastered those basics, it is then fairly easy to construct any kind of sentence with the tools you have. For French and German at least, there is a fairly close correspondence between moods and tenses with English, so often a direct translation will work.

Chinese, on the other hand, is easy to start off with, because you can just put the words together straight away to make simple sentences. But in spite of the apparent simplicity, it actually becomes trickier when you want to express something like "I wouldn't have been able to even if I had wanted to" because Chinese doesn't have a close correspondence with English in the way that many European languages do.

[chrix]

You would need grammar too for expressing simple things in Chinese. As for your friend, this only speaks to the state of language learning in China. I've noticed that in many Asian countries, they don't place much weight on teaching grammar in schools (grammar of your native language, that is).

Don't forget that very high levels of English grammar are almost impossibly difficult. To support this, i'll point to the fact that even educated native speakers of English *regularly* say/write things which are technically not correct..

Don't compare apples and oranges. Every language has "high speech" even native speakers have to acquire through their education. In Chinese this would be the chengyu and all these grammatical patterns influenced by Classical Chinese, these don't come naturally to Chinese people either. But you can't compare this kind of speech level with the situation the average foreign language learner is in.

[valikor]

Anonymoose, you're right--I have no idea how to say that

But, as far as I can see, your point only demonstrates that Chinese grammar can indeed be difficult sometimes. This is a point which I already agreed with, and I don't see how it answers what I really said in my post.

[valikor]

Chrix: I can't respond to your point about "certain patterns influenced my classical Chinese" since I'm not familiar with it. Feel free to explain, if you'd like.

But, why should I consider Chengyu to be a matter of grammar? There isn't really a comparable linguistic element in English, but Chengyu seems much closer to what we would call "vocabularly" than anything we would consider "grammar". You may respond by saying that this is because of Eurocentrism that has caused morphology to almost be equated to grammar.

If so, i'd say you're pulling teeth here. The definition of "grammar" (google define:grammar) indicates that it deals with systems of rules for constructing sentences, and is (as you said) closely related to morphology. Chengyu doesn't seem to fit here. So, what's wrong with the common definition of grammar (you almost suggest that it's defined badly, which I think is silly). Furthermore, what's wrong with having simple grammar?

Thus, I think it's more fair to say that Chinese has certain elements that are very difficult (elements completely absent from English.. like hanzi, tones, chengyu) but that the grammar is relatively simple. (Emphasis on relatively)

So, I agree that comparing Chinese to English is like comparing apples and oranges, but I still see no good reason why I can't say that Chinese grammar is easier than English grammar.

[valikor]

(I could provide a condensed version of my point by saying that you've already stated that grammar is considered to be almost synonymous with morphology. As such, it's already been established that Chinese has easier grammar than English, because it has easier morphology. Unless there's a reason why we should change the definition of grammar, I don't see why the word "grammar" ought to be used to describe the difficult elements of Chinese)

[chrix]

constructing sentences, that's right, but morphology is not about constructing sentences, it's about how words change. Thus, grammar is not just about morphology but also about syntax.

The definition equating grammar and morphology is not only wrong, but also no longer used in modern linguistics.

You're right that chengyu are mostly about vocabulary (though there are some grammatical aspects to them). Well, the "high level language" is full of Classicisms so to speak, function words and constructions taken from the Classical language. If you read a newspaper you'll run across them, or a book like "Expressions of Written Chinese" discussed elsewhere on this forum.

I think the major problem I'm having with statements like yours is that measuring complexity of languages is an immensely difficult task. If you base your comparison on what categories of SAE Chinese does not have, this is not the right way to go about it. I also think that ultimately this discussion is leading nowhere, because irrespective of whether Mandarin does or does not have less difficult grammar, it is, as anonymoose rightly said, quite different, and will require a lot of effort on your part to master.