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Which language is the hardest (for a native Chinese speaker) or an English speaker
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View Poll Results: Which language is the hardest for you or in general
English 0 0%
French (français) 1 5.56%
German (Deutsch) 0 0%
Russian (русский) 3 16.67%
Mandarin (汉语 / 漢語) 9 50.00%
Japanese (日本語) 3 16.67%
Korean (한국어) 4 22.22%
Arabic (عربي) 6 33.33%
Multiple Choice Poll. Voters: 18. You may not vote on this poll



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atitarev -

Thanks for interesting posts, guys!

Some words about Chinese vs Japanese (or Korean). Although Japanese and Korean grammars are more
complex than Chinese, it's not that you have to memorise a lot, understanding patterns, endings is
not that time consuming and with a proper exercise or two it sinks in. A difficult grammar, IMHO,
is when you have a LOT of patterns to deal with. I am Russian but I think Russian grammar has too
many plural patterns, declensions and conjugations, so objectively, Russian is a hard language to
learn, phonetics - no it's not that difficult but native Japanese and Chinese learners have more
difficulties with consonant clusters. So, I think Japanese and Korean grammar is strange and
unusual from European point of view but not too difficult.

Arabic grammar is also difficult, after some exposure, I think it's not as difficult as Russian
but you also have to memorise a lot of plural patterns, declensions and conjugations. Arabic words
change the middle of the word a lot:
bayt - buyuut; house - houses
waziir - wuzaraa'; minister - ministers
madiina - mudun; city - cities
kalb - kilaab; dog - dogs

Like Russian Arabic has cases - 3 only (Russian has 6!)
haadha bayt-un - this is a house
fii bayt-in - in a house
adraka bayt-an - saw a house

But there are different endings for definite/indefinite nouns

Verbs have conjugations and have more forms than, say Russian or German - adding the feminine
forms vs masculine and dual plural. (All nouns have singular, dual and sound plural forms).

Diglossia is more of a problem with Arabic than with Chinese, since there are no native speakers
of the standard Arabic, everybody speaks a dialect and there is some resistance by learners to
actually learn it before getting any education at all.

As the short vowels are not written, very often learning Arabic is somewhat similar to Chinese,
since you have to know the words or their forms, to know how to read them. You can guess the
meaning by their root letters (similar to recognising radicals) and sometimes, guess pronunciation
(of vowels or absence thereof) if you know a lot of patterns and know the grammar well.

d-r-s (learning) - root letters
madrasa - school
mudarris - teacher (male)
darasa - to study (or he studied)


I now find easier to learn Chinese with so many resources available. Characters are the biggest
hurdle, of course but good audio courses with character texts help to overcome at least the
recognition problem. When you know the characters, in many cases it's just putting the building
blocks together to make meaningful sentences

A huge factor in making learning a language is what you have on hand to learn it. Good textbooks,
teachers and exposure. Some complex gramamr points can be explained well and using good examples,
so it no longer seems difficult.



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rmdavis82 -

I came across an article in a Newsweek from earlier this year. It had an article about learning
Chinese and it sited it as being one of the most difficult languages to learn. It claimed that
Putonghua/Mandarin, Cantonese, Arabic, Korean, and Japanese are believed to be the 5 most
difficult languages to learn. But this is from a Western magazine's perspective, so the question
still remains. . .










Weronika -

maybe somebody knows which newsweek was that? I'm interested to read that article.










Quest -

From a Western perspective, Chinese is hard because there's too much irregularity in its grammar,
and you have to relearn all vocab. That plus the annoying characters the Chinese just wont give up
on. And oh, the pesky tones! AND the fact that Chinese people won't talk to me in Chinese.
From an East Asian perspective, Chinese is easy. It has simple grammar, many of which we share in
our own language. We know most of the vocab. We know the characters or we think the characters are
fun to learn, and one of the best things the Chinese have invented. Everyone speaks to us in
Chinese, and since our English is bad, we have to use Chinese to communicate, that gives us a
little more push to pick up the language asap.
From a Chinese perspective, any dialect is easy, you just have to live there for a year or less,
and start speaking to people in their dialect. don't even bother to get rid of your accent though,
because you will never succeed.










Ncao -



Quote:

From a Chinese perspective, any dialect is easy

I have to disagree. I heard many northern Chinese say Cantonese is hard,and think
Cantonese,Shanghaiese and Minnanese sound like foreign languages.










HashiriKata -



Quote:

I heard many northern Chinese say Cantonese is hard,and think Cantonese,Shanghaiese and Minnanese
sound like foreign languages.

By "northern Chinese" do you mean Mandarin native speakers? I can understand why Mandarin speakers
would say so about other dialects, since - generally speaking - speakers of the standard variety
often don't have a very strong incentive to learn (or frequent exposure to) the non-standard
varieties. Similarly, English speakers often consider other languages difficult.










Ncao -

Yes I meant native Mandarin speakers.










Quest -



Quote:

I have to disagree. I heard many northern Chinese say Cantonese is hard,and think
Cantonese,Shanghaiese and Minnanese sound like foreign languages.

Any language you don't understand sounds like a foreign language. Those that say it's hard are the
ones that never tried or intended to learn. "yea, it's hard, because I don't understand it..."
"are you gonna try and learn it?" "no, why would I?" I don't know about other dialects, but I've
seen northerners, southerners alike settling in GZ/HK/overseas, and picking up the language in
less than a year.










gato -



Quote:

I don't know about other dialects, but I've seen northerners, southerners alike settling in
GZ/HK/overseas, and picking up the language in less than a year.

It really depends on what proficiency level one is aiming for. The Western European languages are
still easier to learn, in my opinion, because the written text being phonetic makes it easier to
learn and having the written text makes it easier to learn the spoken language. The difficulty of
the Chinese written language makes it harder to learn the spoken language -- harder meaning that
it takes longer (not hard like quantum mechanics, which is impossible for most people to learn).

I think most Western European langugages can be "picked up" (i.e. reaching conversational level)
in a matter of two, three months in a full-immersion environment. If one studies full-time,
conversational proficiency can be achieved in about a month.

That may also be true for non-Mandarin dialects, though I suspect it would take much longer
because of the lack of a written language to serve as a visual aid, in most cases.










rmdavis82 -

I checked my magazine. . .it was actually TIME and it was from June of this year. The cover story
is about the new trend and the importance in learning Chinese.












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