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Medulin
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Croatia
Joined 4668 days ago
1199 posts - 2192 votes 
Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali
| Message 81 of 96 17 March 2014 at 12:28pm | IP Logged |
Solfrid Cristin wrote:
Hm. You guys are not really helping me in suppressing my urges for Mandarin :-)
A language with a simple grammar and where I may have less trouble with my dyslexia does actually sound
kind of appealing. The problem would of course be the tones, which I have little experience with. Perhaps I'll
make Mandarin my next project after Russian if I ever get to the point where I think that I know "sufficient
amounts of Russian". |
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It Mandarin, you may have trouble with writing/reading,
read this topic: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=19469&PN=27&TPN=1
''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. ''
Edited by Medulin on 17 March 2014 at 12:29pm
1 person has voted this message useful
| Solfrid Cristin
Heptaglot
Winner TAC 2011 & 2012
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5334 days ago
4143 posts - 8864 votes
Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian
Studies: Russian
| Message 82 of 96 17 March 2014 at 1:15pm | IP Logged |
Medulin wrote:
Solfrid Cristin wrote:
Hm. You guys are not really helping me in suppressing my urges for Mandarin :-)
A language with a simple grammar and where I may have less trouble with my dyslexia does actually sound
kind of appealing. The problem would of course be the tones, which I have little experience with. Perhaps I'll
make Mandarin my next project after Russian if I ever get to the point where I think that I know "sufficient
amounts of Russian". |
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|
It Mandarin, you may have trouble with writing/reading,
read this topic: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?T ID=19469&PN=27&TPN=1
''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. '' |
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You are definitely helping :-)
1 person has voted this message useful
| Cristianoo
Triglot
Senior Member
Brazil
https://projetopoligRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 4121 days ago
175 posts - 289 votes
Speaks: Portuguese*, FrenchB2, English
Studies: Russian
| Message 83 of 96 17 March 2014 at 7:26pm | IP Logged |
At least studying kanji = having fun.
No language is difficult if you have fun learning it. It doesn't mean that you'll ever be
able to speak it, but even so it shouldn't be a source of stress.
Eventually you'll start to speak it.
So I believe in lot's of study and less self-pressure into lerning it.
Edited by Cristianoo on 17 March 2014 at 7:30pm
1 person has voted this message useful
| Medulin
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Croatia
Joined 4668 days ago
1199 posts - 2192 votes
Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali
| Message 84 of 96 20 March 2014 at 2:52pm | IP Logged |
Cristianoo wrote:
At least studying kanji = having fun.
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Not really,
studying isolated kanji means nothing,
the right approach is study all words with a particular kanji, this
means combinations of kanji with right pronunciation.
For example, the word meaning unrest ''douyou'',
which is among the 5000 most frequent words in Japanese
(according to the frequency dictionary released by Routledge),
consists of two kanji: 動揺
Edited by Medulin on 20 March 2014 at 2:53pm
1 person has voted this message useful
| Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6597 days ago
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4 sounds
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| Message 85 of 96 20 March 2014 at 3:42pm | IP Logged |
Medulin wrote:
Cristianoo wrote:
At least studying kanji = having fun.
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Not really, |
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It just depends on the person... There's no objective measure of fun.
3 persons have voted this message useful
| Medulin
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Croatia
Joined 4668 days ago
1199 posts - 2192 votes
Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali
| Message 86 of 96 20 March 2014 at 5:36pm | IP Logged |
FUN noun.
1 A trick, a cheat, a hoax
2 Amusement, light-hearted pleasure; jocularity, drollery. Also, something which provides this, a source of amusement. e18.
[Shorter OED)
Edited by Medulin on 20 March 2014 at 5:37pm
3 persons have voted this message useful
| Stolan
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4032 days ago
274 posts - 368 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots
Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese
| Message 87 of 96 20 March 2014 at 7:24pm | IP Logged |
Medulin wrote:
.......Luckily the Chinese like to praise and give face a lot so it's easy to believe the propaganda
when the propaganda is good. '' |
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The further one goes back in this forum, the more posts are filled with more misconceptions, inflection=grammar,
and "standard average European" learner only types.
Oh lord, is it biologically impossible for a person that is not East Asian to speak an Asian languages and hear
tones? You don't think that all the recent Chinese immigrants anywhere speak without such a good accent either in
our languages?
There are some pseudo-scientific blood curdling rage inducing idiotic theories out there that the Chinese and
many others are biologically selected to hear tonality and that different parts of their brains are used and designed
for something so "alien" as Mandarin (which is the simplest Sino Tibetan language outside of creolized dialects and
possibly on the same level as Spanish or English really. It is not a conservative language!)
The writing system only takes a few years to get the hang of, I know tons of Hong Kongers who can only write their
characters in cursive scribbles since they know each character and can type them on computers, but don't feel the
need to remember each and every single stroke, they just make them recognizable when a pen is the only option.
Can you make a sketch of the faces of everyone you know in the world?
No, but you can recognize them when you run into them.
Edited by Stolan on 20 March 2014 at 7:27pm
3 persons have voted this message useful
| Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6597 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes
4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
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| Message 88 of 96 20 March 2014 at 7:58pm | IP Logged |
Medulin wrote:
FUN noun.
1 A trick, a cheat, a hoax
2 Amusement, light-hearted pleasure; jocularity, drollery. Also, something which provides this, a source of amusement. e18.
[Shorter OED)
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Well, for example many say that reading a dictionary is boring and only a phone book can be worse. I remember hearing this even on HTLAL, though fortunately most members understand that we're all different and any language-related stuff can be fun. My subjective opinion is totally that kanji are too difficult to be fun, and it's interesting to look at the etymology but if I ever learned Japanese this would be the least fun thing for me. My main point was that we can't objectively say kanji are fun. Some people enjoy them but there's no need to pretend it will be fun for everyone, especially those who have little interest in Japanese to begin with.
1 person has voted this message useful
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