How much truth is this guy really telling?

[hei ren]

http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/1991Moser.pdf

If it's all true, then I wish I never read this.

[necroflux]

Haha this is a great article! It unfortunately was close to 100% accurate for me. I read this a few months ago and had a good laugh, as so many of his points ring true for me. It's possible you might not experience every annoyance he has, but overall it's an accurate perspective of a native English speaker learning Chinese.

His best point: To say that "knowing 1000 characters allows you to read 95% of written material in Chinese" is disingenuous in that you may be able to "read" the sounds for the words but you won't have any idea what the meaning of those characters are as each character can be used in various combinations. And without spaces to offer hints of where the character combinations occur you guesswork becomes very difficult - i.e. 你不必裝蒜. If you are going to translate this, you first have to decide which of these characters stand on their own and which are part of two-character forms. This can be very difficult if even a single term in the sentence is unknown. Butaswithenglishifyouknowthelanguagewellenough

andwithenoughpracticeyoucanreadwithoutspaces.

I do disagree with his assertions on the lack of a good dictionary - I think in the last 15 years they've come a long way. Just to name one, the ABC chinese-english comprehensive dictionary addresses most of his concerns.

[Lu]

Looking back on the past 6 years of my learning Chinese, I must say much of it is true. But now that I've learned it to a certain level, it doesn't seem so hard anymore in retrospect.

When he tells about the game in which you take a random Chinese book and try to figure out what it's about, I disagree that that's difficult. I see many, many Chinese books every day and in almost all cases (except for novels) it is perfectly clear from the title what the book is about.

[roddy]

The author previously posted some extracts from that and another piece here, which resulted in the longest discussion we've ever had on here. Read it all and make up your own mind . . .

Roddy

[nubix]

That was hilarious. I enjoyed it a lot, thank you hei ren.

The message was a bit sobering nevertheless I am undeterred in my efforts to continue learning.

The quote from his conclusion gave me quite a chuckle...

Someone once said that learning Chinese is "a five-year lesson in humility". I used to think this meant that at the end of five years you will have mastered Chinese and learned humility along the way. However, now having studied Chinese for over six years, I have concluded that actually the phrase means that after five years your Chinese will still be abysmal, but at least you will have thoroughly learned humility.

[novemberfog]

I like the "lesson in humility" part in the conclusion. Certainly I must agree with that.

But it truly is an amazing thing when a non-native masters Chinese. The amount of work, dedication, and stress is amazing. It is something that so many people take for granted and not many can understand. The amount of vocabulary, cultural knowledge, knowledge of the obscure references to things in the past natives so often do...it is simply amazing.

[L-F-J]

For the most part, I don't really agree with what was said. I guess that just means different people are different. Difficult is in the eye of the beholder I suppose. That's not to say I'm extremely good at Chinese, but I really don't find it to be all that difficult. I should just study more. I got fed up with German and ditched it. Chinese is far more easy in my opinion.

[carlo]

It's as impressive as a non-native learning any other language. Try Arabic or Icelandic. I'm firmly against the exoticization of the object of our desire (the Chinese language). ;)

[Mugi]

carlo,

Hear, hear!

[gougou]

but I really don't find it to be all that difficult

I agree, I think learning Chinese is just doing a heck of a lot of simple tasks (which arguably for some people might be the definition of difficult)

It's as impressive as a non-native learning any other language

I disagree. If an American (or French, or German, or...) learns Chinese, I will be much more impressed than if a Portuguese learns Spanish.

Having said that, I agree that there are other difficult languages beside Chinese (most of which, however, come with an alphabet!)

[zhenhui]

I love that article!

But it's true that there is alot of difficulty remembering how to write the words.... it's easier reading a newspaper than remembering how to write all the words that we have just read!

[necroflux]

I think it's interesting that the difficulty of writing Chinese characters is quickly becoming less important in the computer age. I can't write more than 100 characters on paper, but I am very easily able to "write" on a computer using a pinyin input system. With that ability I've decided that for my purposes being able to write every character I can recognize on paper would be a waste of time. Granted I won't be able to fill out any Chinese-only documents in China/Taiwan in person, but I'm willing to forgo that rarely needed ability for a massive amount of time saved.

[trevelyan]

I see many, many Chinese books every day and in almost all cases (except for novels) it is perfectly clear from the title what the book is about.

