I’ve been trying to learn Chinese for over half a year now and, well, it’s kinda tough going. Not only do you need to learn a whole new way of speaking, but you also need to learn two written languages: pinyin (the English transliteration of Chinese words, so you can actually read anything), and Chinese characters themselves.
The spoken language is difficult in its own right due to tones. These are like the accents found in other languages, but more complicated and unfortunately much more important – getting the wrong tone in a word can change the meaning completely, to the extent that you could call your mother a horse by using the wrong inflection.
This is further complicated by different dialects. The majority of people in China speak Mandarin, while people in the South (and most of the Hong Kong expatriates around the world) speak Cantonese. They both use the same characters, but they are pronounced very differently. Actually, that’s not entirely true – Mandarin speakers use ‘simplified Chinese characters’, while Hong Kong and Taiwan use ‘traditional characters’. Sometimes they look similar, sometimes not.
Did I mention the other half-dozen regional variations? It’s enough to cause you to weep.
As you can imagine, this makes for a daunting and frustrating experience. My hope is that the learning curve for Chinese is very steep to begin with, but then flattens out – the language itself has very little grammar. Contrast this to French where it’s relatively easy to get into, but quickly becomes difficult if you want to master the grammar. That’s my theory anyway.
I came across a rather nice site called Authentic Asian. This website attempts to explain the background behind a lot of Asian culture, particularly that of the Chinese. So far it’s taken several Chinese characters and split them apart, with information on how the character evolved and how it found its place in history. Fascinating stuff, and it certainly makes it easier to learn a character when it’s more than just a collection of random lines.
I also recently finished reading Fortress Besieged, a book claimed to be one of the best examples of modern Chinese literature. It’s based in and around the time of the Japanese occupation of China and follows the somewhat comical adventures of a student freshly returned from Europe. It’s surprisingly easy to read, and it was very interesting to see that important period of Chinese history when it moved from the traditional to modern. It’s also fun to see what the Chinese thought of the west at the time.
In a novel set in middle-class Chinese society on the eve of the Sino-Japanese War, Fang Hung Chien obtains a teaching position, using a degree from a fake American university, in a Chinese university – where the pseudo-intellectuals become the butt of the author’s satire.
Good stuff.
Hi John,
This is my first time to leave comment on your blog though I am one of your blog’s subscribers. 🙂
I am a Chinese in the U.S. now and I am an enthusiast of WordPress too. And I am quite surprised and happy to see that you are learning Chinese because, as what you have said, it’s really a tough mission for native speakers of major Western languages (I am assuming you are, please point me out if I am wrong). But I am sure the more you know about Chinese language, the more you will feel the beauty and elegance of this ancient language. What version of the novel “Wei Cheng (Fortress Besieged)” did you read, English, Chinese or bilingual? I think you were really doing a great job if you enjoyed the Chinese version so well. 🙂 I am good at speaking Wu dialect (native), Mandarin and Cantonese. I will be more than happy if I can be helpful upon necessary.
BTW, your new theme is cool, though the old “orange header” version is nice too. I learned a lot about theme tweak from your blog. Thank you!
Best,
GQ
Thanks for the book recommendation. I hope you don’t mind if I read it in English!
Anyway, I spent a year of in-depth study learning Polish (a language that is much harder and more complex than most people think) at a Language school in the Army. By in-depth, I mean 5 days a week, 8+ hours a day. Taught to us by Polish professors. That’s the way to learn a language!
Well, in my time there, I was also very friendly with those learning other languages. I think it is safe to say that it’s actually harder (according to my friends) for native Chinese speakers (whether Mandarin or Cantonese) to learn English than it is the other way around. BTW, if you’re interested, the language school parsed out languages by difficulty levels from 1-5. As I recall (it was 11 years ago!) Chinese and Arabic were 5s. The Romance languages (Spanish and French) were 1s. Russian was a 3, Polish a 3+. Okay, okay, ramble over….Good Luck with your studies!
Hey John,
Nice to meet you here. I like your website so much and it’s very useful for everyone.As a chinese, we know Chinese is very difficult to learn for Westerners. It’s nice to know you are interesting in chinese culture and the laguage.Well, as a beginner,you need a professional chinese teacher. John,Keep learning hard and you will speak very well one day.
Thanks GQ! I’d like to be able to say that I read Fortress Besieged in Chinese, but that task would take me the better part of a decade! The version I have does have some of the Chinese as an appendix, so maybe one day I’ll be able to pick out more than a handful of words.
One thing I have noticed is that it’s very hard to find any decent amount of pinyin text. It would be really helpful to have, for example, a news website that gives the news in English, Chinese, and pinyin. That way you get to experience real-world Chinese, you can use the pinyin to learn the pronuciation, and have the English to fall back on.
Monkeypup seems to have the right way of learning a language – 8 hours a day! Sure beats a few hours a week from a text book that I do. I can definatley imagine that Chinese speakers find English harder, due to all the tricky grammar. I do know that children are taught Chinese using pinyin first, so they at least know the alphabet.
