What major language is harder? Arabic doesnât have tones or pictograms, it is certainly easier than Mandarin.
Arabic
Japanese
Korean
are all harder. I have a good friend who is an Arabist, and found Mandarin considerably easier. Also another friend who has amazing Chinese and then learned Korean and found the latter harder by several magnitudes. Chinese just takes a lot of memorization, but the grammar is pretty simple.
Category I: 23-24 weeks (575-600 hours)
Languages closely related to English
Afrikaans
Danish
Dutch
French
Italian
Norwegian
Portuguese
Romanian
Spanish
Swedish
Category II: 30 weeks (750 hours)
Languages similar to English
German
Category III: 36 weeks (900 hours)
Languages with linguistic and/or cultural differences from English
Indonesian
Malaysian
Swahili
Category IV: 44 weeks (1100 hours)
Languages with significant linguistic and/or cultural differences from English
Albanian
Amharic
Armenian
Azerbaijani
Bengali
Bosnian
Bulgarian
Burmese
Croatian
Czech
*Estonian
*Finnish
*Georgian
Greek
Hebrew
Hindi
*Hungarian
Icelandic
Khmer
Lao
Latvian
Lithuanian
Macedonian
*Mongolian
Nepali
Pashto
Persian (Dari, Farsi, Tajik)
Polish
Russian
Serbian
Sinhala
Slovak
Slovenian
Tagalog
*Thai
Turkish
Ukrainian
Urdu
Uzbek
*Vietnamese
Xhosa
Zulu
Category V: 88 weeks (2200 hours)
Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers
Arabic
Cantonese (Chinese)
Mandarin (Chinese)
*Japanese
Korean
- Usually more difficult than other languages in the same category.
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They are not harder. Japanese is probably harder as that has been confirmed by Foreign Service Institute, the other two are anecdotes.
PTT users represent nobody but themselves. It only has a few tens of thosuands of users.
Then as a Taiwanese, whats your opinion on foreigners not learning Chinese, or what do you think most think
But ⊠what you quoted later said itâs in the same category of hardest languages. That sounds reasonably close to me.
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Yes,it turns out it is close 
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I donât really care one way or another and I think most people just donât expect foreigners to know Chinese, though knowing Chinese isnât particularly surprising either.
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Well knowing Chinese should not surprising in Taiwan. (Even for big noses).
Yeah, but⊠if you have studied in Taiwan and somehow are NOT able to speak Mandarin that will not look good on your CV.
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That is a good point.
Guy
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To the OP. Living in taiwan english only is absolutely possible like everyone seems to have said. But you will be either 95% limited or 950% slower. Take itr slow, but its worth learning the local language where you live. It opens doors, broadens perspectives and we dont become bitter old divorced expats hating taiwan whilst not actually understanding taiwan on a deeper level (we all know these folks). Taiwan gets deep as shit and will probably always be a sort of oxymoronic sophisticated clusterfuck that will always keep surprising the best of us in both amazing and terrible ways. Keeps it interesting, a fun key to life.
I feel that taiwan is exactly as easy in English as Vancouver (canada) is in Mandarin. In many ways. But its not ideal if one wants to dive deeper, or stay longer or get more involved with society and the world. Just as the Canadians will think im stupid saying that, taiwanese also think that about foreigners expecting to live here under english only. The difference is caandians mostyl cant speak mnadarin to explain it at all and taiwanese are able to basically and tend to be more polite about faceâŠ
keep it in perspective and stay humble in the beginning. My group of friends always like to remind me when strangers complement my Mandarin ability its just a face thing because of face. If they truly are friends they will ask you if you ate or why you gianed weihgt instead of saying hello. All in good fun haha but true. All part of the paradox that is taiwan. Enjoy it, stay humble its more fun.
That said, i have also noticed a HUGE improvement in english recently as well. So its not hard to live here in english only. Just seems like a seriously missed opportunityâŠand i regret not taking it serious my first decad here. It would have improved my quality of life literally 100 fold.
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The fastest way to gaining respect within taiwan is learning either âtaiwaneseâ, hakka or any of the aboriginal lnguages depending on the community you live. In buisness you learn these for sourcing (probably just taiwanese is best) and mandarin for actual usefulness outside your community. Those big noses get all the grammas.
Kind of wild that a Taiwanese group would have made this. What a different world it was
Agreed.
To be quite honest, I think that if youâre not planning to stay for the long haul or for an actual career (like less than 20 months) , not learning mandarin wonât kill ya. It will make for a more basic expatriation experience which gets boring eventually. If youâre living a life that is adjacent to the locals like they donât exist and only have meaningful relationships with english speaking ones wonât make you learn anything new.
Mandarin isnât necessarily hard if 1) you live in a mandarin speaking country, 2) you are actively taking classes and 3) are taking these classes seriously. When I was my dorm during my thesis, Iâve seen double diploma students (these usually stayed the year) go from 0 to hanging around with taiwanese locals and speak mandarin in a very correct way, because your oral skills will progress way faster than the written ones. So, if youâre just planning to take your english classes for 6 months and have a little fun without any will to go to Taiwan in the near future, mandarin will clearly not be as useful. However, itâs never bad to learn the basis of a language while youâre there.
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It actually is , to some studies I heard about it takes 5x longer to for reading and writing compared to say another European language. There simply isnât any language that compares with the difficulty of mastering the reading and writing component.
You can only get so far with the mastery of Mandarin without delving into the reading and writing component. I know this from personal experience as I learned to speak before reading and writing and there were many errors due to the Taiwan dialect I was learning .
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They made the whole world hate them . Fecking idiots ! Talk about a massive own goal !
Guoji hua lolâŠ
SHE taking the RMB thereâŠ
I learned Chinese for years but basically have given up on it now I have very little interest in mainland Chinese content or ever living in China and that is the problem. I coast along with my level in Taiwan.and see little benefit from getting more fluent for my future goals (mainly because itâs only really used in Taiwan and China ). I agree a small amount of Chinese can go a long way living here even if just for a short time.
Living in Taiwan is pretty tough for foreigners to integrate with locals , one further issue is that many Taiwanese donât speak Mandarin as their 'friendly language â . Their local language for friends and family when joking could be Taiwanese or heavily influenced Taiwanese Mandarin (Taiwan Guoyu 
). So yeahâŠChallenging.
I think itâs actually as easy to speak English with many people in the cities cos they want to speak English with you and prefer it so they can practice their English. Some will be much more eager to hang out with a newbie who speaks English with them , and knows nothing about Taiwan , than Mandarin
I would pay no attention to some suanming racists on PTT.
Ive studied Chinese now for 13-14 years. Well say studied, but I have never stopped trying to improve. Now I can speak easily with groups of Taiwanese and keep the conversation with the group at the same pace and nobody really accommodating me as a foreigner. If I speak English to Taiwanese friends, they will change to Chinese. After all this time, its only at this point that can say has really helped me to integrate here, which I am happy about, but its a long slog.
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