I don't think Moser is talking about contemporary publications so much as the contents of a typical research-oriented East Asian Library. I need to read 19th century materials and --sometimes you just throw your hands up in the air and curse the fates.

[L-F-J]

I had just been thinking of this. I can read and understand and type lots of characters. But I probably can't write half of them on paper! It hasn't mattered to me so far. But I haven't been in a situation where I need to fill something out in Chinese either.

[mr.stinky]

can someone explain to me why a completely artificial/made-up phonetic system needs

exceptions to the rules?

why is -iou written -iu? why not just write iou? have we exceeded our quota of o's??

does this conflict with another final somewhere? i don't understand why "they" do this?

some tweed-jacket yahoo needed to show his students who's the smarty-pants?

and then explain why we drop the umlauts over the 'u' after j/q/x??? isn't it hard enough

to get the pronunciation right without dropping the clue to vowel sound changes?

why? it's not like 'they' had to deal with a thousand years of pinyin history, is it? just

freakin' spell the freakin' word like it freakin' sounds!! is that too freakin' hard??

[L-F-J]

I think once you learn the system it's really not that hard. In fact I've been pronouncing the 'u' in ju, qu, and xu like nv rather than chu or shu without even thinking it's the same sound until you pointed it out. And it doesn't matter because it's just a way to help us get the pronunciation. That is the important thing. Besides that, it makes far more sense than something like Wade Giles.

[hei ren]

That was hilarious. I enjoyed it a lot, thank you hei ren.

The message was a bit sobering nevertheless I am undeterred in my efforts to continue learning.

The quote from his conclusion gave me quite a chuckle...

Well, if it wasn't for one of Roddy's links, I would of never found that essay. So thanks Roddy!

Also, thank you for the link of the discussion that the author of the essay had with other members from this board. It was quite insightful.

So...now what I am wondering is, are non-native japanese learners are in the same predictament as us non-native chinese learners? I have no idea how similar kanji is to hanzi.

[Lu]

Mr. Stinky: the u in ju and xu is different from the u in nü and lü. I don't know how, I'm not a linguist, a linguist could probably explain. But I can show you how it's different: find an American (one that hasn't been studying Chinese for too long) and ask him/her to say xu or qu. The u will come out right. Then ask him/her to say nü or lü. It will sound like nu or lu.

I don't think Moser is talking about contemporary publications so much as the contents of a typical research-oriented East Asian Library. I need to read 19th century materials and --sometimes you just throw your hands up in the air and curse the fates.

I work in a Chinese research library, I guess it's not a 'typical' one then. But you're right, I was talking about contemporary publications.

[笨笨德]

hei ren,

At one stage, quite a while ago now, I also read this article. Its well written, very funny in places, and the guy obviously has a great grasp of the chinese language.... and I also felt alot like you may do now... I remember reading it and having the impression that, god this is an impossible task, why am I even bothering... however, being the stubborn obsessive guy that i am, i perservered... and now things are starting to fall into place, only after 9 months of university studying chinese, although i have lived here for 18 months...

It is, on the whole, a rather pessimistic view of learning chinese as a native european language speaker, albeit most amusing. This nit picking style of criticism of a foreign language, irregardless of the authors good intensions, are largely redundant unless you are primarly concerned only with the economic efficency of a country. Yes, people in china/taiwan have problems remembering characters, and may pause a little longer than you would when writing a phonetic based written language, but so what? There is, however, more to language and culture than economic efficency, I dont wish to reiterate the arguments already presented in this forums previous thread...

All I wish to portray is that this article should not deter you from studying chinese, anymore than an article on how difficult oil on canvas painting is compared to using a digital tablet and computer software... Ok, you have to wash your brushes, wait for the oil to dry, you can hit CTRL-Z everytime your brush slips... but human existence has must more substance than simple efficency... actually I am way to drunk at the moment to write anything of any substance... just dont let the article deter you from learning chinese or thinking China/Taiwan should use pinyin because it is more efficent...

sure why not speak english instead of irish, its much easier, or speak in binary, it only requires 2 characters...

Éireann go Brách

c3 89 69 72 65 61 6e 6e 20 67 6f 20 42 72 c3 a1 63 68

have a good weekend all....

[novemberfog]

So...now what I am wondering is, are non-native japanese learners are in the same predictament as us non-native chinese learners? I have no idea how similar kanji is to hanzi.

To put it simply, yes. I find that multiple readings for each hanzi to be even more difficult than learning hanzi in Chinese.