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>China may very well become the largest economy in the world, and there is no way that Chinese, as a multi-toned, symbolic language, will ever become the Lingua

by matz1 8y ago

>China may very well become the largest economy in the world, and there is no way that Chinese, as a multi-toned, symbolic language, will ever become the Lingua franca, as it is near impossible for most adults to learn, in contrast to English [2]. Is this true? I would think that english is just as hard to for chinese speaker to learn. Isn't all language has the same level difficulty? Is the preceived difficulty is mostly relative to how close it is to one native language?

nneonneo 8y ago
In China, everyone takes compulsory English courses from a fairly young age. Due to the importance of it as a school subject, preschool children are regularly placed into English classes to help them get an early leg up on the language. In the US of A and most other English speaking countries, nobody bothers learning anything but English; the minority of people who do learn a second language tend to go for something relatively easy like French or Spanish. While this says nothing about the inherent difficulty of learning these languages, it does speak to the differing language learning priorities at a national level.
chillacy 8y ago
> I would think that english is just as hard to for chinese speaker to learn. I've always wanted to know if this is true or not, but I've never found a good answer. I know the FSI rates Chinese at roughly 2000 hours of instruction to their definition of fluency (compared to 500 for other european languages like french or german), but I haven't found a similar comparison for chinese speakers. Link: http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/lang...
- Zarel 8y ago
  The answer is no, English is easier to learn for Chinese-speakers than Chinese is for English speakers. Chinese and Japanese are objectively much harder, because of how kanji/hanzi work. http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-china-mandarin-20160603-snap-story.html http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-china-mandarin-20160... (English is, in turn, harder than languages such as Spanish because of its spelling weirdnesses.) The early weirdnesses stop mattering pretty quickly. Stuff like irregular verbs, you just get used to. The things that make languages hard are things that still trip you up years into learning the language. In English, that'd be spelling. We have spelling bees! For a lot of languages, the idea of a spelling bee is unthinkable, because spelling is just not a problem. But in English, we have spellcheck on computers, we have native speakers constantly correcting each others' spelling. In Chinese, that'd be reading/writing characters. At least in English, if you forget how to spell a word, you can just spell it out phonetically. In Chinese, there are thousands of characters, and if you forget how to write one, you're screwed. In a famous essay, someone forgot how to write "sneeze" in Chinese, and asked his friends at the Chinese equivalent of Harvard, and none of his friends could remember, either (we're talking native Chinese speakers in the PhD program for Chinese). http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html
  - chillacy 8y ago
    A good case but I'm looking for something more objective, like actual studies counting the hours. Moser is a famous text that gets posted on HN a lot but this is basically the most critical text there is, and it gets to the point where he's unfair and contrived, since it's written to be comical as opposed to accurate.
  - matz1 8y ago
    'Why x is so damn hard' can be written for any other language. All language are equally complex. chinese writing might be hard but it makes up in other area.
    - Zarel 8y ago
      You can't make such a strong claim as "all languages are equally complex" with zero evidence, especially if you're replying to a comment that gives plenty of evidence that Chinese is harder. I will grant that Chinese is easy in some ways and hard in others. I'm saying that most differences in difficulty fade away, years into learning a language. The things that remain are disproportionately worse, for Chinese.
Gigablah 8y ago
FWIW Chinese (Mandarin) is my native language and I still found it harder to learn than English. But that’s because I consumed mainly English media and pop culture growing up.
- krylon 8y ago
  > English media and pop culture That has a distinct advantage, though - I practically learned English by osmosis. I had to look up words very often in the beginning, but it felt so effortless and natural. (Native German speaker) DVDs helped a lot, because for US and British movies, they usually contain two audio tracks, the German translation and the original.

by matz1 8y ago

nneonneo 8y ago

In China, everyone takes compulsory English courses from a fairly young age. Due to the importance of it as a school subject, preschool children are regularly placed into English classes to help them get an early leg up on the language. In the US of A and most other English speaking countries, nobody bothers learning anything but English; the minority of people who do learn a second language tend to go for something relatively easy like French or Spanish. While this says nothing about the inherent difficulty of learning these languages, it does speak to the differing language learning priorities at a national level.

chillacy 8y ago

> I would think that english is just as hard to for chinese speaker to learn. I've always wanted to know if this is true or not, but I've never found a good answer. I know the FSI rates Chinese at roughly 2000 hours of instruction to their definition of fluency (compared to 500 for other european languages like french or german), but I haven't found a similar comparison for chinese speakers. Link: http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/lang...

Zarel 8y ago
The answer is no, English is easier to learn for Chinese-speakers than Chinese is for English speakers. Chinese and Japanese are objectively much harder, because of how kanji/hanzi work. http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-china-mandarin-20160603-snap-story.html http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-china-mandarin-20160... (English is, in turn, harder than languages such as Spanish because of its spelling weirdnesses.) The early weirdnesses stop mattering pretty quickly. Stuff like irregular verbs, you just get used to. The things that make languages hard are things that still trip you up years into learning the language. In English, that'd be spelling. We have spelling bees! For a lot of languages, the idea of a spelling bee is unthinkable, because spelling is just not a problem. But in English, we have spellcheck on computers, we have native speakers constantly correcting each others' spelling. In Chinese, that'd be reading/writing characters. At least in English, if you forget how to spell a word, you can just spell it out phonetically. In Chinese, there are thousands of characters, and if you forget how to write one, you're screwed. In a famous essay, someone forgot how to write "sneeze" in Chinese, and asked his friends at the Chinese equivalent of Harvard, and none of his friends could remember, either (we're talking native Chinese speakers in the PhD program for Chinese). http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html
- chillacy 8y ago
  A good case but I'm looking for something more objective, like actual studies counting the hours. Moser is a famous text that gets posted on HN a lot but this is basically the most critical text there is, and it gets to the point where he's unfair and contrived, since it's written to be comical as opposed to accurate.
- matz1 8y ago
  'Why x is so damn hard' can be written for any other language. All language are equally complex. chinese writing might be hard but it makes up in other area.
  - Zarel 8y ago
    You can't make such a strong claim as "all languages are equally complex" with zero evidence, especially if you're replying to a comment that gives plenty of evidence that Chinese is harder. I will grant that Chinese is easy in some ways and hard in others. I'm saying that most differences in difficulty fade away, years into learning a language. The things that remain are disproportionately worse, for Chinese.

Gigablah 8y ago

FWIW Chinese (Mandarin) is my native language and I still found it harder to learn than English. But that’s because I consumed mainly English media and pop culture growing up.

krylon 8y ago
> English media and pop culture That has a distinct advantage, though - I practically learned English by osmosis. I had to look up words very often in the beginning, but it felt so effortless and natural. (Native German speaker) DVDs helped a lot, because for US and British movies, they usually contain two audio tracks, the German translation and the original.