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Decision Time: Mandarin Or Not? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| brian91 Senior Member Ireland Joined 5239 days ago 335 posts - 437 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 1 of 9 08 July 2010 at 5:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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Okay, here is the situation: I want to be a polyglot, but I also want to experience culture in east Asia. I love
Chinese culture the most, and when I start college this autumn I can study Mandarin for four years (including six months in the PRC or maybe Taiwan). But, I'm afraid that because of the difficulty of Mandarin, I will have to slave away at it for a decade, ignoring my German etc. This would obviously be a bad thing, as in achieving fluency in Mandarin I would lose my other languages, as it is apparently such a difficult language. So I guess what I'm really wondering is: how difficult is Mandarin? Would I have to sacrifice my other languages for it? I was thinking of learning Indonesian instead: Asian culture + much simpler. So what are your thoughts? Do you speak Mandarin with other languages? How long did it take you to become proficient? Do you feel Mandarin took away (too much) from your other languages? Okay, too many questions. :D Thanks, Confused Teenager Edited by brian91 on 08 July 2010 at 6:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Adamdm Groupie Australia Joined 5232 days ago 62 posts - 89 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Japanese, Dari, German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written) | Message 3 of 9 09 July 2010 at 2:29am | IP Logged | ||
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Yes, Chinese is very hard to learn*. I have been on it for over a decade, with the advantage of a tame 华人, and still find it a struggle to understand simple pieces of writing, or to converse at a level above the most basic.
However, your learning Chinese will not negatively affect your learning of other European languages, such as French and German - quite the opposite. Putting your brain to the sounds and logic of a language so far removed from the Indo-European ones helps you to recognise the similarities in those languages, and thus makes them easier to learn. A year or two ago, I had the opportunity to take a Spanish course for free. Spanish is a language that I had never studied. I realised that my _starting_ competence in Spanish was about level to my Cinese ability! Since then, I have revived my French (learned for 18 months, reluctantly, at school >30 years ago), and started with German. Pas de dificile, und so far, so gut! These are recreational breaks from my Chinese studies. Like mountain climbing, or sailing around the world, put office problems in perspective, so does Chinese study make study of European languages seem like a fairly easy walk in a familiar park. Good luck with your studies! A * (although some Westerners do seem to learn it with remarkable facility - one of my heroes in this regard is Rick Harbaugh author of an extremely useful Chinese/English dictionary [http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0966075005/zipubooks], who, without any obvious Chinese antecedants [he's American born, doesn't look Chinese, and I imagine that his name is Welsh] did an economics degree in Taipei and compiled the dictionary in his spare time!) Edited by Adamdm on 09 July 2010 at 2:29am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Genocyde Groupie United States Joined 5567 days ago 56 posts - 75 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Mandarin, Persian | Message 4 of 9 09 July 2010 at 10:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm studying Mandarin now, along with 3 other languages, and I really don't think it takes away from the others. It honestly isn't that difficult, excluding the writing system of course. The writing would be the thing to take away time from other languages.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cassie.Stroll Newbie China Joined 5058 days ago 23 posts - 23 votes Speaks: Mandarin* Studies: English, Spanish, French | Message 5 of 9 10 July 2010 at 3:39am | IP Logged | ||
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Well,I am a native Chinese speaker.
I had learned English at school on and off for nearly six years, but my English is still not good. I think that's because I had little practice chances in the real life. Every language has its difficulties, if you master the rules, things will be better and clearer. All you need is practice while keep learning. edit: "little" should be corrected with"few" Edited by Cassie.Stroll on 10 July 2010 at 3:58am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| YoshiYoshi Senior Member China Joined 5326 days ago 143 posts - 205 votes Speaks: Mandarin* | Message 6 of 9 10 July 2010 at 4:53am | IP Logged | ||
Indonesian：Southeast Asian culture + Muslim culture + much simpler. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| johntm93 Senior Member United States Joined 5122 days ago 587 posts - 746 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 7 of 9 10 July 2010 at 5:15am | IP Logged | ||
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Do it if you can stop/put off a language you're already learning, but I'd say stop adding languages to your "currently learning" list. It's hard, I know, but it'll be nearly impossible to get anywhere trying to study 3 languages and keep up with school, life, possibly a job, and everything else. Unless you don't sleep.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TixhiiDon Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5259 days ago 772 posts - 1474 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, German, Russian Studies: Georgian | Message 8 of 9 10 July 2010 at 5:30am | IP Logged | ||
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I would advise not to learn Indonesian just because you've heard that it's easy. You
need to have some basic interest in the countries of the languages you are studying in order to stay motivated, not just a general interest in "Asia", which after all is a huge continent with a vast number of peoples, cultures, religions, and languages. If you are specifically interested in South-East Asia Indonesian might be a good choice, but there is also Thai, Vietnamese, Khmer, and so on. Why don't you check out the homepage for SOAS, University of London? They offer degree courses in all kinds of Asian and African languages. You might see something that takes your fancy there. Without wanting to sound patronising, you're still young, you have plenty of time, and you never know what avenues life is going to lead you down. If someone told me at 16 I would be living in Japan and translating Japanese into English for a living I would have laughed in their face. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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