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Chinese writing is not so hard. | ||
Tags: Chinese Characters | Writing | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Collaborative writing |  | |
| Halcyon Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6237 days ago 35 posts - 37 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese | Message 9 of 18 21 March 2008 at 6:57am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I might be out of place here, but you can guess the pronunciation for some words. The meaning by context (if there is any), related words and word pairs, related words that share the same radicals, etc... but uh, tones be damned. Guessing isn't really a great way to go about it, but not all new hanzi you come across necessarily require a dictionary to know at least one definition or general meaning. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| delectric Diglot Senior Member China Joined 6963 days ago 608 posts - 733 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: German | Message 10 of 18 21 March 2008 at 11:27am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I agree learning to write/learn Chinese is not so hard (if you enjoy it) and don't mind taking the years of effort to learn it.
So true it's not so hard to learn but it's certainly harder than any other language in the world including Japanese. Here's why... 1)Non phonetic for many characters. 2) Over 4000 characters that need to be learnt just to read a newspaper (compared to only 2000 for Japanese). 3) Some writing can be particularly dense and idiomatic. 4) Two sets of characters to learn Traditional and Simplified. 5) 2 sets of phonetic script to learn Taiwanese and Pinyin. 6) No phonetic script used for foreign loan words or foreign company names etc, really the phonetic script is just a tool to learn the characters. 7) More than one pronunciation for many characters (though not as much as for Japanese). 8) No spacing between words. 9) Sometimes hard to define what a word is in Chinese is it a composition of more than one character.... 10) Various accents and 'Chinese languages' that further complicate the reading of Chinese. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6332 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 11 of 18 21 March 2008 at 11:34pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Totally disagree. How much longer did it take for you to become fluent in Chinese than to become fluent in Japanese? I personally find Chinese much easier to learn than Japanese, although I'm certainly not fluent. Anyway, my opinion is probably not nearly as convincing as the collective opinion of the forum 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6484 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 12 of 18 22 March 2008 at 2:26am | IP Logged | ||||||||
That opinion you're referencing is about all four aspects of the languages. It's the grammar that makes Japanese harder. This discussion is about the writing system. Chinese is just a long hard road with no breaks and no shortcuts. Everything new must be memorized. The characters are just mnemonics with a limited connection to either the pronunciation or the meaning. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Ruan Diglot Groupie BrazilRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5963 days ago 95 posts - 101 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English | Message 13 of 18 23 March 2008 at 11:04am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Maybe most of the people who complain about how hard is Chinese are just taking the wrong approach to it. I firmly believe that if anyone approaches to any language philologically, he will be sucessful sooner than if he didn't; but in Chinese "sooner" means "while you're alive" if you're a Western.
The difficulty of a writing system should not be measured due to its complexity, but due to its accuracy. Insofar as I'm concerned, Chinese writing is very accurate: one syllable corresponds to one word and words that sounds the same but are different in meaning are also spelled differently. And if it's not enough, most of the characters are made up of smaller parts that give clues about its meaning and pronounciation. I cannot imagine anything more efficient and suitable to such language, but I can readily imagine how the English writing system could be improved. Edited by Ruan on 23 March 2008 at 11:09am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| delectric Diglot Senior Member China Joined 6963 days ago 608 posts - 733 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: German | Message 14 of 18 24 March 2008 at 12:21am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Yes i'm talking about the writing system and not the languge as a whole. I can't say I have a lot of experience learning Japanese, though I am familiar in the make up of the language as it's been discussed so many times.
Though I do have many friends who are learning Chinese who came from learning Japanese to a high level. They find Chinese more difficult though perhaps these learners were particularly good at grasping grammar. I also know a lot of Japanese learners of Chinese 100% of them say Chinese is the much more difficult, by far... But I guess they don't count. As for Chinese not being able to be improved I think there is a huge debate out there that has been going for many years. If it couldn't be 'improved' then it wouldn't have been simplified. Vietnam (and it's tonal language) and Korea wouldn't have done away with their characters. Also the whole reason the simplified system and Pinyin etc emerged is due to the notion that the Chinese writing system can be vastly improved. Well I like it the way it is. But like I said in my former post the Chinese writing system is very easy to learn (if we don't calculate hardness in time efficiency). It provides me with a lot of joy that I wouldn't get anywhere else. Though it will take longer to learn then just about every other writing system. For example most languages with an Latin alphabet you are 99% of the way there already. Other phonetic style scripts well I do believe that anyone can learn 30-50 symbols very quickly. Edited by delectric on 24 March 2008 at 12:23am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6332 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 15 of 18 24 March 2008 at 4:44pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Good point.
That's your opinion. I agree that the Japanese grammar is much harder. But I also believe that, regarding the writing system, multiple readings for a character trump everything else, even a higher number of characters.
I've never heard of anyone learning Chinese after learning Japanese to a high level and thinking Chinese is harder. There are probably some out there, but I frequently hear the opposite. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| J-Learner Senior Member Australia Joined 5812 days ago 556 posts - 636 votes Studies: Yiddish, English* Studies: Dutch | Message 16 of 18 03 July 2008 at 7:17pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Why do some people excel at music? Why some at engineering? Why some at doing nothing in particular at all?
Can't say I know the whole of that answer, but passion and need seems to be two large components of it. Who can say: speaker of X should find learning Y easy? The fact that I am finding Hebrew far easier than German blows that out of the water if you ask me. Even if there is some help in being related, there is no certainty that it will be learn easily. Some will find Chinese easier, some Japanese (insert any other language pair here), some will find it easier to learn a language closely related to one they speak, and others will learn with ease one unrelated to their native language. This attempt at forming "objective" categories of degrees of difficulty is not only distracting but pointless. Ask someone with a an excellent visual memory what they find hard about chinese. Guarantee it is not the characters. On the flip side, ask a musical person which aspect they find easier, bet it's more likely the tonal/pronunciation. Shalom, Yehoshua. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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