Comments on Hanyu Man: Why is Chinese so Difficult to Learn?

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2011-02-09T19:37:09.618-08:00

Do you don’t like my site?(Charlxtz)

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2011-01-04T03:25:10.792-08:00

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2010-12-20T02:56:43.798-08:00

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2010-12-06T03:20:39.851-08:00

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2010-11-26T08:14:49.502-08:00

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2010-11-24T23:19:05.695-08:00

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- Henry

Thanks for your thoughts! Seven languages, includi...

2009-06-02T10:21:20.228-07:00

Thanks for your thoughts! Seven languages, including two of the monsters (Japanese, Chinese)? Wow.

I'm focusing on building basic vocabulary now, and have been baffled by many of the constructs I've come across in the process. I'm sure it will be a whole new challenge to figure how these work once I am far enough along to be able to focus on the overlying structures instead of just the basic characters/words within.

thanks ross, for telling it like it is. I speak se...

2009-05-31T05:57:38.036-07:00

thanks ross, for telling it like it is. I speak seven languages, including Chinese and Japanese, and I would tick every para of this article. Chinese is indeed extremely difficult to learn, if not impossible without a two or three year stay in the country (Japanese is up there too, for similar and also different reasons).
Reading Chinese comfortably takes a decade of daily practice. The characters are only the beginning or your problems; the bigger issues are the elision and vagueness ross points out, the constant resort to impenetrable abbreviations and four-character terms, the "strange" ways of expressing ideas, and the enormous sentence length and (I think) needless complexity that chinese writing seem so fond of. Plus, of course, the massive vocabulary burden. It really is a huge challenge. As for writing, learn enough to deal with email, which is not so hard, and then quietly forget about it. Classical Chinese simply is not worth the trouble. It is closer to code than language and even the natives struggle with it. Just use the translations.