Harder than another language? You’ve failed to consider the drastic differences in
phonetic efficiency of the scripts
complexity of the individual script elements (the element q or even quit vs. the monosomatic element 龍 for instance (it cannot be meaningfully broken down further))
the difference in the number of such script elements needing to be learned, e.g. 26 letters vs. thousands of complex characters
the added complexity of tonality
It’s good to see someone forging ahead, blind to the difficulty of the language he or she is learning. How far has this irrational optimism gotten you, btw?
Really, I love the cram school system. Sleep is way over rated, especially for young children, and kids really only need to learn math and English to be successful in life… :eh: :eh: :eh:
Really, I love the cram school system. Sleep is way over rated, especially for young children, and kids really only need to learn math and English to be successful in life… :eh: :eh: :eh:[/quote]
And they don’t even learn English! Give them those 1000s of hours back to play and get them to learn it later if they need to.
I hated doing that! What a waste of time. I used to blast through it so I could actually just sit down and memorise them (stare at them 'til brain remembers shape/sound)
Yeah…pretty boring. Now I just read novels with a dictionary in case I run into rough going.
Repetition was the key for me… I need to look at something 10 times for 5 min vs. one time for 50. Writing things down is also a key me remember. For example, I’ll make a crib sheet for an open book test but not use it because the act of making the crib sheet allowed me to remember.
Reading my first full length novel now. It’s a translation (from Dutch, which I can’t read) so it’s not so culturally opaque. Dictionary slows me down, just guess. Going OK but I sometimes a bit lazy getting started.
Harder than another language? You’ve failed to consider the drastic differences in
phonetic efficiency of the scripts
complexity of the individual script elements (the element q or even quit vs. the monosomatic element 龍 for instance (it cannot be meaningfully broken down further))
the difference in the number of such script elements needing to be learned, e.g. 26 letters vs. thousands of complex characters
the added complexity of tonality
It’s good to see someone forging ahead, blind to the difficulty of the language he or she is learning. How far has this irrational optimism gotten you, btw? [/quote]
The Chinese learning is going great, thanks for asking. I’m no die-hard, learn it in 18-months kind of guy, but I enjoy going at my own pace and studying everyday. I do have a job and other responsibilities. If I could cut English out of my life and spend 18 hours a day studying Chinese, I would. I find that once I add a character to my flashcards and practice writing it, I can remember it quite well and rarely make mistakes. I wouldn’t say I’m blind to the difficulty. I never said learning another language was easy (if I did, I take it back. Sorry). I merely said/meant that learning one language is just as hard/easy as learning any other. They each have their benefits and drawbacks, but in the end, they are just arbitrary symbols with certain amount of rules. I think Chomsky would agree with me on this (that is the basis of Generative Grammar, no?)
I did say there were benefits and drawbacks of each language, which you seem to have missed. Let’s take an English Verb vs. a Chinese verb.
English verb is easier to pronounce (thanks, alphabet).
Must know how to spell/write it (pretty easy in English; exceptions may be foreign loan words. Also, according to some of the other threads on this forum, I guess spelling English is pretty tough even for English teachers in Taiwan.)
You must know verb forms and syntactic rules (3rd person singular, past tense marker, irregular past tense forms, etc)
You have to know any prepositions it can use (listen TO, or listen FOR, but not listen AT)
Must know other verbs it can work with (I LIKE TO GO shopping, but not I LIKE TO WALK shopping.)
That’s a good start. How about the Chinese verb?
Pronunciation is harder - must be memorized (sometimes, not always, this can be deduced from the radical).
Must know how to write it (more difficult than English in most cases)
No need for verb forms - there’s just the 1 character. Other characters take care of the tenses (過, 了, etc).
No need to learn prepositions it can use. Other characters take care of that, too.
Must know other verbs it can work with.
So, English verb has the benefits of better pronunciation. Chinese verb has the benefits of not learning any tenses/extra forms. Now imagine a German verb, which has many more forms than an English verb (sein, ist, ist gewesen, war, etc) or any other language that has way more noun markers and declensions than English. Chinese, in this respect, is easier than them all.
Sure, Chinese is harder as far as pronunciation and writing goes, but the grammar, compared to Germanic languages, is pretty damn easy. So, each has it’s benefits and drawbacks. Is one harder than the other? Personally, I don’t think so, especially from a linguistic point-of-view.
p.s. Given your “26 letters vs. thousands of characters” - I don’t buy that, either. You only have 26 letters, sure… but in pretty much every combination possible resulting in tens of thousands of words. How many words does the average native English-speaking adult know? 30k? 40k? More? You must know that many words and all it entails - spelling, meaning, pronunciation, verb forms, noun forms, prefixes, suffixes, infixes, prepositions, etc) and you want to make the argument that learning 3,000 characters is harder than what you’ve already accomplished in your native language? I’m not buying it. It’s difficult, sure… but not nearly as hard as people make it out to be.
[quote=“MPenguin”]
p.s. Given your “26 letters vs. thousands of characters” - I don’t buy that, either. You only have 26 letters, sure… but in pretty much every combination possible resulting in tens of thousands of words. How many words does the average native English-speaking adult know? 30k? 40k? More? You must know that many words and all it entails - spelling, meaning, pronunciation, verb forms, noun forms, prefixes, suffixes, infixes, prepositions, etc) and you want to make the argument that learning 3,000 characters is harder than what you’ve already accomplished in your native language? I’m not buying it. It’s difficult, sure… but not nearly as hard as people make it out to be.[/quote]
If it were only a matter of memorizing 3,000 characters…the problem is that they all combine, and not always in ways that are listed in a dictionary or reference source, but there are rules behind the combining that the native speakers “know”. Add on that there is no capitalization, no means of marking proper nouns, no spacing between words (if indeed anyone can agree on what a written word consists of in Chinese)…yes, it is as hard as people make it out to be. And to top it off, the written language is wildly different from the spoken language.
Well, I won’t deny that some aspects of Chinese are easier, but I don’t think anyone in their right mind would say that they’re even close when it comes to the topic of this thread.
For most, the difficulty of the tones and the writing system is SO great that it is terribly difficult to make oneself understood while speaking, very hard to learn to read and terribly hard to learn to write at the adult level. I really don’t think that can be said about most Western languages. BTW, have you, as an adult, learned any other Western languages to fluency (and I mean the ability to converse at ease in a wide range of topics, even if not perfectly, and to read at least novels written for young adults with ease)? I don’t mean to challenge you or anything; I’m just curious. I believe that most who learn both Mandarin and a Western language like German, French, Italian or Spanish will give very different ratings to the overall difficulty of the two efforts. Both ironlady and I can make this comparison based on first-hand experience. I’m wondering whether you’ve also gone through both types, or whether you’re basing your judgment on your evaluation of your native tongue’s difficulty. Again, I’m not being the least bit snide here – it’s just that I don’t know where you’re coming from, and I’ve seen people do that. They (e.g. local Taiwanese) think English is MUCH more difficult than Chinese, not realizing that they’re not really in a position to judge. IMO, someone (e.g. an Arab) who has learned both English and Mandarin to fluency is in a real position to judge.
Of course, it could just be that we’re each placing greater weight on different aspects of the language, you on grammar and I on characters, and we can agree to amicably disagree.
[quote=“MPenguin”]
You have to know any prepositions it can use (listen TO, or listen FOR, but not [color=#FF0000]listen AT[/color])[/quote]
Unless you’re from certain parts of the Deep South…
Excellent! 加油! 