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Which is more difficult to learn? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Magnum Bilingual Triglot Retired Moderator Pro Member United States Joined 6916 days ago 359 posts - 353 votes  Speaks: English*, Serbian*, French Studies: German Personal Language Map | Message 1 of 27 14 September 2006 at 1:30am | IP Logged | |||||
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If we don't study the written language, and only want to learn to speak, which is harder to learn- Mandarin or Japanese?
Our administrator in his language profiles says that speaking these languages is easier to do than learning to read. Both language profiles say it takes a year to learn to speak. My opinion is it will take longer, and is more difficult. What do other people think? Can you speak Mandarin or Japanese after only 1 year of study? How good is Pimsleur? What can you expect to do after finishing the program? Will you be able to understand the news program? Will you be able to go shopping and negotiate prices? How good is FSI? How long do these programs take to complete? Does anyone have a timetable of how much speaking they can do per month of study? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7004 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 2 of 27 14 September 2006 at 5:36am | IP Logged | |||||
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The FSI Chart of language levels and time studied at the bottom of this page give an idea for native English speakers under ideal conditions (FSI training program).
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 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6708 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 27 14 September 2006 at 6:07am | IP Logged | |||||
I'm sure you can, depending on the definition of "speak" and "study". Is that full-time, eight hours a day, immersion?
If you only do Pimsleur (by the end of the month I will have finished the Mandarin course) you won't be able to follow the news, or even have a high level shopping/tourist Mandarin, but you have a glimpse of the language. As many have said before, it's probably best as an accompanying course to something more "deep". Anyway, Malcolm has in another thread posted his opinions on various Pimsleur courses: Here's my opinion based on the three-volume Pimsleur courses I've used. The plus volume makes such a small difference that it can be ignored. "High Beginner" means almost intermediate and "Low Intermediate" means just barely intermediate. Spanish - Low Intermediate Portuguese - Low Intermediate French - Low Intermediate Mandarin - High Beginner Japanese - Beginner 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Raistlin Majere Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Spain uciprotour-cycling.c Joined 6951 days ago 455 posts - 424 votes 7 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Catalan*, FrenchA1, Italian, German Studies: Swedish | Message 4 of 27 14 September 2006 at 6:09am | IP Logged | |||||
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I really can't give you an expert's opinion on this subject - but based on my personal experience, I'd say Mandarin is harder. With about 50-100 words of Japanese I know, I can understand roughly the meaning of very simple sentences written in katakana; however, and with the same base, Mandarin remains totally incomprehensible for me.
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| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6501 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 5 of 27 14 September 2006 at 6:11am | IP Logged | |||||
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Personally, I think Mandarin is easier to learn than Japanese, because of how much Japanese grammar affects the sentence. In particular, the levels of politeness.
In order to understand the average compound or complex Japanese sentence, you need to master both the polite and the plain form. In this post I've already used two complex sentences (the first in each paragraph), and they form a natural part of adult conversation. The plain form seems only loosely related to the polite form, too, which means memorization and practice before being able to use them. Add to that two different types of adjectives, and the 'conjugation' of those adjectives, and you have a lot of mechanics to learn in order to speak normal sentences. The result is that, in general, what you learn the beginning of most Japanese texts is quite different from what you hear in Japanese movies and music. It places yet another hurdle in the way of learning a quite foreign language. Mandarin doesn't have the problem of inflection. Politeness isn't much of a problem, either. I lived in Taiwan for almost four years before I really starting to learn the formal and polite language, and I was confortably accepted in conversations with native speakers. The main problems people have with Mandarin are its foriegnness, the characters and the tones. The first two are also problems with Japanese (except for the huge number of words borrowed from English, including 'soup,' which blows my mind). Tones -- I think tones are an overrated problem, but not many people seem to agree with me about that. I think that it's a much smaller problem than the conjugations found in Japanese. And, anyway, Japanese also has intonations to remember. Edited by Raincrowlee on 14 September 2006 at 6:12am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6567 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 6 of 27 14 September 2006 at 6:58am | IP Logged | |||||
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I found it was much easier to understand Mandarin movies than Japanese movies after I'd studied each for two semesters at school. It's my impression that brief conversation in Mandarin will consist of textbook-grammar utterances, while conversational Japanese will use grammar that beginners' courses don't expose you to.
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| japkorengchi Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6479 days ago 334 posts - 355 votes | Message 7 of 27 14 September 2006 at 7:37am | IP Logged | |||||
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I personally think Mandarin is easier than Japanese. In Japanese the same Chinese character can be read in more than ten different ways according to the preference of native speakers yet we don't have this problem in Mandarin. There is only one way of reading the same character in Mandarin; exceptions are so rare that I can hardly give you any.
What is more, when I make mistakes in Japanese polite form, the listener may feel offended even though I don't mean it. Polite forms have been out of fashion in Mandarin so you don't need to worry about it in most occasions. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| TDC Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6720 days ago 261 posts - 291 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, French Studies: Esperanto, Ukrainian, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Persian | Message 8 of 27 14 September 2006 at 3:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'd say you can definitely learn to speak Chinese faster, because there are no verb conjugations, and the sentence order is the same as English basically, whereas in Japanese it's different.
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