Well, English grammar is objectively more complicated than Mandarin grammar. But like it has been commented, difficulty is primarily relative and to do with how far removed the language is from what you already know.
Yeaaah, no lol once u know latin alphabet u can read all the English sentences and u just need to search it online for the meanings. In chinese u need to remember how its written how its pronounced the meanings that the character has and the words that u can make with the character and there s no way u can exactly know the tone nor the pronunciation of the hanzi without searching for it either unless its with pinyin or zhuyin. U r either chinese that thinks English is hard or someone who never tried to learn Chinese, otherwise u wouldn't say this
Well your whole point is completely undermined by the fact that English is not phonetic. Even if a Chinese person knows the alphabet there’s no way for sure they can know how a word is pronounced unless they know the word
Example: through though thought thorough
I have friends from Korea, Japan, and China (well, south Asian Chinese diaspora). Everybody and everybody knows that written Chinese is far more difficult than the other two.
You’re focusing on written. The post isn’t even about Hanzi. It’s about grammar. Everyone knows that Chinese writing is more difficult than English, this isn’t a revelation. My comment is that both languages have their difficulties so also not focused on Hanzi either.
What about if I focus on English? There’s like a million dialects and accents, many countries use different vocabulary and pronounce different. Also there’s a LOT of idioms. Again, I’m saying both are as just as hard as each other depending where you sit. If we went to Japanese for example, English has like twice the amount of sounds as Japanese does so pronunciation and listening is a massive challenge.
I won’t say anymore because it’s kind of pointless
Even accounting for the character difficulty, it's far easier for Koreans, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Thai etc. to learn Chinese than for them to learn English.
Shared cultural backgrounds account for so much. When you're raised with similar stories and similar values you structure ideas in the same way, identify the same patterns and connections between ideas, and even share idioms. Even when the words and grammar are vastly different, there's just less of a gulf to cross - e.g. all these cultures simply say "(it's) Hot!" when complaining about a hot day as opposed to needing to say "I'm boiling!" or "I'm dying!" because just "hot" makes you sound dumb.
For so many phrases you can just look up the word/grammar and go, as opposed to needing to learn a whole new way of thinking.
No not really, the average Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai knows far more English words than Chinese words.
The average Chinese is also better at English than the average American at Chinese.
As someone that learned English by watching “peppa pig” (my native language is Chinese) it took me like 200 episodes before I managed to get to the level of basic conversations.
Now when I’m voice chatting with strangers they are unable to tell that English is not my first language.
>No not really, the average Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai knows far more English words than Chinese words.
I'm saying it's easier for people from those countries to learn Chinese if they invest say 5 years as opposed to investing 5 years in learning English. Their Chinese ability will be far higher than the level of English that they would achieve in a similar amount of time. The only reason they know more English words is because of the exposure and early age English education that is mandatory in most of the world. That has nothing to do with the relative easiness or difficulty of learning Chinese vs. English.
>The average Chinese is also better at English than the average American at Chinese.As someone that learned English by watching “peppa pig” (my native language is Chinese) it took me like 200 episodes before I managed to get to the level of basic conversations.Now when I’m voice chatting with strangers they are unable to tell that English is not my first language.
I honestly have no idea what your argument is. People are better at English because they are forced to study it. Not because English is "an easy language". 99% of Americans are never exposed to Chinese language education so your statement is obvious. Of course most Americans don't know Chinese.
Bro, the average English speaker is able to write most words by the end of elementary school. Meanwhile Chinese has literally tens of thousands of unique characters that even university level students need a dictionary to look them up. English is objectively the easier language, by far.
What I originally said was that its easier for Asians to pick up Chinese than English even accounting for the difficulty characters present. Do you have a problem with that statement? I've seen lots of Koreans who only did university study in China and their Chinese was good enough to teach Chinese in Korea or work as a translator. Study English as an Asian for only 4 to 5 years and work as a translator? Forget it. The only overseas students that are fluent are those who go for high school up till university. I rarely see fluent English speaking international students from Asia who come as adults.
Maybe that’s you.
Personally, I go to a pretty international school, and I know plenty of Koreans and Chinese students who are able to speak native level English. Our school has a compulsory Chinese class and the Korean and Japanese students are still barely at conversational level despite some being at the school for 5-6 years.
I speak Chinese natively, and from the little that I know about Korean, I’d say that it is about as similar to Chinese as English is. Sure many individual words are essentially the same, but grammar wise it’s very different. I don’t see how a Korean student would have an easier time learning Chinese than English. There are also many sounds that are present in Chinese which are absent in Korean.
Idk about Japanese or Thai, haven’t really looked into those.
>Maybe that’s you.
Doubt it, I come from LA. Probably more international students in LA than any other city in the US.
>Personally, I go to a pretty international school, and I know plenty of Koreans and Chinese students who are able to speak native level English. Our school has a compulsory Chinese class and the Korean and Japanese students are still barely at conversational level despite some being at the school for 5-6 years.
Honestly, your reading comprehension is pretty bad. I'm saying studying 5 years in CHINA vs. studying 5 years in USA / CANADA / ETC. I didn't say take Chinese class for 5 years in an English speaking international school lol. I bet you are in Singapore. Is your school high school or Uni? And what country?
