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Difficulties in Mandarin | ||
Tags: Difficulty | Mandarin | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| w.shipley Groupie United States Joined 5675 days ago 42 posts - 43 votes Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 8 08 February 2010 at 2:24am | IP Logged | |||||
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Last fall, I took an Elementary Chinese I course and passed with an A. I enjoyed the language a ton, but I hated the class environment (I had a similar experience with German and haven't touched it since). I've put Chinese on hold for a while, but I've been considering picking it up again.
My question is this: Compared to what I'm currently toying around with (Russian), is Chinese basically just about learning characters and using them in the correct ways? I'm a native English speaker, and most of Chinese grammar I've studied seems quite simple. I also think I do well with the tones and memorizing characters (I actually think of it as memorizing words, not individual characters) and enjoy both of them quite a bit. So, for someone with my experience, aside from a few grammar things still left to be learned, is all I have to do is learn vocabulary/idioms, etc? I mean, I understand some other things must be practiced, but still, I feel like most of the work left is actually the characters/vocabulary (the HARD part). Is this true? Maybe? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Pyx Diglot Senior Member China Joined 5734 days ago 670 posts - 892 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 2 of 8 08 February 2010 at 3:13am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'd assert that compared with the amount of vocabulary you have to learn, the grammar you have to learn is negligible anyway. It's just that in Chinese you ALSO have to learn the characters. Oh, and the chengyu. Don't forget the goddamn chengyu.
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| delectric Diglot Senior Member China Joined 7180 days ago 608 posts - 733 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: German | Message 3 of 8 08 February 2010 at 7:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Yes I second that. Learning lots of words is definitely the biggest task in any language which is why Chinese is so difficult because there's nearly no shared vocabulary. Yes the Idioms will take time. I suggest just learning a few until you get really good at Chinese. A lot of the idioms will have characters that are rarely used elsewhere. Remembering the tones on EVERY single (not word) but syllable. I think getting comfortable with the tones takes a long time. It's easy to rationally comprehend that the tone of a syllable will change the meaning of what you want to express, however, it's another thing all together feeling this idiom in your heart.
The grammar in any language is I feel the small part of learning the language. For language production I feel grammar is mainly the rules that should make predicting the contruction of sentences easier. For me I would count which words commonly go together (what verbs with what nouns) is also some sort of loose grammar (i.e. a rule in the language). As Chinese has little in common with English much of this 'loose grammar' will have to be learnt 'by heart' in the same way the more difficult and abstract idioms will have to be. Expect only the more patient and educated speakers of Chinese that deal with foreigners in the big cities to understand speakers when they first come to China and mess up the tones (when they go beyond the basic chit chat of 'hello' and 'where are you from' conversations). Good that you do well with the characters, this will set you in good stead to learning the 4000/5000 characters that you'll need to read a paper. A joy in learning Chinese, dedication to the task and lots of free time will make this language easy to learn. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| delectric Diglot Senior Member China Joined 7180 days ago 608 posts - 733 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: German | Message 4 of 8 08 February 2010 at 7:19pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Try this http://www.clavisinica.com/character-test-applet.html applet to see how many characters you know. I just tried the advanced test with 72 characters 2554 was my score. Thought I was at about 3000. Well it's good fun, there's certainly some characters I couldn't recognise outside of a piece of text, and plently of 'oh I should have known that' after I got it wrong. Edited by delectric on 08 February 2010 at 7:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 6049 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 5 of 8 09 February 2010 at 5:36am | IP Logged | |||||
It is a broken link? I am interested to try this... Anyway about the difficulty of Chinese. If you want to study it, just for go it. If you do really well, great!. There are more westerners that speak Mandarin now than ever before (still not a whole lot though). I will tell you though that what delectric said about the grammar is true; not as easy as people expect it to be. This is especially true at the advanced level. Besides, if Chinese weren't hard, there wouldn't be so many beginners out there who have given up, and it wouldn't be a Cat IV language at FSI taking somewhere around 2000 hours to reach proficient level. Anyway, just go for it and find out for yourself. One more thing, the characters = words assumption is wrong and will hinder your thinking. Another false assumption is that all words' characters fit together in a logical way based on meaning. The reality is not that simple. Be sure to keep an open mind. Good luck :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| GeekGuy Newbie China Joined 5436 days ago 21 posts - 23 votes Studies: French | Message 6 of 8 09 February 2010 at 5:38am | IP Logged | |||||
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Put an accent on idioms, characters and the way you use them. If you are fond of Chinese literature, try finding dynamic and imaginary ways operating the idioms you acquire.
In terms of Grammar, you may find it is always somehow "ignored" in contemporary Chinese literature where everything is live and mobile. I suppose the main thing on which you ought to focus in the part of Grammar is sentence structures. They make up ways people express their ideas and emotions. A good piece of work, if you would like to admire CHinese literature, implies lively languages with abundant idioms and various ways of expressions. Learing basic sentence strutures will serve the purpose of helping to "live" in China. The more idioms you know, the more "profound" you sound when speaking CHinese. On the other hand, I highly suggest learning a little about ancient Chinese which is also a vey big challenge for native speakers. People quote a lot to decorate their speech. http://www.shigeku.org/shiku/gs/songci/index.htm http://www.3lian.com/zl/114/t/tangdai.htm Try these tow links above. Hope that will help. Good luck! Edited by GeekGuy on 09 February 2010 at 7:12am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| unityandoutside Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6013 days ago 94 posts - 149 votes Speaks: English*, Russian Studies: Latin, Mandarin | Message 7 of 8 10 February 2010 at 5:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Chinese is definitely a LOT more a vocabulary battle than Russian. There's a lot less "formalized" grammar. On The other hand, this ends up meaning that there are a lot of things going on that are still relevant, just more difficult to put into a strict set of rules. So I'd say that the grammar rules of Chinese are simpler to learn, but I think ultimately more difficult to get the nuances of. In addition, it's even more foreign than Russian, despite the fact many claim that the grammar is "similar" to English because it's analytical and SVO.
In a typical Russian grammar rule, you're told that such and such a case is used in such and such a grammatical situation. In a typical mandarin one, beyond the very basics, you're told that such a particle or structure carries a connotation - a much more loosely defined way of looking at grammar. Even so, vocabulary and idioms are the bulk of the battle. I may have just built up the grammar beast in my last two paragraphs, but that was merely to balance out the misconception that it's virtually nonexistent. In any case, Chinese and Russian are both great languages, best of luck! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Johntm Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5421 days ago 616 posts - 725 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 8 10 February 2010 at 6:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
Edited by Johntm on 10 February 2010 at 6:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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