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I just finished a Chinese (Mandarin) introductory class, and while there seemed to a consensus in saying that writing Chinese characters is the language most daunting difficulty, I very much think otherwise. From my experience I think that the only difficulty with learning characters is the required studying time to master it. However the same thing is true for learning word-spelling in romance languages for instance, where spelling can diverge from pronunciation quite significantly. Other than that, in my opinion, the system is very much straightforward, one can't really say it's tricky.
My main difficulty came verbal comprehension. Identifying phonemes is incredibly challenging as the sounds morphology do not resemble those in the languages I master, furthermore since they can shaped differently by different tones. In writing you can take a second to recognize a character, whereas verbally you only have a fraction of a second to recognize words.
I had been acquainted with Japanese before, and while the writing system (aside from hiragana-katakana) is very much the same, its phonemes are much easier to identify. I could transcribe fairly accurately conversations phonetically even though I didn't know most of the vocabulary employed.
Would you agree to say that the Chinese language is much harder to learn for a westerner than Japanese?
No. Japanese is for the average person. Japanese just seems easy because of a lack of tones, but you need more time to reach fluency compared to Japanese. Chinese grammar is SVO like most European languages. Japanese is SOV, and that makes a very significant difference alone
I just finished a Chinese (Mandarin) introductory class, and while there seemed to a consensus in saying that writing Chinese characters is the language most daunting difficulty, I very much think otherwise. From my experience I think that the only difficulty with learning characters is the required studying time to master it. However the same thing is true for learning word-spelling in romance languages for instance, where spelling can diverge from pronunciation quite significantly. Other than that, in my opinion, the system is very much straightforward, one can't really say it's tricky.
My main difficulty came verbal comprehension. Identifying phonemes is incredibly challenging as the sounds morphology do not resemble those in the languages I master, furthermore since they can shaped differently by different tones. In writing you can take a second to recognize a character, whereas verbally you only have a fraction of a second to recognize words.
I had been acquainted with Japanese before, and while the writing system (aside from hiragana-katakana) is very much the same, its phonemes are much easier to identify. I could transcribe fairly accurately conversations phonetically even though I didn't know most of the vocabulary employed.
Would you agree to say that the Chinese language is much harder to learn for a westerner than Japanese?
I found an excellent blog by an American-Korean here that compares Japanese vs Chinese:
I think speaking Chinese is more difficult because of the tones. Japanese is no walk in the park either, but not having tones makes it a little easier, though some Japanese words tend to be long. Chinese words aren't very long. Than again Chinese you will realize is kind of simplistic while Japanese is complicated with it's many words types and different ways of saying things. hmm.
Chinese difficulty - Tones and Writing.
Japanese difficulty - Grammar, Honorifics, SOV Order (as opposed to Chinese which is mainly SVO - similar English).
In some ways though, Mandarin can be a bit like English, easy to start off with once you accomplish tones but if you get to the advanced level, things get real crazy - stuff like Classical Chinese and WenyanWen.
I have heard that to become really fluent (native level) in Japanese is very difficult, because the pitch accent must be right. Since Mandarin is a relatively new language and only widely taught since the 1950s on a mass scale in China, foreigners have it somewhat easier since the Chinese will accept different accents.
I don't know if its the power and popularity of Mandarin lately but I've seen more foreigners perfecting Mandarin than Japanese or Korean for that matter.
I've studied Japanese extensively and Chinese a little bit. Here's my take on it: Japanese starts off hard and gets easier, Chinese starts off easy and gets harder.
Why?
1. Japanese syntax (SOV order) is more or less set in stone. Modifiers ALWAYS precede what they modify, the main verb ALWAYS comes at the end of a sentence. Chinese has a SVO order, like English, which seems simple except when it isn't. Sure, you start off with easy sentences like "flower red" (the flower is red) or "dog run" (the dog runs), but before you know it you are facing conundrums like "arrive [complete] exterior side come arrive one stem tree bottom underside" (He entered the wood and stood beneath a tree).
2. Japanese phonology is much simpler than Chinese, and it's not just the tones. In Chinese you have an aspirated/unaspirated distinction which does not exist in English, as well as a retroflex/palatal distinction. And then, yes, there are the tones which are by no means easy to memorize...and then you have to figure out which syllables actually DROP or CHANGE their tones when they are combined into words/sentences. There are a few words in Japanese which are distinguished by tones (ha'na "nose," hana' "flower"), but they are few and far between. For the most part putting the wrong tone on a word makes no difference in Japanese other than making you sound like a foreigner. This is not the case in Chinese.
3. You can learn hiragana in a day or two and write anything in Japanese in it while you gradually learn kanji. You will not seem overly educated, but it is acceptable. You will also be able to read a lot of what is around you, immediately. In Chinese, writing everything in Pinyin is really not acceptable and it does not help at all in reading. You really have no choice but to learn a whole lot of characters, right away.
Chinese is a context-heavy language. Often times, syntax can be simplified if the context already provides enough information for you to put pieces together. Other languages usually require more formal syntax even in that condition.
However, after you get used to it, you will see the way Chinese is constructed really makes sense and conversation can be very efficient that way.
Chinese is a context-heavy language. Often times, syntax can be simplified if the context already provides enough information for you to put pieces together. Other languages usually require more formal syntax even in that condition.
However, after you get used to it, you will see the way Chinese is constructed really makes sense and conversation can be very efficient that way.
I must admit of all things I dislike about the Chinese language, it's efficiency is one part which I like!
I've studied Japanese extensively and Chinese a little bit. Here's my take on it: Japanese starts off hard and gets easier, Chinese starts off easy and gets harder.
Why?
1. Japanese syntax (SOV order) is more or less set in stone. Modifiers ALWAYS precede what they modify, the main verb ALWAYS comes at the end of a sentence. Chinese has a SVO order, like English, which seems simple except when it isn't. Sure, you start off with easy sentences like "flower red" (the flower is red) or "dog run" (the dog runs), but before you know it you are facing conundrums like "arrive [complete] exterior side come arrive one stem tree bottom underside" (He entered the wood and stood beneath a tree).
2. Japanese phonology is much simpler than Chinese, and it's not just the tones. In Chinese you have an aspirated/unaspirated distinction which does not exist in English, as well as a retroflex/palatal distinction. And then, yes, there are the tones which are by no means easy to memorize...and then you have to figure out which syllables actually DROP or CHANGE their tones when they are combined into words/sentences. There are a few words in Japanese which are distinguished by tones (ha'na "nose," hana' "flower"), but they are few and far between. For the most part putting the wrong tone on a word makes no difference in Japanese other than making you sound like a foreigner. This is not the case in Chinese.
3. You can learn hiragana in a day or two and write anything in Japanese in it while you gradually learn kanji. You will not seem overly educated, but it is acceptable. You will also be able to read a lot of what is around you, immediately. In Chinese, writing everything in Pinyin is really not acceptable and it does not help at all in reading. You really have no choice but to learn a whole lot of characters, right away.
Good points. Certainly difficulty can be somehow a subjective matter, but I am coming from someone who is familiar with romance languages only (and that's already a lot), saying the Chinese phonology is challenging is an understatement. As an example, at the beginning of the semester our class was composed of mostly Asian-American and a handful of non-Asians. By the mid-term, the non-Asian contingent had been decimated down to less than half of its original size. Chinese classes have typically a high drop-out rate due to its difficulty, but this is an indication of a trend.
I know that Mandarin is probably a better investment professionally wise, and also due to the high number of Chinese speakers where I live, I nonetheless can't help feeling discourage!
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