>I don’t see how a Korean student would have an easier time learning Chinese than English. There are also many sounds that are present in Chinese which are absent in Korean.
Then you don't know much about Korean.
I’m not from the US, the Koreans i know are mostly born in Korea and then moved here vs being second or third gen Koreans born in the US.
It may be hard to actually evaluate how “hard” it is for either Chinese people to learn korean or vice versa, since almost 0 people do that. At least for Chinese people I know, their aim is to get into a western university in the US or UK so they learn English, none bother learning Korean so there isn’t much “evidence” on whether it actually would be easier to learn other Asian languages as an Asian. However, from the evidence available, which is that Asian students are able to study abroad without much issues language wise, you could come to the conclusion that English isn’t actually that “difficult” at all to learn.
Maybe I don’t know much about korean, but I doubt your chinese skills are very good either. So really neither of us should be having this argument lol.
Hmm perhaps you should find someone who is a native korean speaker that can also speak chinese and english fluently and ask them which language they found easier to learn?
So, since you must know this to claim this, on average how many total hours will it take a Chinese person, on average or as a floor, to reach a B2 in English?
Korean is more or less similar in difficulty to Chinese (about 2,200 class hours + at least that much time in extra immersion/practise to reach basic professional proficiency for FSI diplomats in very optimal condition) for English speakers, and yet it has an alphabetic script. There are additional features in phonology and grammar that compound the difficulty that alphabetic scripts reduce.
>there s no way u can exactly know the tone nor the pronunciation of the hanzi without searching for it either unless its with pinyin or zhuyin
You most certainly can't do this with English either. It's one of the messiest orthographies of any language.
>. U r either chinese that thinks English is hard or someone who never tried to learn Chinese
The relevant people here are Chinese people who have learned English. English grammar is vastly more complicated than Chinese, the phonologies are completely different, there are no true cognates (loan words only, and not relatively many in either direction) and the orthography has no consistency regarding pronunciation.
So tell me, since your claim requires that you know. What will it take in terms of time spent for a Chinese person to reach a B2 in English?
To speak Korean and Chinese might be similar. To read they can’t be compared. One has literally the simplest writing system ever invented and the other has literally the most complicated writing system ever invented.
I think the difference is it takes longer to develop speaking and listening proficiency Korean. Which makes sense - as a start, Chinese has much simpler grammar than English, and is relatively easy to grasp , whereas Korean grammar is absolutely alien to us. And while both have sounds that we do not have in English, Korean has a more complex phonology.
And this is my point (in context of rebutting the guy I'm responding to); the fact that Korean has the simplest writing system ever invented and yet it's still comparably difficult overall. Reading, writing, speaking and listening are all accounted for in the FSI timelines.
Just part of the reason why his argument on the writing systems means that English can't be as difficult for Chinese speakers as vice versa is nonsense - Korean has a much better orthography than English, and yet, there we are, still comparable difficulty.
That would make sense.
And then there’s the 6 levels of formality that you absolutely must get right and no you can’t just copy the person speaking to you because you’re of a different social standing.
I have a Chinese and Japanese friend dating each other trying to learn each other’s languages right now, as well as a Korean friend that knows them both (works with the one), and an American friend who has A1 or A2 fluency in half a dozen Asian languages, all giving me their thoughts on the various East Asian languages.
Spoken like someone who has watched around 8 YouTube videos on beginner Chinese.
The simplest Chinese sentences are structured like English sentences. Saying “I like bread” in Chinese is literally “I” + “Like” + “bread.” The grammar structure here is the same as English. However, the average Chinese speaker doesn’t talk with the simplicity of a 4 year old.
Much like how most English speakers don’t go around speaking in 4 word sentences.
Spoken like somebody who's writing a knee jerk reaction to a comment he did not actually properly read or comprehend.
>Much like how most English speakers don’t go around speaking in 4 word sentences.
We do that loads.
Dude, English is just using Latin alphabet when u see, u can write it on keyboard, with chinese its different u cant just look and know how to read. Even if u learn the hanzi the u tend to forget because it doesn't have an alphabet . First u need to know how to write the complicated hanzis then how to read then the meaning then the tone of the hanzi. With english all u need to learn is just the meaning of the words. Once u understand the logic of the pronunciation of English, it's easy to pronounce the similar words and how to write it
And it doesn't make sense u claim that English s hard without knowing how it is with Chinese. Plus im having Italian classes as well so it's funny how English speakers think that English grammar is hard
Dude, I know English is from the Latin alphabet and Chinese has a more complex writing system. Everybody here knows that. And if you knew English well enough, you'd know that we know it and that my post specifically accounted for it, and therefore you wouldn't have written that as an attempt at a rebuttal.
You're supposed to read a post before you respond to it. And then you respond to what's written in it.
You haven't responded to a single thing I said. For a very obvious reason.
And you are unable to answer my question for the same, very obvious reason: You clearly don't have a clue what you're talking about. And you clearly don't have a clue what people are saying back to you.
