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Is Mandarin Really More Difficult? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Sayumi Groupie Japan Joined 5416 days ago 51 posts - 75 votes  Speaks: Japanese | Message 25 of 47 14 March 2010 at 9:24am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I don't know what the average is, but even elementary kanji seem to have a ridiculous number of readings.
That's different. The same holds true for Japanese. 3000 characters isn't going to cut it either if you want to be really good. You need to know 6000 characters for the kanji kentei level 1. I probably know around 2500 kanji and it's definitely not enough. Edited by Sayumi on 14 March 2010 at 9:25am 3 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 26 of 47 14 March 2010 at 9:28am | IP Logged | ||||||||
But I understand non-standard kanji have furigana, and with your kanji level you should be able to read most about everything as long as it's not terribly specialized? I'm not studying Japanese, so I don't really know much about that, but that was the gist I picked up here and there.. 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 27 of 47 14 March 2010 at 12:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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About 2500 characters is what the government regards as a literate person in the city
(someone correct me if I'm wrong). This is all good in theory, but in practise knowing 2500 characters will allow you to read material designed for 12 year old's and even then you're arms and fingers will be tired from reaching for that dictionary. Even 3000 characters will not have you happily reading a paper. As I remember people say 4000 characters is what you need, but from what I hear 5000 is more realistic. So an educated person should really know 6000. Now, this probably doesn't mean they can write all 6000. But surely at least 4000 must be able to be written. Then of course characters are used in thousands and thousands of combinations with each other. From what I see it seems most Japanese texts use characters in combination much less (but maybe I'm wrong). I know about 3000 characters right now (maybe a bit less), so I'm not at a good enough level to read a newspaper without a tired arm (reaching for a dictionary). I could be described then to be at 'basic fluency'. Probably an 18 year old preparing for university will know 6000 characters. Now if someone suddenly told me that I would need double the amount of characters to 10,000 to be at a newspaper reading level, I think I'd swoon! There are people who know 10,000 + characters and they are considered to have a really high level of Chinese. Of course the point I'm trying to make is this. At 3000 characters wouldn't I be reading a newspaper in Japanese now? Clearly both languages are difficult and usually it's cited that it's because of the complex writing system. The fact that both have characters make both languages extremely difficult. Of course, the question is, 'is Mandarin REALLY more DIFFICULT'. From just looking at the writing system the answer is an unquestionable an objective YES. Take Japanese, one of the hardest written languages in the world, take away the tool and convenience of any phonetic script, double the amount of characters needed to learn for 'basic' fluency, and there you have Chinese. And, this is without having to learn the old/new script which is actually pretty essential to know (even if you don't have the ability to write both). The Chinese script is out of this world, in a word it is 'Alien'. It's the type of script you'd remember seeing after being abducted by little green men. Now let's get back to the core question. Is Mandarin really that much harder. The fact is a Westerner that speaks 'great' Chinese is very very rare. Chinese people really set the level low for what they consider a 'good foreign speaker of Chinese to be' simply because there really are so few. I know an extremely intelligent friend of mine who went through the DLI, was top of his class, then worked in translating for the US government and now lives in China. Now the DLI is considered an elite learning institution. All I can say is that the US is lucky for computers and the fact that much military information tends to be factual and to the point (though of course heavy in useless everyday vocabulary). Of course I'm another example, I've been in China for 5 years. A year ago I met people who got 7 in the HSK (the Chinese proficiency test) who were studying at Beida. Their Chinese level was certainly not higher than mine. Though, like like many Westerners (including myself at times) had fooled themselves into believing that their Chinese level was great (and it was/is compared to the masses)! But how can one say their level is 'great' when they're not picking up a paper for 'happy reading'! Let's face it when you've been studying Chinese for years and attend an elite Chinese university you have to do something to trick yourself psychologically to make yourself feel that with all the effort 'you've' put in 'your' Chinese is 'up there'. Luckily the Chinese like to praise and give face a lot so it's easy to believe the propaganda when the propaganda is good. Now the fact that me at probably HSK 7+ (I hope!) is not picking up a Chinese newspaper for fun daily reading, I find, to be honest, embarrassing. Of course I'm working as well but I'm a