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Is Mandarin Really More Difficult? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6848 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 9 of 47 03 March 2010 at 12:11am | IP Logged | ||||||||
There is no such thing as "Classical Mandarin." Mandarin is a modern spoken Sinitic language. Classical Chinese (the proper term) is a literary language (also called Literary Chinese). It was the standard for written Chinese for millennia but was replaced by Vernacular Chinese or Standard Chinese (which is based mainly on Mandarin but is not quite the same). So, Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, Taiwanese, Hakka, etc. are all spoken languages. Standard Chinese, Classical/Literary Chinese, and Vernacular Chinese all refer to written standards. They can all be read in any of the so-called "dialects." But the spoken languages all differ from the written standard in varying degrees. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Sayumi Groupie Japan Joined 5416 days ago 51 posts - 75 votes Speaks: Japanese | Message 10 of 47 03 March 2010 at 7:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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魚 is written the same in both Mandarin and Japanese, but let's compare the readings in both languages:
漁獲(gyokaku) 魚座（uoza) 魚（sakana) 鱼池(yu2chi2) 鱼肝油(yu2gan1you2) 魚 is always read the same in Mandarin.So is 大, 东, etc. There are, of course, exceptions to this generalization, such as 紅 which has, to the extent of my knowledge of these languages, three readings in Chinese and four or five corresponding sounds in Japanese. In spite of this, however, I'd still be tempted to say that in general, Chinese readings tend to be easier to memorize, albeit slightly harder to pronounce. Edited by Sayumi on 03 March 2010 at 9:35pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| AlexL Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7082 days ago 197 posts - 277 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 11 of 47 03 March 2010 at 10:06pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Oops, yes--I meant "Classical Chinese". Thank you. When you say that Standard Chinese is not the same as Mandarin, what are some of the differences? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Nick_dm Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5711 days ago 24 posts - 26 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Cantonese | Message 12 of 47 04 March 2010 at 1:28pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I haven’t seriously studied any other languages and I have more experience with Cantonese then Standard Written Chinese/Mandarin but I have certainly found this to be the case. Often I’ll read a sentence and be completely unsure of the role of one or two characters in it. While a language with more complicated grammar may have more “facts” to learn, the word endings and word placement will often indicate whether something is a noun, verb, adjective etc. Tae Kim, the author of a book on Japanese grammar, has written some blog posts about Chinese grammar (or lack of it), he thought it was fairly easy at first but his views shifted after more studying. In response to the original question, I doubt that Mandarin is particularly more difficult than other Asian languages, but the difficult pronunciation and large number of characters means that it has a very steep initial learning curve. I have had real difficulty being understood in the few situations where I have needed to use some simple Mandarin and I already have some experience with a tonal language! Regarding the characters, a beginner with knowledge of only a few hundred would struggle to do something as simple as read the destination on the front of a bus, something that would be trivial in most other languages. However, in the long run these issues are not such a big deal, the characters seem daunting at first but with an organised approach it’s actually possible to learn them quite quickly and better pronunciation will come with more exposure and practice. Edited by Nick_dm on 04 March 2010 at 1:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| OneEye Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6848 days ago 518 posts - 784 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Taiwanese, German, French | Message 13 of 47 04 March 2010 at 4:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Well Mandarin is really a dialect group spoken in a large swath of China. It is largely mutually intelligible, but there are some differences (for instance, the tones are pronounced differently in Sichuan than in Beijing). Chinese names for "Mandarin" include 官話 (officialese) and 北方話 (northern speech). Standard Mandarin is the government-approved version, which is really an amalgamation of all the dialects of Mandarin, with some classical vocabulary thrown in for good measure, and even a hint of vocab originally from other dialects. The Chinese name for this language is, of course, 普通話 (common speech). The Taiwanese name for Standard Mandarin (which is, of course, nearly completely identical in both countries) is 國語 (national language). Again, the word "Mandarin" refers to speech, not writing. Standard Chinese (the written language) is based on Standard Mandarin, but there are some notable differences, especially as the writing becomes more formal and begins to resemble Literary Chinese more. You would not generally use 之 in place of 的 in conversation, but you would in writing. Many constructions of written Chinese are literary in nature, and would never be used in conversation. The book, "汉语书面用语初编: Expressions of Written Chinese" published by 北京语言大学出版社, is supposed to be very good as far as learning how to read and write more formal and academic Chinese, with all of its borrowings from the classical language. A good explanation of the subject of languages, dialects, and standardization in China (much better than I can do) can be found in S. Robert Ramsey's The Languages of China. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| delectric Diglot Senior Member China Joined 7179 days ago 608 posts - 733 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: German | Message 14 of 47 04 March 2010 at 5:18pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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For myself I think learning vocabulary is one of the biggest tasks in language
