Anyone here speak (or is learning) Chinese?

[brentspeak]

How difficult is it to learn? I'm considering making the attempt?

[crispini]

1. Ni hao ma!

I lived in China for a year. Speaking / listening isn't too hard, but for basic literacy you need to learn about 4000 characters, so that's a bit of an undertaking. I never got much beyond menus and recognizing the characters for "women's toilet." :P

[Democrat 4 Ever]

2. Quick story - I took Chinese in college.

Now I do not have an ear for languages. Told my academic adviser just something I do not have a talent for. My degree required 12 hours of a foreign language. AA recommended that I take Chinese (Poly Sci major BTW) with the opinion I would be in a class with kids (I'm returning to school after a long, long time away) who have not had Chinese. If I had taken one of the big three (Spanish, French, Latin) I would be in a class with people who just graduated with one of these and I would be starting behind the curve. So, taking this yahoo's advice (after him telling me I was too OLD to be a Poly Sci major - another story), I enrolled in Chinese.

I still cannot speak Chinese. Or write it, or read it. In my own defense, the class was limited to 20 students. Good. Only my class comprised of 19 Foreign Exchange students from...wait for it...China! They could read and write dirrent Chinese dialects but could not speak Mandarin so they were there for a little help to learn the business language of their own country. Funny thing, much of the Chinese languages use the same symbols to read and write but the different dialects pronounce them very differently so the foreign exchange kids need to learn how to speak the same symbols differently. They were a little ahead of my curve. Ended up getting a special permission to drop the class (I hung in to the bitter end!).

I would love to speak a foreign language. I have tried Chinese, French and Spanish. After struggling through endless classes, tapes, study groups and tutoring the school finally decided to see if there was a problem. Have a learning disability - especially in the language area while maintaining a 4.0 (worked my butt off!). They finally agreed to let me substitute 12 hours of international culture for those 12 damn hours.

Good luck, it is a fascinating language and culture. Wish I could converse with you after you finish your studies.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

4. The Chinese languages ARE all the same. They use the same written

language. There are of course regional expressions and minor differences.

Imagine if you took English speaking America, and put it a thousand years ago where there was no TV, radio, internet, and very little travel, and where most people lived in the same towns and communities their whole lives.

Now what do you think would happen to regional Southern, New England, New York, and Midwestern accents? Eventually people become non-understandable. This would take generations. This is in essence what has happened to Chinese, but it's actually still the same language. I think what is spoken in Mongolia, for instance, might be an exception.

Write down the same sentence though and people can understand it from all regions.

This speaks to how old the Chinese language is, and how old the written language is.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

3. The main issue with the spoken language is, that it is TONAL.

That is, there are four different tones which can be assigned to each sound, which would make them different words.

This isn't hard in and of itself, but since English and European languages aren't tonal, it requires many hours of listening to tapes and practice, in my opinion, to get it right, for those who didn't grow up listening to this language.

Written language is difficult because there is no alphabet, only a different pictogram or character assigned to each word which has to be memorized. Of course most of these are combinations of other characters, so you start to "get it" after a while, but it requires much more memorization than Latin or Germanic based languages.

[Democrat 4 Ever]

5. I listened to hours and hours and hours and hours, well you get

the idea. Just couldn't get the sounds, the tones, symbols, nothing. Was so frustrating and confusing - I can usually learn anything if I make my mind up. No go.

Fascinating language, people, and culture. Would love to visit China one day. The sheer concept of how old this country is astounding. Their "current" events makes our entire US history little more than a news crawl across a CNN news flash.