Totally new to Chinese...

[valikor]

I actually did read the post about the guy who hated the Hanzi Anyways, these posts have been helpful. Renzhe's point about high level technical words makes sense.. though it was always blatantly obvious that having thousands of cognates/words similar to your native tongue would make it easier, I always assumed that the simplicity of Chinese system of constructing meanings by combining characters would at least somewhat counterbalance this. To a point, I still think this, since I can look at the word for certain illnesses and guess what they mean, because I recognize certain body parts etc. within the word. But, this certainly wouldn't work all of the time, and it is also passive (I wouldn't be able to guess how to say a complex word, even if I would be able to figure it out in reading). On the other hand, I spent the spring festival traveling with a German friend of mine, and on at least a few occasions I recall her saying a word and then realizing "I actually don't know how to say this.. but it's probably the same in English". So, I guess when it comes to reaching high-levels of fluency, the dissimilarity to English really does win out (as you originally said, chrix, but I now I think I understand that better)

I also totally agree with the "no stress" and no borders between words, which I find a bit ridiculous, especially when I encounter a new word in reading without realizing that i'm encountering a new word.

I've heard that of European languages, English is actually very easy to learn (for my German friend, it was easier than Spanish or French, with the exception of English lacking standard spelling, making fluent reading and writing more difficult than speaking)

I do still maintain that the ability to combine simple characters into complex meanings is a very easy aspect of Chinese, making new vocabulary acquisition quite easy at times (maybe it's just at the beginning?)

Alas I must go to work, though I don't think I'm writing anything that will ever be helpful to anyone anyways

thanks

david

[chrix]

English, German and Dutch form a group called Western Germanic and are thus the closest relatives, so that's a reason why Germans and Dutch have the highest TOEFL scores worldwide (the next group of relatives are the Scandinavian languages, forming a group called Northern Germanic, the two extant branches of Germanic).

Germanic and Romance are on the same level, so they're quite distant relatives, as well as Slavic (and a bunch of other first-level branches, but it might be fair to say that due to a long history of mutual influence, Germanic and Romance languages also share more vocabulary than other branches of Indo-European).

Now English has also borrowed a lot of French and Latin roots, as have German and Dutch to a lesser degree, but borrowing does not a Romance language make. So it will be more difficult, even if you had several years of Latin in school, as many Germans do.

[renzhe]

I do still maintain that the ability to combine simple characters into complex meanings is a very easy aspect of Chinese, making new vocabulary acquisition quite easy at times (maybe it's just at the beginning?)

No, actually, this is a very useful aspect. European languages do the same thing with native, Greek and Latin roots, but not all native speakers are as familiar with these original Latin and Greek words.

For example, yesterday I ran into 癫疯 and guessed that it's epilepsy. But good luck picking that up for the first time in speech. Then it's "goodbye characters, welcome similar-sounding syllables".

[KateDesiraeReid]

Chinese seems to be tough language to me..Its difficult to read and understand..