| Comparing languages | |
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| Dec 6, 2007 20:54 |   |
 | This question is directed primarily at those who are not Chinese nationals but still have learned to speak Chinese plus a few other languages in addition to your native tongue. I'd like to know how you rate each language in terms of difficulty, when you were acquiring them. Let's use a scale of 1-10, with 1 being the easiest and 10 being the most difficult, to learn the language. So for example if someone stated: French: 6 Spanish: 7 Chinese: 9 We assume that none of the languages are their native language and they felt Chinese was the most difficult to learn and French was the easiest. I look forward to your replies! :) |
| Dec 7, 2007 02:31 | #1 |
| I'm not sure whether I can attribute scores to language in terms of how easy I've found learning them, but I certainly have an opinion. My native language is English and at school I studied Latin, French and German. I probably ought to have started by saying that I have never been good at languages. Don't know why. I love languages - just never mastered them. Never-the-less, I found French relatively simple as, growing up in the south of England, I visited France often and got in some practice in those formative years. Also, of course, French uses an alphabet very familiar to speakers of English, and indeed there are a great many similarities between the two languages. The same could be said for German. In fact, in many ways German was even easier to learn than French because (to me) it seems to resemble English more closely. Although a lot of English is derived from Latin, I found this language just a bit too full of unfamiliar grammar for me to really make much headway. When I came to China I could neither speak nor read Chinese and everyone insisted that it was one of the most difficult languages to learn. That is, by the way, why I came here - because I thought that only by living in the country could I hope to learn the language properly. I must say, though, that my experience of Chinese, so far, has been very rewarding. Getting away from pinyin was a crucial step, as learning characters really helped me to understand the relationships between the words far more easily. The fact that Chinese bears little resemblance to English hasn't stopped me from getting along well in my studies and I am now very confident in my listening, speaking, reading and typing (not writing) abilities. I won't say that Chinese is easy to learn, but for me no language has ever been easy. Still, I don't believe that westerners should fear it as so many seem to. |
| Dec 7, 2007 22:02 | #2 |
| >>...Getting away from pinyin was a crucial step, as learning characters really helped me to understand the relationships between the words far more easily. << Thanks Tom for your insight into learning some languages, especially Chinese. So you recommend I learn how to read Chinese at the same time that I learn how to speak it? Will learning it from someone who speaks Cantonese pose a problem? >>The fact that Chinese bears little resemblance to English hasn't stopped me from getting along well in my studies and I am now very confident in my listening, speaking, reading and typing (not writing) abilities.<< Excellent, good for you! How did you learn your Chinese? At a special school, private tutoring, friends? |
| Dec 9, 2007 05:49 | #3 |
| For me, and for those who learned Chinese with me, it was definitely worth studying characters alongside oral communication. I had the benefit of two free lessons per week, provided by the school for which I worked. The quality of lessons was variable as the teachers changed frequently, but my fellow students and I all bought boxes of flash-cards, 'Da Shan' VCDs, dictionaries and other materials, and we really took control of the content of our lessons as much as we could. We were out every day, lunching in local restaurants, haggling for goods on the street and meeting strangers in bars. We had the added benefit of living in a small town with very few foreigners, so there were plenty of opportunities to practise. Other people in the same situation didn't want to learn characters at all, and studied purely oral Chinese, for basic communicative purposes, in a separate group. They, too, got along fine with Chinese, although their objectives were much more limited in scope. And that's the crucial point - if you just want to hold a conversation then there's relatively little point in learning characters. While an understanding of the characters certainly helps to fit the pieces of the linguistic puzzle together, it is undeniably time-consuming and some people (quite reasonably) argue that understanding the finer points of WHY the language works is less important than understanding HOW to use the language for practical purposes. For my close band of friends and me, learning the language in greater depth was a key objective, and while we are all still struggling to achieve the incredibly lofty goal of "understanding" Chinese, I believe that we couldn't have hoped to make the progress that we have without studying characters. Also, of course, even learning a few hundred basic characters will be as useful to any student as learning a few dozen key phrases. Some characters are so common-place and so useful to know, that students who missed out on character-learning in the early part of their Chinese studies often express the sentiment that they can't believe they were walking around all that time completely oblivious to giant signs telling them very useful things in very simple Chinese. |
| Dec 9, 2007 06:10 | #4 |