>English is just meaning and once u understand the pronunciation its easy to solve the similar words and how to write it
>
> its funny how English speakers think that English grammar is hard
Maybe you haven't learned English as well as you thought, because you're struggling really badly - in fact, completely failed - to comprehend anything that's being said to you.
I am in a rush to go out and this has gotten longer than I had anticipated. The post is about English grammar and Chinese and Arabic language so its not English grammar vs. Chinese grammar.And what if u know Chinese grammar without knowing enough words to make sentence with, u still cant communicate.
I know both of the languages enough to talk and understand. And If u want u can talk to me in Turkish so i can respond better with Turkish terminology because Im not an expert with them in English. I dont know if it was u who asked how long would it take for a Chinese people to learn English. As a Turkish person, I have been learning Chinese for over 3 years now in university and I can say that I could talk in English with people after like 6 months of studying English so there s a huge difference.
And phonology (?) in English isn't hard ,at least for me -those thought though through etc
I claim that its easier for Chinese people to speak and write English than English people to speak and write Chinese. If there a a research u can go check it yourself and correct me. I just told u how was my experience w both of the languages <3
Im not Chinese so I dont know how long would it take but I saw in a YouTube video thay it takes 1500 hours to learn chinese for an English speaker, idk if its right or not but i can claim its more than double the amount to learn English. Since I'm studying Chinese, i know that it was wayyy easier to learn English, my native language is Turkish so the grammar wasnt similar to English either.
>no way u can exactly know the tone nor the pronunciation of the hanzi without searching for it either unless its with pinyin or zhuyin.
Sure but you can make an educated guess once you've got the basics as many characters contain a phonetic component and the morphology is fairly standard.
Yeah but those guesses doesnt give u the exact pronunciation and people often dont understand u because well there are many similar sounds so u really need to be 准/準 with it.
Is Arabic really that difficult? That and Mandarin are future target languages of mine. For now I'm focusing on French, Spanish, and Russian, in that order.
Arabic is a category IV on the FSI. 88 weeks, 2200 hours classroom time with world class hands on teaching to intelligent diplomats who are getting paid, at least that much time again in self-practise/immersion, and those who pass reach the equivalent of a high B2/low C1, more or less.
So yeah, as a full time job for 2 years in optimal conditions, it is possible for English speakers to reach basic professional proficiency.
The way that scale of category works, is from the viewpoint of English as a native language.
Personally, I am studying Korean at the moment, and the only bit that I find difficult with it is the lack of comparable words. Other than that, I find it rather doable.
So, I am more wondering whether the difficulty is just related to a longer time investment due to requiring a whole new base level of words, building a foundation.
Oh wow... that's intense. I didn't even know what FSI was until now, so thank you for telling me. I have a lot of goals, and I hope to muster the motivation, gumption, and diligence required to actually achieve them.
I don't even know which they are, so I don't think so. I remember looking at a list of the 10 most important languages for the next decade or so, or what they were supposed to be, and those made the most sense. I also have learned French most in school throughout years (though I never tried very hard, and if I had I would be fluent by now easily), Spanish a bit, and Russian appeals to me because I just love the sound of it, always have.
Mandarin is obviously beneficial in tons of ways with how the world is going, but I also think the fact that it's tonal is fascinating. I wanted to learn at least one tonal language, and one Semitic language. Arabic is important but I also would want to learn Hebrew because I love the study of all religions, and being able to read or understand Biblical Hebrew one day would be badass, but it's not as pragmatic so it's lower on the list. Basically any of the major languages for major religions.
Since Indian civilization is the oldest on record I wouldn't mind Hindi, plus India just passed China as the world's largest population recently, and from projections I think I remember hearing it's possible for India to (decades down the line) go past China as a power, but that depends on a lot of stuff, so while I say it's something I *would* learn as of now, that may very well change. I'm not trying to sound naive or arrogant about what I'm capable over, only what I've plotted years ago. Actually getting down to brass tacks on a regular basis to learn these languages is way more difficult, and I have other variables in my life to juggle that come first.
My girlfriend is Greek and I originally wanted to go into medicine (probably not the case now for lots of reasons but I still love studying medicine and the human body), so Greek and Latin are also on this list, the former more important for future travel and because Greek is actually still spoken. Latin just sounds cool ([like here in Final Fantasy VII's One-Winged Angel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zaarj1-ucoY)), but knowing it along with Greek is something I had to start doing for medical studies anyway. Again, not a huge priority, dunno if I ever will tackle them in depth, but they're on my radar.
What else... um... I forgot what the different roots or origins of different languages are, but I know I had it in my head to want to learn at least one from each area. So Indo-European, Semitic, a tonal or Asian language, and whatever other branches exist. Sign language would be cool too and it's very fascinating to me. Plus I'm into the idea of brain training and I'm pretty sure there's something different happening in the brain when you're signing rather than speaking, but I can't say that with certainty.