Interesting about the rankings of languages. I remember once reading that the British Foreign Office considered Hungarian as the most difficult language, due to a very complex grammar system. Whatever happened to Esperanto?
hi, Iam searching some information of the pronunciation and tone in chinese language, hehe, your article was list on the second position on the google. Now Iam studying the” certificate of teaching chinese as a foreign language”. It’s a tough work for me, because what you know about your mother language is totally different from what you can teach a foreign learner.The novel Fortress Besieged is such an wonderful and black humorous one that I enjoyed through the whole summer hoilday when I was graduated from junior high school, but I read in the original chinese language. I really surprised that you have the same feeling as me.Maybe we can discuss more about the chinese language, especially your experience on the learning process.
That sounds great, I’d certainly love to talk more about Chinese as I know it would give me more reason to study harder and not be lazy!
Your experience must be similar for everyone teaching their own language. I know that sometimes the only explanation I can give for using a particular English word is ‘you just do’. A lot of the details of a language are based upon a culture, and Chinese culture (and hence the language) is very different. Some things are simple – days and months are ridiculously easy in Chinese, and so logical I wish other languages followed the same pattern – but I understand that reverse is not true of a Chinese person learning Western days and months. The reason is the difference in cultural background (such as the lack of any connection to Greek and Roman gods). Likewise, there are many expressions I’ve come across in Chinese that don’t really make much sense when translated directly into English. The background is not the same, and the words have no meaning on their own. These are very difficult to learn!
For those not familar, Chinese days and months go something like ‘1 day, 2 day, 3 day’ for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and ‘1 month, 2 month, 3 month’ for January, February, and March
Great post on learning Chinese John!
You touched on something very important – those darn tones!
May I suggest to the newbies that (please let mw know how you all feel about this…) that dun get TOO hung up on the tones.
Reason why I say this is because a lot of my students before meeting me confessed of “Paralysis Through Analysisâ€.
Having said that, it’s Absolutely Great to see that everyone is striving to master Chinese and not getting put off by it!
Keep it all up!
I was learning Uighur (in Way West XinJiang province) and the joy of communicating is immeasurable!
Learning to speak is pretty straight forward. If you’re really interested get in touch and I show you how with no pen and paper!
If Richard Branson’s Right Hand man can, you can too!
=P
To Your Chinese Learning Success!
Alex
=)
P.S. I SO miss the people and food…
esp in Urumqi where I was for a year training the local teachers to teach English.
I must admit that I’m one of those that get’s hung-up on tones. It’s a hard habit to break. I’ve also noticed that a lot of Chinese who speak English do the same. It’s easy to get tangled up in making sure the pronuciation is perfect, and forget about the conversation itself.
One thing for sure, it might be tough learning Mandarin tones, but it seems a lot tougher learning Cantonese ones!
Hi John,
I tumbled onto this website as I was knee-deep in trying on WP Themes and tangled in the all of the things that weren’t working – your site is pulling me out of the quicksand, so thanks for taking the time with those tuitorials. Now I find that you are also in China struggling with learning the language! I just landed in Beijing with my husband 4 weeks ago and we are working our way through survival Chinese – I won’t even bother with characters yet! Anyway, thanks for the great site and helpful information!
Hi,
I too was interested for a long time in learning chineses but here in Portugal — although we had a chinese “colony” (sort of), Macau — china was never an important area for our government (Well! For some of them was important but not to promote to the common mortal) so there is a lack of places where to learn it.
I think I’m too old to start learning such different languages like chinese, japanese or arab — I’m 40 — but, neverthless, I would like to try.
Does anyone know of a free site where we could learn chinese? Or is anyone interested in partnership with me so we can put up an ATutor or a Moodle -based website to teach chinese / mandarim? Someone with enough proficiency in teaching that language, of course.
Best,
Lopo
how do you say nice butt in chinese
ni de tou hao xiao
I’ve got a excellent site for Chinese learners:
http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/Lesson/176381.htm
I hope that you all can enjoy learning Chinese, it’s a hard language at the beginning, but it’s certainly worth leaarning! Good luck, guys!
Hi John,
I just started messing w/ WP and found your theme dissection piece. Just now stumbled on this “learning Chinese” post. Looks like it has been more than a year now, have you given up yet? LOL. I was born in Hong Kong and studied English Cantonese… and I feel really lucky to have been born into a bi-lingual environment! I suck at writing Chinese now though, 😛 but at least I can still read and speak it relatively well. 🙂 Have you tried using Podcasts to learn Chinese? I’m listening to JapanesePod101.com and it’s terrific! I heard http://www.chinesepod.com/ is really good as well! Give it a shot! & Keep at it! åŠ æ²¹ï¼
Oh, and thanks for your Theme Dissection, I hope to use it to create a blog site for Chinese history & culture, and another for Japanese living overseas. Haven’t gotten nowhere yet, but hopefully I will soon.
Hi, I am a Chinese blogger who’s new to WP.
But I have been blogged for over 2 years since the summer of 04. I was using an ASP-Access Blog system, and now change to WP.
Nice to find your plugins and really glad to know you are learning Chinese,haha
Take a look at ZhongWen.com . Great online dictionary for learners.
Hey John, great work.
Actually, there’s a site called "Chinesepod" is very famous. It’s not only a Chinese learning site but also an SNS with many people all over the world who just like you, wants to learn Chinese 🙂
A friend in China from Africa recommend it(http://chinesepod.com/) to me, and now I recommend it to you 🙂
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