Oh, that’s not even the half of it! Then there’s the fact that all 6,000 characters have to share only 50 (or so) sounds! And then there’s the tones: Mandarin has 5, Taiwanese has 7 (I hope I’m remembering this right).
It’s not even inflected the same way because turning up the end of a sentence to ask a question just changes the meaning of the last word! You have to word questions just right or they sound like statements, yes/no questions are ended with “ma”. Then there’s the verbs – Asian verbs don’t conjugate so “I eat”, “I ate”, and “I will eat” are the same thing! Worse yet, people outside of Beijing don’t understand “classroom Chinese” all that well. Good luck, Claire.
All right – I stand corrected, Unfortuantely, languages from that side of the world don’t have much uniformity (like how European languages have certain things in common), so I can only speak for the languages I have had contact with. That includes dialects (not sure if any of them were the “proper” language) from Mongolia, Korea, Russia, and India.
Actually, to be literate in Chinese (to be able to read a newspaper or a novel) you have to know 4000 pictograms. In japanese, it’ s 2150 joyo kanji and in korean (hangul) it’s 1800. Japanese has also kana (hiragana and katakana), to make things even more complicated, many japanese kanji have more readings, called on-yomi and kun-yomi. 勇気yuki courage in japanese
I took several Spanish course in college and enjoyed them. I took one Chinese course. I’d rather take nearly any of the graduate level engineering courses I had rather than take Chinese again.
LOL!! My husband is a native of Spain, but has not spoken Spanish to our children, so I sent my oldest to Chinese school last year sort of as a “well, she needs to learn some language and if you’re not going to teach her Spanish…”. She did great, much better than I did! I was lost after a couple of months, but she was at the top of her class and we have no Chinese relatives to practice with, unlike her classmates. I almost regret not continuing her in it.
ejcapulet almost 13 years ago
Oh, that’s not even the half of it! Then there’s the fact that all 6,000 characters have to share only 50 (or so) sounds! And then there’s the tones: Mandarin has 5, Taiwanese has 7 (I hope I’m remembering this right).
It’s not even inflected the same way because turning up the end of a sentence to ask a question just changes the meaning of the last word! You have to word questions just right or they sound like statements, yes/no questions are ended with “ma”. Then there’s the verbs – Asian verbs don’t conjugate so “I eat”, “I ate”, and “I will eat” are the same thing! Worse yet, people outside of Beijing don’t understand “classroom Chinese” all that well. Good luck, Claire.
Michelle Morris almost 13 years ago
Where’s a Universal Translator when you need one?
T_Lexi almost 13 years ago
Hold still, Claire, while we put this babel fish in your ear…
Lyons Group, Inc. almost 13 years ago
Not mention you have to read from top to bottom.
ejcapulet almost 13 years ago
All right – I stand corrected, Unfortuantely, languages from that side of the world don’t have much uniformity (like how European languages have certain things in common), so I can only speak for the languages I have had contact with. That includes dialects (not sure if any of them were the “proper” language) from Mongolia, Korea, Russia, and India.
Uskoke almost 13 years ago
Actually, to be literate in Chinese (to be able to read a newspaper or a novel) you have to know 4000 pictograms. In japanese, it’ s 2150 joyo kanji and in korean (hangul) it’s 1800. Japanese has also kana (hiragana and katakana), to make things even more complicated, many japanese kanji have more readings, called on-yomi and kun-yomi. 勇気yuki courage in japanese
bobviously almost 13 years ago
I took several Spanish course in college and enjoyed them. I took one Chinese course. I’d rather take nearly any of the graduate level engineering courses I had rather than take Chinese again.
lightenup Premium Member almost 13 years ago
LOL!! My husband is a native of Spain, but has not spoken Spanish to our children, so I sent my oldest to Chinese school last year sort of as a “well, she needs to learn some language and if you’re not going to teach her Spanish…”. She did great, much better than I did! I was lost after a couple of months, but she was at the top of her class and we have no Chinese relatives to practice with, unlike her classmates. I almost regret not continuing her in it.