pretty hardcore into the study in my free time. After 5 years of self study and heavy reading on this website, I know pretty much all the tricks to self studying. Now maybe I'm an idiot but if that's the case I seem to be one of the more capable foreign idiots nearish the top of the tree out here. It's sad... I'm in Xiamen China right now, where there's lot of Dutch, Belgians and Germans. Of course they all know how to speak English my friend from Belgium speaks 3 European languages to native level fluency (but with an accent) and then some more. However, coming onto the topic of Chinese he made the comment/moan that learning Chinese is more than ten times as difficult as learning English (his native language is French). Indeed, we came to the conclusion that comparing Chinese to learning a European language just seems ridiculous. Is French, Spanish or even Russian a foreign language to English? They all seem in comparison a dialect that just needs a year or two to get used to after living and naturally assimilating into the environment. Nobody is going to assimilate Chinese from living there. For a start it seems very few people (read Westerners) reach across the bridge and make real heart to heart friends with 'same sex' Chinese people. The 'same sex' Chinese friends that Westerners make are usually those that have crossed the language bridge into the Indo-European kingdom. If the un-politically correct truth be known most Westerners find Chinese thinking and culture (as in everyday attitudes and ways to life) alien/weird and so rarely cross the bridge into the 'Chinese' world. From what I hear this just isn't as extreme in say Japan. Japanese people are more Westernised and this cultural influence from the West is reflected in the Japanese language and their everyday habits. Japanese youth culture and now also South Korean in contrast to China seems 'cool' and 'creative'! There's still nothing cool about extreme filial piety, frost bitten hands, pulling a plough or wearing clothes that looked fashionable in the 80's (at least not in the eyes of most Western youth). Obviously if you find it easier to fit into a culture and make friends you will also find it easier to learn the language. My advice for anyone that wants to learn good Chinese, is not to go to the famous cities where you will be seduced by temptation of the familiarity of other Westerners. Go to a 'dive' city and if the university you join has other foreigners learning Chinese, make sure they are Koreans, Japanese etc. who don't have a good command of English. I was thinking of the cacti system that's used to rate foreign languages, coming from a native speaker of English. For me Mandarin is at 5 perhaps Japanese is there too but maybe (dare I say) at 4. Then you can put all the other 'difficult' languages (Korean, Arabic, Hindi etc) at 3 and 2. Finally the European Indo-European languages including even maybe Russian will be at 1! Chinese is a different language in nearly every way. Look at nearly any other popular languages you want to learn, and in comparison, Chinese brings it to it's knees showing it to be merely a dialect, a mere deviation from the overall script. When Chinese people talk of Cantonese as being a dialect to Mandarin and vice versa they're SERIOUS! Westerners will point out that it's to do with reinforcing the political unity of the Chinese state. While this thinking certainly doesn't undermine the status-qua it is a big example of how culture and language affects people's understanding of the world. After all we could say the Western definition of language and dialect perhaps merely highlights a common 'Roman' people politically separated as each warring European State sets up it's own Empire and so bestowed it's own dialect with the status of language. If you speak English you can stay in France if you live outside the English compound, study or not, you'll soon pick up (bad) French; stay in Spain you'll pick up Spanish. Stay in China and you'll soon pick up frustration, depression and the odd Chinese caveman grunt. Is Chinese that much more difficult? YES! But for myself I looked at the low hills around me 'French', 'Spanish' and the others, none of them really seemed to be able to offer me much of a better perspective on the world than I had already. Thus, I looked towards the bigger mountains. If you like a challenge then climbing the intellectual mountain that is Mandarin, is great fun, and something that is fun can never be difficult. Edited by delectric on 14 March 2010 at 12:39pm 8 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 28 of 47 14 March 2010 at 12:22pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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delectric, 顶! Sadly, I very much agree with you. Should have gotten a Spanish-speaking girlfriend! ;)
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| ericspinelli Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5781 days ago 249 posts - 493 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Italian | Message 29 of 47 14 March 2010 at 12:38pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
生 is an extreme case. Most characters only have 2 or 3 standard readings. Many of those that officially have more than that are simply cases where the okurigana (kana attached to the kanji) are different but the kanji itself is read the same. These are most often transitive/intransitive or active/passive pairs.
