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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| delectric Diglot Senior Member China Joined 7182 days ago 608 posts - 733 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: German | Message 25 of 31 26 July 2006 at 3:16am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Raincrowlee,
I do not make the assumtion that everyone learning Mandarin is from an Indo-European background. As I said if a Mandarin speaker learns Cantonese it will be easy for them. So by this I implicitly mean that if the language learners native language family is close to Mandarin it will also be easier. However, the facts are that most people reading this forum will have an Indo-European background, and this context can't be ignored. I've met many a Korean studying Mandarin and I can certainly say that they find speaking Chinese hard. Like Lady Skywalker said, Korean and Japanese have a vastly different grammar. Infact at times i've been frustrated when a Chinese native will insist on talking to the Korean with deficient Mandarin rather than me (with slightly less deficient Mandarin) because I look European (based on their assumption that the Asian person will have better Chinese). I take your point with the tones, foreigners can be understood by context. However, not always especially (i find) if the listener is not well educated and if the speaker is nearer a beginner, they will have less context to frame their words in. All in all, I think the tones are another barrier that can be overcome with context but it's still another hurdle to achieving fluency that many other languages don't have. Also lets face it a foreigner with zero tones just doesn't sound good and though an acute listener will understand it won't be easy for them, otherwise I wouldn't have had as much trouble when I first arrived in China :) Actually I still sometimes have some trouble after 2 years. I'll try to put a sound recording up on my profile asap so that others can judge my Chinese. Raincrowlee, maybe you just have a real natural talent for Mandarin that I and many other laowais (foreigners) don't have, I can certainly really envy that! Or maybe I'm just really, really good at learning French :) Edited by delectric on 26 July 2006 at 3:22am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6703 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 26 of 31 26 July 2006 at 3:32am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Everyone learns languages in different ways, and that's something that doesn't fit your head. I've found that I can quickly remember words because I don't have to think about pronouncing them, and just have to worry about memorizing the character. It's amazing how much difference learning a character for a word helps me distinguish them, even in conversation.
But those common phrases are the ones that are the places that languages are the most conservative. Look at the differences between the English "thanks a lot" and the French "merci beaucoup." If it wasn't for movies, we wouldn't know it either. English speakers find spoken French quite foreign, too. When you get into higher-level, more formal language, you run into more similarities. That's as true when comparing English with French as much as Japanese with Chinese. Even when the meaning is radically changed, such as 'sensei' (J., teacher) and 'xiansheng' (Ch., Mister), Japanese speakers can find more familiar words than Westerners. That means that Japanese (and Koreans) can learn Chinese much more quickly that Westerners can -- as my classmates' grades can testify. You can also look at a language like Latin, whose grammar is quite different than English, but which has recognizable vocabulary. An English speaker would have a much easier time with it than someone whose background was non-IndoEuropean. And I would never claim any language is a 'breeze.' I'm studying Indonesian, supposedly the easiest language to learn in the world, and I wouldn't say it's a breeze at all. Easier than Russian, but still not a walk in the park. I'm saying that it's easy for them as far as learning languages go, knowing that learning languages isn't an easy thing. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6703 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 27 of 31 26 July 2006 at 3:58am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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delectric
I don't think that I'm particularly good at learning Chinese, but I refuse to demonize the language. Many people consider it one of the hardest languages to learn, but I think that's mostly hype. Maybe I've been studying it too long. Then again, even when I was studying it in America, it made sense to me. A kind of backward sense, like reading a book in a mirror. But don't get me started on Japanese. I've had to learn that language three times. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| lady_skywalker Triglot Senior Member Netherlands aspiringpolyglotblog Joined 6891 days ago 909 posts - 942 votes Speaks: Spanish, English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, French, Dutch, Italian | Message 28 of 31 26 July 2006 at 4:40am | IP Logged | ||||||||
It could be that different people are on a different frequency when it comes to language learning. Chinese has obviously been something you've 'clicked' with while others can't get their head around it. The language is neither easy nor hard...it just depends on the person and whether they're interested in the language or not. Japanese has been a lot more interesting and easier to grasp for me, even in the short time I've been learning it. Perhaps I am more attuned to Japanese so I can't really criticise anyone for being scared of the language. I don't think anyone is intentionally demonizing Chinese. It *is* a fairly hard language to pick up if you find it hard to retain characters in your head or are tone-deaf. The myth is probably perpetuated by the Chinese themselves who claim it's such a hard language for foreigners to learn. Perhaps this has changed now that they want the big businesses to come to them but it certainly wasn't seen as a language foreigners could possibly grasp when I was living in China. I'm sure there are even people from Indo-European backgrounds that find Asian languages easier to grasp than something closer to home. While learning a related language is theoretically easier, sometimes people just take more of a fancy to something more exotic and do better in that than they would with, say, French or Italian. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Mga Groupie United States beastie.redirectme.n Joined 7124 days ago 67 posts - 66 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Arabic (Written) | Message 29 of 31 01 August 2006 at 11:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Edited by Mga on 02 August 2006 at 12:02am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6703 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 30 of 31 02 August 2006 at 4:08am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Chinese, like Japanese, is composed of fixed syllables. They are almost all single consonants followed by vowels or diphthongs. You will never run into unexpected consonant clusters or words with radically different structures. English in contrast, often maintains the original pronunciation and spelling, where possible, such as 'prix fixe' or 'sang froid.' 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| CaitO'Ceallaigh Triglot Senior Member United States katiekelly.wordpress Joined 6858 days ago 795 posts - 829 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian Studies: Czech, German | Message 31 of 31 02 August 2006 at 1:26pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I feel this way too, sometimes. Except you have to admit that while Slavic (at least Russian) tenses might seem easier at first, no, the truth is, you have to remember two verbs for every one you know in Spanish or English. At least! There's skazat', razskazat', govorit', pogovorit', razgavovyrovyrovat' and did I leave any out? I might have added one. It's been a long time. I miss Russian. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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