learning. For Mandarin the problem is that the tones just don't come naturally to a Westerner. English is a syllable timed language and we have much more freedom with the tonal qualities of English to represent mood. It's quite strange to hear English speakers trying to use the same tonal patterns in Chinese to try to place a mood quality on a sentence in Mandarin. I think the problem with Mandarin is that it's hard to relate many of the the sounds to English sounds and there is next to no correlation between Mandarin vocabulary and English vocabulary. If you can't match a word or a sound with your native language even remembering new words with powerful mnemonics will not be easy. Learning Japanese by contrast will give you plenty of sounds and words that you can use your pre-existing English to remember the 'alien' words. Of course languages like Thai, Vietnamese ... (insert tonal language) will also pose the same problem, just mentioned, to the English speaker as Mandarin. I think it's worth noting that Japanese and Korean students here in China often claim that Chinese is a very difficult language to learn, while Chinese speakers often claim that Japanese is easy for them, with learning Korean most Chinese students of this language choose it because they think it's cool (but certainly not a difficult language). Of course what will make Chinese vastly harder than any other language is the writing system. Vietnamese uses a 'Roman script', Korean has one of the easiest and most well thought out scripts in the world, Thai has an alphabet (even if, it is, as claimed a hard one). Japanese also has couple of 'phonetic' writing systems and from some of the stuff I've seen it seems that some texts use very little kanji. The problem with Chinese isn't just that you have to learn thousands of characters, the problem is that you don't get the instant passive reinforcement of your oral/listening vocabulary through reading everyday signs on the street. Even when you've been reading for some years you will always encounter new characters, albeit rare ones. To be at a near native speaker level I would say you need to know both scripts. Most people will learn the simplified set, but you should at least recognise the most common characters within the traditional script that is used in Taiwan and also in some public places in mainland China (oh and KTV). Finally it has to be noted that a native speaker of Chinese, due to the amount of characters that need to be learnt, will require a much longer time （or more hours) to get to the same reading level as natives of any other language. Remember, Korea and Vietnam got rid of their characters not just because of national pride but because the writing system was so difficult, in turn the Chinese themselves planned to implement pinyin as the written standard (which thankfully never took place). Ancient Japanese (so I've been told) uses much more kanji and is considered, because of this, more difficult by the Japanese, yet this ancient Japanese would perhaps be easier than a more modern Japanese script, to comprehend, for a native Chinese (can anyone confirm this)? Learning Mandarin then, to a native level, is objectively harder than nearly any other language. Though if you want to learn Cantonese this will be harder, as you have to learn the Chinese writing system too (based on Mandarin grammar) and Cantonese has more tones, traditional characters in Hong Kong, oh and of course speakers of other Chinese 'dialects' are expected to also speak Mandarin to be a competent speaker of Chinese. Edited by delectric on 04 March 2010 at 5:26pm 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Pyx Diglot Senior Member China Joined 5733 days ago 670 posts - 892 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 15 of 47 05 March 2010 at 1:59am | IP Logged | ||||||||
This has been discussed do death and I DON'T want to restart such a debate, but I'd like to point to a very good, very insightful debate about this in the comments here: http://www.sinoglot.com/blog/2010/02/24/wut-if-ur-kids-skool -thot-this-wuz-fine-spelling/#comments If you're interested in this issue, it's a very good read! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| delectric Diglot Senior Member China Joined 7179 days ago 608 posts - 733 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: German | Message 16 of 47 05 March 2010 at 3:38am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Pyx, interesting stuff. I'd like to to know if, learning such a complicated writing
system can give other intangible mental benefits, that actually make the complexity of the script worth learning. Recognizing 4000 + characters requires discipline and a lot of suffering! Imagine if this was institutionalised! Does this mean that the average Chinese child just through their education system, is more likely to develop a more disciplined personality? Learning Chinese characters, almost seems like a mental right of passage - the government should introduce some sort of citizenship to any foreigner that learns to read and write 4000 characters fluently. Edited by delectric on 13 March 2010 at 6:52am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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