For Tao Yuran,
I was at an Chinese language related event the other day. I happened to overhear a Chinese lady said to a white student that Chinese is the most difficult language in the world. Actually I really wanted to snap at that Chinese lady. How can we attract more foreign students to study Chinese if we keep telling them that Chinese is the most difficult language in the world?
Maybe it is a good tag line to attract students who would like to study something that offers challenges. However, I believe that people prefer something easier. Considering my future job prospects, I always tell people that Chinese is not as difficult as you think.
Let's make the statement more specific. As regards to speaking, Chinese is not as difficult as people think.
First, there is no conjugation of verbs in Chinese. Unlike European languages, one does not have to memorize a variety of verb changes according to tense, mood and aspect when he or she is studying Chinese. For example, 去 (qu4; go) is always the same in any situation. There is no qu"s", qu"ing", and qu"ed" in Chinese.
Second, even the noun forms do not have to be changed in Chinese. Many European languages have gender markings. One does not have to worry about these complications in Chinese.
However, as regards to Chinese characters, they might be a challenge for Chinese learners. But, technology nowadays makes learning Chinese characters much easier than before. Students are able to use computers to type Chinese as long as they are familiar with the pinyin system. The high-tech tools such as on-line dictionaries and hand-writing input systems help students increase their efficiency in studying Chinese.
Indeed, Mandarin Chinese is very different from European languages. Those differences might be the problems for the learners whose native languages are not in the same language family as Chinese. However, it does not mean that Chinese is one of the most difficult languages in the world.
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3 comments:
it's also easy if you think about how one word might look like another. that's how my mom taught me to recognize new words. for example, 包、抱、飽、胞 all look alike, and even if you only know the first one, at least you can make an educated guess with the other ones and guess that its pronunciation is "bao." and it also makes remembering easier, too! like, crab "pangxie" is just the 旁 of 旁邊, plus a "insect" root, to make 螃蟹. so easy!
vs. English: peasant vs. pleasant vs. pheasant are nowhere near being synonyms!
Zhangqi, in English as in all languages, there are words with related meanings. In your examples, pleasant is related to pleasure. Peasant, if you know some Italian (or have seen The Godfather movies), is related to paisano meaning friend. Pheasant, as far as I know, is not related to other words; however, it is not really used that often. For many words, a study of Latin and Greek root words, prefixes, and suffixes will help decipher their meanings.
In the end, the difficulty of another language really depends on your native language. For native speakers of English, Chinese is one of the most difficult languages because of differences in vocabulary, grammar, tones, chengyu, etc.
As for the characters, for most non-Chinese, we are used to associating sound to meaning, but with the Chinese language, there is sound, symbol (i.e. character), and meaning. I agree with Fanyi that using computers to type Chinese makes things a lot easier.
Yuruan
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