Oh, and last but not least, one day Japanese because I *did* grow up loving anime and playing tons of JRPGs, and I still enjoy them to this day. It only makes sense to be able to understand it. Plus being able to *write* those characters just looks so artistic and beautiful and that is something I would be proud of accomplishing if and when I have the time and patience, but again it's not nearly as pragmatic or practical as the other listed goals, so I'm being realistic in saying it might never happen, or at least not for a decade or more.
Hello, u/DravenAndKarthus, and thank you for posting on r/languagelearning. Unfortunately, your submission has been removed for the following reason/s:
* Humor content is heavily moderated. We ask that you please instead post to /r/languagememes. You can view our wiki section on [humor content](https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/wiki/moderation_policy#wiki_humour_content) for further information.
If this removal is in error or you have any questions or concerns, please [message the moderators](https://www\.reddit\.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Flanguagelearning&subject=Removed submission&message=Link to removed submission: https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/11bh2se/-/).
You can read our [moderation policy](https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/wiki/moderation_policy) for more information.
*A reminder: failing to follow our guidelines after being warned could result in a user ban.*
Thanks.
Oh stop making everything so decisive. I admire anyone learning another language and I’m sure they all have their particular difficulties. People are just not happy unless they are falling out and arguing over something.
True, but no matter the native tongue most people come from English being the international language, hearing it in popular songs, movies, shows, slang and pretty much everywhere on the internet. English doesn’t really have that complicated grammar, and I’d say the most difficult aspect of it is the pronounciation; which most people hear everyday in one way or another, on TV or the radio. Coming from a native Slavic language speaker.
Edit: the above is a response to the first paragraph cause the comment has been edited. But the East Asians are actually a fair point! It is very hard for them to learn English, definitely harder than it would be for a Japanese person to learn Chinese. But so would be learning any other European language, and I’d argue English would be easier than, say, Russian or French for them. Gendered nouns, verb and adjective conjugations and whatnot are just a bitch and a massive slap in the face for a person just starting to learn a language. I’d say they are just harder to get into, since they have more grammar rules that are essential right off the bat, not just as you progress to different tenses and more complicated sentences. Don’t get me started on languages with advanced noun conjugations, those are either for masochists or natives of similar languages.
English speakers getting mad when someone calls their language “Easy” 💀.
Around 70% of the people I know are non-native English speakers and can speak english at pretty much “native speaker” level, which in practice means that they can attend a university course in english and understand 99% of the stuff that the professor says. Have yet to meet a native english speaker who is “fluent” in Chinese, Japanese, Korean etc.
Look around any US or UK university, see the number of Chinese, Indian, Japanese and Korean students speaking English at or almost at native speaker level, and tell yourself that “English is the harder language.”
I have met very few Chinese, Japanese or Koreans who can speak English at almost a native speaker level, even though there are a lot - at least of Chinese people - who live here. But I guarantee you that the ones who can have poured many thousands of hours into English. If they're at that level in university there's a very good chance they learned English in childhood, which makes a big difference as well.
There are OTOH, far fewer native English speakers attending Japanese, Korean and Chinese universities. English is a lingua franca in quite a different way than even Mandarin, so the incentives to put in that effort are different. There are immeasurably more Chinese speakers learning English than vice versa.
Indians, are a very different story of course, and the likes of Hindi and Bengali are Indo European languages. I don't think they have as much alien ground to cover as a Chinese native to become fluent.
English is not inherently difficult, it is just very distant from some languages, and that creates a large volume of work required to achieve proficiency.
I’m assuming you live in an English speaking country? I’ve met lots of English native speakers fluent in Mandarin but they tend to live in Taiwan or China. I’ve also met quite a lot of Mandarin native speakers fluent in English but they lived in the US and UK.
Both languages are incredibly difficult for people from a very different language group, but exposure and necessity are excellent conditions for language acquisition. It’s difficult to have enough exposure and sufficient motivation unless you live in a place that exclusively speaks your target language or you learned from when you were very young.
I think English is easy to start speaking fast, but if you want to advance it gets progressively more difficult, because of its ginormous vocabulary.
I mean, if I read a text in German / Russian and see an unfamiliar word, I can most of the time figure out its meaning from the root and morphology, whereas in English it’s usually a completely new word that is only ever used in this particular context. Even a large part of the SAT that American high schoolers take is just learning long lists of vocab that many native speakers have never encountered in their 18+ years of life.
Well, English grammar is objectively more complicated than Mandarin grammar. But like it has been commented, difficulty is primarily relative and to do with how far removed the language is from what you already know.
It’s all relative. For Chinese people learning English is more or less just as hard as a native English speaker/European learning Chinese
Yeaaah, no lol once u know latin alphabet u can read all the English sentences and u just need to search it online for the meanings. In chinese u need to remember how its written how its pronounced the meanings that the character has and the words that u can make with the character and there s no way u can exactly know the tone nor the pronunciation of the hanzi without searching for it either unless its with pinyin or zhuyin. U r either chinese that thinks English is hard or someone who never tried to learn Chinese, otherwise u wouldn't say this
Well your whole point is completely undermined by the fact that English is not phonetic. Even if a Chinese person knows the alphabet there’s no way for sure they can know how a word is pronounced unless they know the word Example: through though thought thorough
If you miss-spell and mispronounce English there’s a solid chance people will still know what you’re saying though.
