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Difficulty of Mandarin, Purely Spoken | ||
Tags: Difficulty | Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6384 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 9 of 19 10 April 2014 at 3:07am | IP Logged | |||||
Here in Singapore there are tons of children's books with pinyin and characters. You can also find some with pinyin, characters, and English. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| day1 Groupie Latvia Joined 3897 days ago 93 posts - 158 votes Speaks: English | Message 10 of 19 10 April 2014 at 5:55am | IP Logged | |||||
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In Mainland China there are enough of pinyin-above-characters kids books. Also several readers for grownup foreign students with pinyin above the text have been published by Sinolingua (i.e, not "Chinese Breeze" series).
http://www.amazon.com/Graded-Chinese-Reader-MP3-Edition/dp/7 802003741/ EDIT: and if reading in front of a computer screen is OK, there's http://mandarinspot.com/annotate or even translate.google.com (least amount of pinyin errors) Edited by day1 on 10 April 2014 at 7:15am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Astrophel Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5737 days ago 157 posts - 345 votes Speaks: English*, Latin, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Cantonese, Polish, Sanskrit, Cherokee | Message 11 of 19 20 April 2014 at 9:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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As someone who's studying only the spoken Cantonese language, I can tell you that at first it will be much easier than, say, French or German at a comparable level - that is, if you can get past the tones and the lack of cognates. However, to reach a comfortable intermediate level is much harder, because as others have said, the way ideas are put together is just so different - you say "I am alone with myself", for example. You have to learn all those things. So, just getting by might not be so hard, but speaking well will be much harder. The difficulty curve picks up very sharply.
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| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5604 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes | Message 12 of 19 21 April 2014 at 6:26am | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, you would never guess, even if you heard these names: Wēilián Shāshìbĭyà and Mălì Jūlĭ. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4449 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 13 of 19 21 April 2014 at 8:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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For a beginner and even people with some exposure to Chinese, getting a reasonable pronunciation is
key to be understood. Intonation is the main concern. Even intermediate speakers tend to mispronounce characters occasionally. For example: 出轨 chūguǐ is the phrase for a derailment such as a train derailment and also a slang for having an extramarital affair. 出柜 chūguì with the same Pinyin means "out of the closet" which is a slang for gays & lesbians coming out. 北京 Běijīng is the name a city but 背 景 bèijǐng is the phrase for background. Besides getting the correct intonation, there are a number of characters that sound very similar such as si & xi, jiang & zhang, ci & qi. Part of learning basic phrases is going through phrase books and getting familiar with the phonetics. When it comes to pronunciation, there are limited range of sounds. To get the pronunciation correctly, I prefer to check an online dictionary such as: www.mdbg.net. There is an audio button after each word or phrase so you can check exactly how it is pronounced. To look for the correct word / phrase, you can enter the equivalent in English. I prefer to use Pinyin 拼音 over Zhuyin 注音 (often referred to as BPMF) from Taiwan because you can use 26 letters of the alphabet. BPMF uses a completely different set of phonetic characters and slows me down when I'm typing. Edited by shk00design on 23 April 2014 at 7:01am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4673 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 14 of 19 21 April 2014 at 11:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The pronunciation of Mandarin is still very difficult to master (even if we don't bother with the tonal system):
The North Wind and the Sun in Mandarin according to phonetician Luciano Canepari (professor at University of Venice): 
source: Phonetics of Chinese (by prof. Canepari) http://venus.unive.it/canipa/pdf/HPr_11_Chinese.pdf Edited by Medulin on 21 April 2014 at 11:48pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 4037 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 15 of 19 23 April 2014 at 4:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Mandarin is one of the least conservative Sino Tibetan language, and perhaps in the whole tonal isolating Asian
sprachbund as well. It is not a difficult language nor does it deserve to be considered one of the hardest on Earth. Some even believe Mandarin is a creolized form of Chinese. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ChiaBrain Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5813 days ago 402 posts - 512 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish* Studies: Portuguese, Italian, French Studies: German | Message 16 of 19 25 April 2014 at 3:19am | IP Logged | |||||
How about software to convert Chinese characters to Pinyin? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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