| Completely forgot to address the question about learning Mandarin from a native Cantonese-speaker. At my school the Chinese teachers were not from Guangdong and had fairly standard Chinese. When I would get into a taxi the drivers often remarked about how good my pronunciation was - which made me feel very pleased with myself, I must say. One of my good friends, however, went on to work in Beijing and spent the first three months re-learning how to pronounce just about all that he had learned. Instead of moving to Beijing, I moved to Guangzhou, and here, too, I have people tell me how good my pronunciation is. Really, though, I know it's just good compared to the pronunciation of the person congratulating me. Listening to newsreaders on CCTV1 will give you an appreciation of how Chinese ought to sound. Listening to a Cantonese speaker struggling to remember how to pronounce words in Mandarin shouldn't reassure you that you have managed to learn Chinese well. I work in an office full of Cantonese speakers, who communicate mostly in English for day-to-day purposes. When we are meeting a client, however, who cannot speak English, then we must all speak Mandarin. It can be painful, at times, to hear my colleagues struggling so much and making so many basic mistakes. It could well just be a certain proportion of older Cantose people who never learned Mandarin properly. I imagine younger Cantonese should have no problems with Mandarin. This theory may, indeed, have been borne-out in the first city where I worked - many of the old people spoke their local dialect and nothing else, but the younger generation all spoke fluent Mandarin. Still, though, you'd come up against the question of accents. My friend who went to Beijing was basically riddiculed for sounding like a farmer when he spoke. Unless you study in Beijing this may be difficult to avoid. You have to ask yourself whether it really matters. I remember a case of an overseas student being denied an application to study English in the UK on the grounds that she had applied to a university in Scotland and the authorities judged that she could not reasonably expect to learn any useful form of English in Scotland. It was quite a stunning case, at the time, and sticks in my mind even today. How many Chinese do you know who speak English with a thick, Scottish accent? Would it be a bad thing if they did? I think it would be fantastic, and that's why I'm happy to carry on learning in Guangzhou (I just make sure my teacher isn't a local). |
| Dec 9, 2007 20:46 | #5 |
| Thanks Tom for taking the time to explain your experiences with the Chinese language. In my situation, it is unlikely at this time that I would be living in China. My girlfriend lives in Guangzhou and speaks Cantonese, naturally. I will be teaching her English of course, but I am also curious enough to learn some basic Chinese to make our communication easier. >>And that's the crucial point - if you just want to hold a conversation then there's relatively little point in learning characters.<< So it seems for me, especially at this point in my life, I should concentrate on just the verbal side of the language. I think you assumed that my Cantonese friend would be speaking Mandarin. I don't know how good her Mandarin is really. I was really asking whether it would be wiser for me to learn Cantonese in this situation, or a 'compromised' Mandarin? |
| Dec 10, 2007 00:23 | #6 |
| Ok, I'm sorry for the confusion. I don't know any foreigners who learn Cantonese, so I just assumed you'd be learning Mandarin. In China, Cantonese is spoken mostly in Guangzhou and Hong Kong. People will tell you that it is spoken widely in Guangdong Province as a whole, but I've lived in Guangdong Province for nearly three years, and of the five dialects I've heard, Cantonese hasn't been prominent outside of the two cities I've mentioned. An important difference, however, between hearing Cantonese in Guangzhou and Hong Kong, and hearing other dialects in other parts of Guandong Province, is that in the wider Province, Mandarin has been successfully established as the standard dialect and it is used for just about all business transactions from taking a taxi to ordering dinner to buying a house. Outside of Guangzhou and Kong Kong, Cantonese sits alongside other dialects that are used just within families or between friends. In Guangzhou and Hong Kong, however, Cantonese has retained its position as the dominant day-to-day and business dialect, with total strangers assuming that everyone they meet will be able to speak Cantonese and conducting their lives accordingly. Foreigners normally learn Mandarin because, although there are dozens of regional dialects, Mandarin can be used anywhere in China, and can also (obviously) be used when talking to a group of Chinese people who come from several different Provinces. It also has fewer tones than Cantonese and is considered to be a bit easier to learn. Having said that, I believe Cantonese is more widely spoken around the world, due in no small part to Hong Kong and Guangzhou being the source of much of the Chinese overseas population. China Towns all over the world tend to speak Cantonese (though I heard a surprising amount of Mandarin the last time I was back in London). To sum-up, if you are planning on learning Chinese in a way that will bring you socially closer to your Cantonese-speaking girlfriend (and her family) then this may be one of those rare opportunities to do something that most foreigners simply dismiss for practical reasons. If I could get by without Mandarin, or if I could master Mandarin already, then I would love to learn one of the other dialects, like Cantonese. |
| Dec 10, 2007 19:11 | #7 |
| >>Having said that, I believe Cantonese is more widely spoken around the world, due in no small part to Hong Kong and Guangzhou being the source of much of the Chinese ... ...then this may be one of those rare opportunities to do something that most foreigners simply dismiss for practical reasons. << Thanks again Tom for your insight. I wasn't aware how popular Cantonese was outside of China. If I had my 'druthers, I'd pick Mandarin. First because it is a much more versatile dialect in China. Secondly, I've had an opportunity to hear both Mandarin and Cantonese 'in action' and I find Mandarin to be much more appealing to listen to. I find Cantonese quite harsh in comparison. But for my situation it seems Cantonese is the logical way to go. |
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