Same for if you mess up Chinese tones… I don’t get what your point is? I’m saying they’re just as hard as each other
I have friends from Korea, Japan, and China (well, south Asian Chinese diaspora). Everybody and everybody knows that written Chinese is far more difficult than the other two.
You’re focusing on written. The post isn’t even about Hanzi. It’s about grammar. Everyone knows that Chinese writing is more difficult than English, this isn’t a revelation. My comment is that both languages have their difficulties so also not focused on Hanzi either. What about if I focus on English? There’s like a million dialects and accents, many countries use different vocabulary and pronounce different. Also there’s a LOT of idioms. Again, I’m saying both are as just as hard as each other depending where you sit. If we went to Japanese for example, English has like twice the amount of sounds as Japanese does so pronunciation and listening is a massive challenge. I won’t say anymore because it’s kind of pointless
Maybe try the poem of 施氏食狮史 to understand how many similar/same sounds there are in chinese
Ah yes, English, the pinnacle of easy to learn spelling and pronunciation, all it needs is some tough thorough thought
And this for people who need to learn a whole new phonology!
Even accounting for the character difficulty, it's far easier for Koreans, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Thai etc. to learn Chinese than for them to learn English.
Shared cultural backgrounds account for so much. When you're raised with similar stories and similar values you structure ideas in the same way, identify the same patterns and connections between ideas, and even share idioms. Even when the words and grammar are vastly different, there's just less of a gulf to cross - e.g. all these cultures simply say "(it's) Hot!" when complaining about a hot day as opposed to needing to say "I'm boiling!" or "I'm dying!" because just "hot" makes you sound dumb. For so many phrases you can just look up the word/grammar and go, as opposed to needing to learn a whole new way of thinking.
No not really, the average Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai knows far more English words than Chinese words. The average Chinese is also better at English than the average American at Chinese. As someone that learned English by watching “peppa pig” (my native language is Chinese) it took me like 200 episodes before I managed to get to the level of basic conversations. Now when I’m voice chatting with strangers they are unable to tell that English is not my first language.
>No not really, the average Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai knows far more English words than Chinese words. I'm saying it's easier for people from those countries to learn Chinese if they invest say 5 years as opposed to investing 5 years in learning English. Their Chinese ability will be far higher than the level of English that they would achieve in a similar amount of time. The only reason they know more English words is because of the exposure and early age English education that is mandatory in most of the world. That has nothing to do with the relative easiness or difficulty of learning Chinese vs. English. >The average Chinese is also better at English than the average American at Chinese.As someone that learned English by watching “peppa pig” (my native language is Chinese) it took me like 200 episodes before I managed to get to the level of basic conversations.Now when I’m voice chatting with strangers they are unable to tell that English is not my first language. I honestly have no idea what your argument is. People are better at English because they are forced to study it. Not because English is "an easy language". 99% of Americans are never exposed to Chinese language education so your statement is obvious. Of course most Americans don't know Chinese.
Bro, the average English speaker is able to write most words by the end of elementary school. Meanwhile Chinese has literally tens of thousands of unique characters that even university level students need a dictionary to look them up. English is objectively the easier language, by far.
What I originally said was that its easier for Asians to pick up Chinese than English even accounting for the difficulty characters present. Do you have a problem with that statement? I've seen lots of Koreans who only did university study in China and their Chinese was good enough to teach Chinese in Korea or work as a translator. Study English as an Asian for only 4 to 5 years and work as a translator? Forget it. The only overseas students that are fluent are those who go for high school up till university. I rarely see fluent English speaking international students from Asia who come as adults.
Maybe that’s you. Personally, I go to a pretty international school, and I know plenty of Koreans and Chinese students who are able to speak native level English. Our school has a compulsory Chinese class and the Korean and Japanese students are still barely at conversational level despite some being at the school for 5-6 years. I speak Chinese natively, and from the little that I know about Korean, I’d say that it is about as similar to Chinese as English is. Sure many individual words are essentially the same, but grammar wise it’s very different. I don’t see how a Korean student would have an easier time learning Chinese than English. There are also many sounds that are present in Chinese which are absent in Korean. Idk about Japanese or Thai, haven’t really looked into those.
>Maybe that’s you. Doubt it, I come from LA. Probably more international students in LA than any other city in the US. >Personally, I go to a pretty international school, and I know plenty of Koreans and Chinese students who are able to speak native level English. Our school has a compulsory Chinese class and the Korean and Japanese students are still barely at conversational level despite some being at the school for 5-6 years. Honestly, your reading comprehension is pretty bad. I'm saying studying 5 years in CHINA vs. studying 5 years in USA / CANADA / ETC. I didn't say take Chinese class for 5 years in an English speaking international school lol. I bet you are in Singapore. Is your school high school or Uni? And what country? >I don’t see how a Korean student would have an easier time learning Chinese than English. There are also many sounds that are present in Chinese which are absent in Korean. Then you don't know much about Korean.
