Chinese is easier for native English speakers?

[Maisi]

As a non native English speaker I sometimes feel that Chinese must be somewhat easier for native English speakers.

When I first came to China I quickly figured out that I had to just use English to study Chinese. It was simply too messy having notes in my own language when all learning materials were in english/chinese.

There actually doesn't even exist a dictionary between my language and chinese.

Even though I like to think that my English is pretty good, I still feel that my native language is more deeply rooted in my mind. I think that I would probably remember translation of words better if i heard them translated into my own language.

I have more examples on how I think it's easier for NES to learn Chinese, but first I'd like to hear if anybody here has the same notion?

[Tsunku]

My good Italian friend told me that these days the Chinese classes at his university in Italy are taught using English. The only Italian-Chinese dictionary he could find was a sad little thing, not nearly as comprehensive as some of the English-Chinese dictionaries available. I know also that the university classes here in Kunming use textbooks with English translations, despite the fact that a lot of the students (probably a majority) are not native English speakers.

So I think in this regard there is a distinct advantage in being a native English speaker. There are a wealth of Chinese-English, English-Chinese resources available to us that speakers of other languages don't have.

[pazu]

i think it's true for other languages too, my native tongue is Chinese but when I learn Thai and Vietnamese, I use Eng-Thai/Viet dictionary or textbook instead, they're usually better and lighter. The Chinese-Thai dictionary I can find is either like an encyclopedia, or useless.

[wix]

I'd like to suggest that the best language for learning Mandarin is Mandarin itself. The earlier you can remove yourself from the confines of thinking in English or your native language the quicker you will learn. I say this based on having been very fortunate to have a great teacher who borrowed from ESL techniques to teach Mandarin.

[Hann]

I do agree that in terms of textbooks, yes being able to read English makes it easier, but I agree with wix.

And often times speaking english can be such a negative that when locals try to speak english with me i just tell them i dont understand english and then it forces them to speak chinese.

So it is not always easier to be an english speaker, becuase the languge rape can be hard to avoid at times, but for many texts etc yes.

[HashiriKata]

I agree with what has been said and only want to add that in my experience, people with disavantages at the outset tend to get the best out of the situation in the end.

It hurts to be born with a silver spoon stuck in the mouth.

[xiaocai]

也不一定。如果母语是日语或者韩语的话，优势也是非常之大的。

[Comrade Yixian]

Xiao is probably right, I can imagine with some Japanese charecters being the same or similar to Chinese ones, that might help.

English is also fairly similar to Chinese in terms of grammar and sentence structure, which is why I actually find learning Chinese is much easier than say, French. Plus the Chinese don't bother with the ridiculous concept of verb tenses and rely instead on adverbs, which I believe is far more logical and easy to learn.

[gougou]

I disagree.

Of course, a wealth of information is available in English, and thus more accessible to native speakers, and of course it constitutes some sort of disadvantage if you do not have a dictionary in your language

However, I (as a non-native speaker of English) think that English is a bad language to be born with (if you want to learn other languages, that is).

For once, you are born as a speaker of the world language. The need for other languages is thus rather small, which in turn influences the way in which languages are taught in English speaking countries. I met a lot of Americans or British who were very eager to get ot know a new culture and its language, but hadn't got a clue how to learn language.

Also, English is a language with rather simple grammar, which makes it harder to understand grammatical concepts in foreign languages.

But that's just my POV, maybe some native speakers of English could comment on that?

[rmontelatici]

I'd like to suggest that the best language for learning Mandarin is Mandarin itself. The earlier you can remove yourself from the confines of thinking in English or your native language the quicker you will learn. I say this based on having been very fortunate to have a great teacher who borrowed from ESL techniques to teach Mandarin.

Right, as for any other language. But you still need to bootstrap the learning process

[carlo]

This is only true of absolute beginners: when it comes to dropping the crutch of the second language, the less comfortable you are with it the better. Most speakers of languages other than English would have to learn English first, in order to be able to understand the textbooks. An exception is Japanese: there are apparently some very good resources for learning Chinese in Japan.

The interesting thing, I think, is that using English as a medium sometimes creates cultural distortions. Say, a Turkish businessman learning the art of negotiating in China from a book written in English, more often than not, will end up knowing more about America than China (before learning how the *Chinese* see things, he would first have to absorb the cultural assumptions of an English-speaking audience).

[Dav-X]

The language resources written in English is huge, but sometimes these resources are just too foreign or even pointless, spending too much time on explaining the concepts that most people in east world have already acquired. Chinese speaker should find it much easier if they learn Thai, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean with chinese material. But when I learnt some european language, i think English is still a good medium to achieve it.

[Marco]

It maybe seems easier for native English speakers to study Chinese because of the translations, but according to my own experience it is also their biggest handicap, Chinese is becoming my fourth language to function in (I consider both English and Dutch as my mother tongue). Native English speakers always lean on the translation to understand the meaning of words and phrases, while I think that it is more important to understand the imagery behind the word, it is after all the meaning of the sound you utter.

Because I speak more then one language already I find it easier to understand the imagery and never have to translate in my head, if I use a language I in the same time think in that language, how ever limited my vocabulary may be. My tip is, try not to use to much translation ( the translations are often not complete) but ask your teacher to give you as many examples as possible of how to use it, you will soon under stand the meaning of the word or phrase better then by translation

[PollyWaffle]

the first semester i studied in china, there were no english translations in any of our textbooks... in the second, the textbooks only had shengci translated into english...

trying to stay on topic, i think the HSK is easier for japanese people than english native speakers because of the character advantage... on the recent HSK my jap classmate got a 8, while my other thai friend got a 7... the thai friend's chinese is much better than his but he uped his mark in the reading section... also, another friend was saying they understood, for example, the dialogue & the question in the listening section but didn't understand the characters in the answer... anyway........

[johnmck]

Being an English guy living in France I have the opposite problem; I find it difficult to find text books in English! My learning materials are in a mix of French and English. My grammar book is in French and I do find it hard going trying to understand it as it uses uncommon terms and an exact, detailed understanding of the text is required.

I like the idea of learning Mandarin in Mandarin. When I first came to France I could barely string two words together and I found myself in the typical expat trap, spoke English at work, spoke English at home. I had moved to France to find myself immersed in English. I eventually got on to a beginner's French course only to discover that it was given entirely in French. Surprisingly after a few lessons I was able to start understanding what the teacher was saying and the course worked.

Currently I am teaching my children English and they are reading a range of books called "Read with Me" from the children's publisher Ladybird, this range is widely used by teachers and parents in the UK. The books are numbered from 1 to 16 and the first book is extremely basic and the 16th book is at a reasonably high level of English. When I came to France I searched for the equivalent in French but could not find it. Does such a structured course exist for Chinese children?

[skidooman]

我不觉得是真的。。。。

中文的拼音与法文很近。。。

The best proof: when a Chinese comes to America, he often uses an English name (or what he thinks is an English name). After all, a girl named Fang doesn't really want to be called fang (like in "fangs").

But a French speaker would approximate that sound a lot closer to the right way to say it.