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What are the main difficulties in learning Mandarin Chinese ?
Home > Languages > Mandarin > FAQ > Difficulties > Main difficulties

The written system
The Chinese written system is very difficult to learn. There is no alphabet and every word is represented by a different sign. You need to learn at least 1000 signs to be able to begin reading a newspaper.

The vocabulary
Learning Chinese vocabulary is difficult as there are no similarities with vocabulary from Western languages. You need to learn everything from scratch.

The word order
There are no big grammar difficulties in Mandarin but as there are no flexions, everything is based on word order. If you miss the precise word order, your sentence has no sense.



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