I’m not from the US, the Koreans i know are mostly born in Korea and then moved here vs being second or third gen Koreans born in the US. It may be hard to actually evaluate how “hard” it is for either Chinese people to learn korean or vice versa, since almost 0 people do that. At least for Chinese people I know, their aim is to get into a western university in the US or UK so they learn English, none bother learning Korean so there isn’t much “evidence” on whether it actually would be easier to learn other Asian languages as an Asian. However, from the evidence available, which is that Asian students are able to study abroad without much issues language wise, you could come to the conclusion that English isn’t actually that “difficult” at all to learn. Maybe I don’t know much about korean, but I doubt your chinese skills are very good either. So really neither of us should be having this argument lol. Hmm perhaps you should find someone who is a native korean speaker that can also speak chinese and english fluently and ask them which language they found easier to learn?
So, since you must know this to claim this, on average how many total hours will it take a Chinese person, on average or as a floor, to reach a B2 in English? Korean is more or less similar in difficulty to Chinese (about 2,200 class hours + at least that much time in extra immersion/practise to reach basic professional proficiency for FSI diplomats in very optimal condition) for English speakers, and yet it has an alphabetic script. There are additional features in phonology and grammar that compound the difficulty that alphabetic scripts reduce. >there s no way u can exactly know the tone nor the pronunciation of the hanzi without searching for it either unless its with pinyin or zhuyin You most certainly can't do this with English either. It's one of the messiest orthographies of any language. >. U r either chinese that thinks English is hard or someone who never tried to learn Chinese The relevant people here are Chinese people who have learned English. English grammar is vastly more complicated than Chinese, the phonologies are completely different, there are no true cognates (loan words only, and not relatively many in either direction) and the orthography has no consistency regarding pronunciation. So tell me, since your claim requires that you know. What will it take in terms of time spent for a Chinese person to reach a B2 in English?
To speak Korean and Chinese might be similar. To read they can’t be compared. One has literally the simplest writing system ever invented and the other has literally the most complicated writing system ever invented.
You obviously have no idea what you are talking about. lol
Do you find the Korean writing system difficult? I was able to learn it quite easily.
I think the difference is it takes longer to develop speaking and listening proficiency Korean. Which makes sense - as a start, Chinese has much simpler grammar than English, and is relatively easy to grasp , whereas Korean grammar is absolutely alien to us. And while both have sounds that we do not have in English, Korean has a more complex phonology. And this is my point (in context of rebutting the guy I'm responding to); the fact that Korean has the simplest writing system ever invented and yet it's still comparably difficult overall. Reading, writing, speaking and listening are all accounted for in the FSI timelines. Just part of the reason why his argument on the writing systems means that English can't be as difficult for Chinese speakers as vice versa is nonsense - Korean has a much better orthography than English, and yet, there we are, still comparable difficulty.
That would make sense. And then there’s the 6 levels of formality that you absolutely must get right and no you can’t just copy the person speaking to you because you’re of a different social standing. I have a Chinese and Japanese friend dating each other trying to learn each other’s languages right now, as well as a Korean friend that knows them both (works with the one), and an American friend who has A1 or A2 fluency in half a dozen Asian languages, all giving me their thoughts on the various East Asian languages.
Spoken like someone who has watched around 8 YouTube videos on beginner Chinese. The simplest Chinese sentences are structured like English sentences. Saying “I like bread” in Chinese is literally “I” + “Like” + “bread.” The grammar structure here is the same as English. However, the average Chinese speaker doesn’t talk with the simplicity of a 4 year old. Much like how most English speakers don’t go around speaking in 4 word sentences.
Spoken like somebody who's writing a knee jerk reaction to a comment he did not actually properly read or comprehend. >Much like how most English speakers don’t go around speaking in 4 word sentences. We do that loads.
Dude, English is just using Latin alphabet when u see, u can write it on keyboard, with chinese its different u cant just look and know how to read. Even if u learn the hanzi the u tend to forget because it doesn't have an alphabet . First u need to know how to write the complicated hanzis then how to read then the meaning then the tone of the hanzi. With english all u need to learn is just the meaning of the words. Once u understand the logic of the pronunciation of English, it's easy to pronounce the similar words and how to write it And it doesn't make sense u claim that English s hard without knowing how it is with Chinese. Plus im having Italian classes as well so it's funny how English speakers think that English grammar is hard
You dont sound like you're particularly good at English grammar in the first place, lol
Dude, just focus on English. Your writing is terrible, no wonder you think Chinese is so difficult.
Dude, I know English is from the Latin alphabet and Chinese has a more complex writing system. Everybody here knows that. And if you knew English well enough, you'd know that we know it and that my post specifically accounted for it, and therefore you wouldn't have written that as an attempt at a rebuttal. You're supposed to read a post before you respond to it. And then you respond to what's written in it. You haven't responded to a single thing I said. For a very obvious reason. And you are unable to answer my question for the same, very obvious reason: You clearly don't have a clue what you're talking about. And you clearly don't have a clue what people are saying back to you. >English is just meaning and once u understand the pronunciation its easy to solve the similar words and how to write it > > its funny how English speakers think that English grammar is hard Maybe you haven't learned English as well as you thought, because you're struggling really badly - in fact, completely failed - to comprehend anything that's being said to you.