"Enough" is an entirely subjective notion. Also the Kanji Kentei Level 1 is a meaningless standard that exists only to appease a culture enamored with collecting paper qualifications. Even Pre-Level 1, testing half that of Level 1 (i.e., 3000 characters), is unnecessary for just about anything. 4 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 30 of 47 14 March 2010 at 3:28pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Thanks for the enlightenment, that's very interesting! So what would you say is the kanji threshold for functional everyday literacy (including newspapers, novels, and things like that)? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6700 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 31 of 47 14 March 2010 at 6:20pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I think you're overstating the case. As someone else pointed out, it takes 6000 characters in Japanese to read comfortably, which knocks out one of the main pillars of your argument. All Asian languages are difficult because of the start-from-zero effect of having very few (if any) cognates. At the same time, they have an advantage over languages like English where every new concept tends to be a new word while in Chinese (and probably the others), they tend to build up from a fixed number of syllables/characters that have a certain meaning. Reading titles and category names is easier in Chinese because they tend to use the same characters again and again, as opposed to English that reaches for a Latin or Greek word. And I'm surprised about much your post, about the difficulty of reading Chinese for pleasure. I spend six years in Taiwan, most of which time I wasn't the best student, and if I pick up a newspaper or even a popular book, and I concentrate on what I understand instead of what I don't, I can follow the main point and get most of the details, unless it's a topic I'm completely unfamiliar with. Even then, I might be able to guess because I can see the meanings in the Chinese characters. This is not to diminish the difficulty of Chinese. It is quite a difficult language. But there is nothing that I've seen that would indicate that it's much more difficult than Japanese, Korean or Vietnamese. I tried to learn Japanese before I went to Taiwan, and I personally found the basics of it more difficult to grasp than the basics of Chinese. I haven't gotten to an advanced level of it yet, so I can't comment on that. It is much more difficult than most European languages, but that doesn't mean it's more difficult than other Asian languages. Even then, much of the difficulty lies in the written language. I am less intimidated in learning spoken Chinese (even other dialects) than I am in trying to learn Russian, having tried to learn the latter before and having worked on it almost every day for the last year or so. Chinese, especially the more advanced you get, is all about learning new combinations of fixed syllables. There are a lot of them to learn, but, again, that's no different than any other Asian language. You start from near zero in all of them. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Sayumi Groupie Japan Joined 5416 days ago 51 posts - 75 votes Speaks: Japanese | Message 32 of 47 14 March 2010 at 10:21pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Maybe you think the Kanji Kentei is useless, but did you know that major newspapers require their top journalists to take and pass that test? Meaningless or not, the truth is it does make a huge difference. A 300k yen a month difference. More if you're a professor. Needless to say, most people, native speakers, are at the 3,000 kanji level and they get by just fine. Sure, but there's a difference between just getting by and being able to read classic works of literature, etc. In fact, when people say they can read newspapers I can't help but to think they're either kidding themselves or think I'm an idiot. How many people here know what a "defect warranty provision" is? In English, let alone in Kanji! What about "divergence rates" and the "futures market"? The first uses non-joyou kanji and the second, 先物(sakimono), has a rather tricky pronunciation.物 can be read "mono", "motsu" and "butsu". Edited by Sayumi on 14 March 2010 at 10:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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