I actually learned both English and Mandarin Chinese :) Vocabulary in English is a problem, but it's much easier to learn than thousands of Han characters. Gra

I actually learned both English and Mandarin Chinese :) Vocabulary in English is a problem, but it's much easier to learn than thousands of Han characters. Grammatical gender is not a problem for native speakers, you already know it from speaking the language. > - Chinese characters have structures and relationships too Most Han characters can be decomposed into simpler characters. But not all, and you still have to memorize that a character for "branch" (支）consists of "ten" (十）and "again" （又）. And of course, some characters have multiple meanings, and even multiple readings. In short, you have to memorize a lot. > - Children in school in China don't need to know all the charaters, they start off with a useful subset and learn (or look up in dictionaries) more as they go along. Of course. But they still have to learn at least 2-3 thousand by the end of the school.