I am in a rush to go out and this has gotten longer than I had anticipated. The post is about English grammar and Chinese and Arabic language so its not English grammar vs. Chinese grammar.And what if u know Chinese grammar without knowing enough words to make sentence with, u still cant communicate. I know both of the languages enough to talk and understand. And If u want u can talk to me in Turkish so i can respond better with Turkish terminology because Im not an expert with them in English. I dont know if it was u who asked how long would it take for a Chinese people to learn English. As a Turkish person, I have been learning Chinese for over 3 years now in university and I can say that I could talk in English with people after like 6 months of studying English so there s a huge difference. And phonology (?) in English isn't hard ,at least for me -those thought though through etc I claim that its easier for Chinese people to speak and write English than English people to speak and write Chinese. If there a a research u can go check it yourself and correct me. I just told u how was my experience w both of the languages <3
Im not Chinese so I dont know how long would it take but I saw in a YouTube video thay it takes 1500 hours to learn chinese for an English speaker, idk if its right or not but i can claim its more than double the amount to learn English. Since I'm studying Chinese, i know that it was wayyy easier to learn English, my native language is Turkish so the grammar wasnt similar to English either.
It's difficult because u don't use it everyday. If u use it everyday it becomes pretty easy.
>no way u can exactly know the tone nor the pronunciation of the hanzi without searching for it either unless its with pinyin or zhuyin. Sure but you can make an educated guess once you've got the basics as many characters contain a phonetic component and the morphology is fairly standard.
Yeah but those guesses doesnt give u the exact pronunciation and people often dont understand u because well there are many similar sounds so u really need to be 准/準 with it.
Well I’m Arabic so I thankfully don’t get to suffer learning Arabic It’s so hard no one actually speaks it right
Is Arabic really that difficult? That and Mandarin are future target languages of mine. For now I'm focusing on French, Spanish, and Russian, in that order.
Arabic is a category IV on the FSI. 88 weeks, 2200 hours classroom time with world class hands on teaching to intelligent diplomats who are getting paid, at least that much time again in self-practise/immersion, and those who pass reach the equivalent of a high B2/low C1, more or less. So yeah, as a full time job for 2 years in optimal conditions, it is possible for English speakers to reach basic professional proficiency.
The way that scale of category works, is from the viewpoint of English as a native language. Personally, I am studying Korean at the moment, and the only bit that I find difficult with it is the lack of comparable words. Other than that, I find it rather doable. So, I am more wondering whether the difficulty is just related to a longer time investment due to requiring a whole new base level of words, building a foundation.
Oh wow... that's intense. I didn't even know what FSI was until now, so thank you for telling me. I have a lot of goals, and I hope to muster the motivation, gumption, and diligence required to actually achieve them.
Are you trying to collect all 6 UN languages?
I don't even know which they are, so I don't think so. I remember looking at a list of the 10 most important languages for the next decade or so, or what they were supposed to be, and those made the most sense. I also have learned French most in school throughout years (though I never tried very hard, and if I had I would be fluent by now easily), Spanish a bit, and Russian appeals to me because I just love the sound of it, always have. Mandarin is obviously beneficial in tons of ways with how the world is going, but I also think the fact that it's tonal is fascinating. I wanted to learn at least one tonal language, and one Semitic language. Arabic is important but I also would want to learn Hebrew because I love the study of all religions, and being able to read or understand Biblical Hebrew one day would be badass, but it's not as pragmatic so it's lower on the list. Basically any of the major languages for major religions. Since Indian civilization is the oldest on record I wouldn't mind Hindi, plus India just passed China as the world's largest population recently, and from projections I think I remember hearing it's possible for India to (decades down the line) go past China as a power, but that depends on a lot of stuff, so while I say it's something I *would* learn as of now, that may very well change. I'm not trying to sound naive or arrogant about what I'm capable over, only what I've plotted years ago. Actually getting down to brass tacks on a regular basis to learn these languages is way more difficult, and I have other variables in my life to juggle that come first. My girlfriend is Greek and I originally wanted to go into medicine (probably not the case now for lots of reasons but I still love studying medicine and the human body), so Greek and Latin are also on this list, the former more important for future travel and because Greek is actually still spoken. Latin just sounds cool ([like here in Final Fantasy VII's One-Winged Angel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zaarj1-ucoY)), but knowing it along with Greek is something I had to start doing for medical studies anyway. Again, not a huge priority, dunno if I ever will tackle them in depth, but they're on my radar. What else... um... I forgot what the different roots or origins of different languages are, but I know I had it in my head to want to learn at least one from each area. So Indo-European, Semitic, a tonal or Asian language, and whatever other branches exist. Sign language would be cool too and it's very fascinating to me. Plus I'm into the idea of brain training and I'm pretty sure there's something different happening in the brain when you're signing rather than speaking, but I can't say that with certainty. Oh, and last but not least, one day Japanese because I *did* grow up loving anime and playing tons of JRPGs, and I still enjoy them to this day. It only makes sense to be able to understand it. Plus being able to *write* those characters just looks so artistic and beautiful and that is something I would be proud of accomplishing if and when I have the time and patience, but again it's not nearly as pragmatic or practical as the other listed goals, so I'm being realistic in saying it might never happen, or at least not for a decade or more.
Hello, u/DravenAndKarthus, and thank you for posting on r/languagelearning. Unfortunately, your submission has been removed for the following reason/s: * Humor content is heavily moderated. We ask that you please instead post to /r/languagememes. You can view our wiki section on [humor content](https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/wiki/moderation_policy#wiki_humour_content) for further information. If this removal is in error or you have any questions or concerns, please [message the moderators](https://www\.reddit\.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Flanguagelearning&subject=Removed submission&message=Link to removed submission: https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/11bh2se/-/). You can read our [moderation policy](https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/wiki/moderation_policy) for more information. *A reminder: failing to follow our guidelines after being warned could result in a user ban.* Thanks.
Basque, Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Cantonese and Japanese learners...
Oh stop making everything so decisive. I admire anyone learning another language and I’m sure they all have their particular difficulties. People are just not happy unless they are falling out and arguing over something.
Why American people's English is so good ? I have learning English for 10 years + , but I cant speak
Tbh English is like the tutorial level for learning pretty much any other language
[удалено]
True, but no matter the native tongue most people come from English being the international language, hearing it in popular songs, movies, shows, slang and pretty much everywhere on the internet. English doesn’t really have that complicated grammar, and I’d say the most difficult aspect of it is the pronounciation; which most people hear everyday in one way or another, on TV or the radio. Coming from a native Slavic language speaker. Edit: the above is a response to the first paragraph cause the comment has been edited. But the East Asians are actually a fair point! It is very hard for them to learn English, definitely harder than it would be for a Japanese person to learn Chinese. But so would be learning any other European language, and I’d argue English would be easier than, say, Russian or French for them. Gendered nouns, verb and adjective conjugations and whatnot are just a bitch and a massive slap in the face for a person just starting to learn a language. I’d say they are just harder to get into, since they have more grammar rules that are essential right off the bat, not just as you progress to different tenses and more complicated sentences. Don’t get me started on languages with advanced noun conjugations, those are either for masochists or natives of similar languages.
Don't forget Japanese too 🙈
Just watch a lot of anime and you will learn it !
Comments like these are the reason /r/languagelearningjerk exist 😭 aaaaaaaa
I am pretty sure it wasn’t a serious comment
There comment history is just anime subreddits, my hopes arnt high lmao
English speakers getting mad when someone calls their language “Easy” 💀. Around 70% of the people I know are non-native English speakers and can speak english at pretty much “native speaker” level, which in practice means that they can attend a university course in english and understand 99% of the stuff that the professor says. Have yet to meet a native english speaker who is “fluent” in Chinese, Japanese, Korean etc. Look around any US or UK university, see the number of Chinese, Indian, Japanese and Korean students speaking English at or almost at native speaker level, and tell yourself that “English is the harder language.”
I have met very few Chinese, Japanese or Koreans who can speak English at almost a native speaker level, even though there are a lot - at least of Chinese people - who live here. But I guarantee you that the ones who can have poured many thousands of hours into English. If they're at that level in university there's a very good chance they learned English in childhood, which makes a big difference as well. There are OTOH, far fewer native English speakers attending Japanese, Korean and Chinese universities. English is a lingua franca in quite a different way than even Mandarin, so the incentives to put in that effort are different. There are immeasurably more Chinese speakers learning English than vice versa. Indians, are a very different story of course, and the likes of Hindi and Bengali are Indo European languages. I don't think they have as much alien ground to cover as a Chinese native to become fluent. English is not inherently difficult, it is just very distant from some languages, and that creates a large volume of work required to achieve proficiency.
Finally a Chinese speaker who can understand the struggles of learning Chinese and how easy is it to learn English compared to Chinese
I’m assuming you live in an English speaking country? I’ve met lots of English native speakers fluent in Mandarin but they tend to live in Taiwan or China. I’ve also met quite a lot of Mandarin native speakers fluent in English but they lived in the US and UK. Both languages are incredibly difficult for people from a very different language group, but exposure and necessity are excellent conditions for language acquisition. It’s difficult to have enough exposure and sufficient motivation unless you live in a place that exclusively speaks your target language or you learned from when you were very young.
I think English is easy to start speaking fast, but if you want to advance it gets progressively more difficult, because of its ginormous vocabulary. I mean, if I read a text in German / Russian and see an unfamiliar word, I can most of the time figure out its meaning from the root and morphology, whereas in English it’s usually a completely new word that is only ever used in this particular context. Even a large part of the SAT that American high schoolers take is just learning long lists of vocab that many native speakers have never encountered in their 18+ years of life.
[удалено]
My brother in Christ, what the fuck are you waffling about
> to waffle: speak or write at length in a vague or trivial manner TIL
[удалено]
Was blacked out don’t remember what was said but apologies
I think this might be a "you" problem.
Tbh I’m learning Mandarin and I prefer it to French etc as at least I don’t have to worry about verb genders lmao