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Given that Chinese is one of the hardest languages in the world (overall) and conversely English one of the easiest, to the point where it is far easier for a l

by drucken 14y ago

Given that Chinese is one of the hardest languages in the world (overall) and conversely English one of the easiest, to the point where it is far easier for a literate Chinese person to learn sufficient English to be useful than for an English speaker to learn Chinese, is there any reason why you would expect substantial value from this kind of project? Recall its 5 years of your life that you would be dedicating...

zeckalpha 14y ago
As a linguist, I don't think it is fair to say English is one of the easiest languages to learn, and Chinese is one of the hardest.
nicholas73 14y ago
I don't think people choose languages to learn based upon difficulty. As a side note, Chinese (and English too) has been simplified over time, both in terms of sound and vocabulary, and writing. In the old days, not only did you have up to 9 tones and more consonants, you also had regional variations from village to village. You needed a tremendous understanding of the culture and history to comprehend it all, not to mention any special idioms related. For writing, a standardized system had to be implemented to deal with all the variations, which read like nothing you would speak. Now today the standard Mandarin has much more simplified tones and vocabulary, and it's written in vernacular. And yet here we are...
zampano 14y ago
Part of it is personal value. I spent years learning Japanese and frequently felt that, while there were many resources for learning kanji, there were few routes that one could take to mastery that were not mostly self-guided and didn't take years to accomplish. The market for something like this would obviously be niche to those learning Chinese/Japanese characters, but I'd also argue that the absence of a comprehensive way to learn the characters has turned off many learners who were otherwise perfectly capable of learning those languages. Considering the growth of the Chinese economy and the enduring size of the Japanese economy (still one of the largest in the world even after years of recession), I'd bet that the pool of those learning Chinese or Japanese for business purposes will not be dwindling in the near future, even if Chinese and Japanese learners would have an easier time picking up English. On the other side of things, Chinese and Japanese students also have their own issues learning their own characters. Many young Japanese struggle to master the kanji and it is not uncommon to meet university level students in Japan who would not be able to write a simple character like "turtle" without looking it up first. While I would no doubt love to change how the Japanese school system teaches kanji, that might be a little bit ambitious for only 5 years time, but tools to help students learn at the same pace as their peers could probably be extremely valuable (especially in a society that frequently expects students to go to after-school education to keep an edge on their competition for prestigious colleges). Now a lot of this is making a lot of assumptions about my success in this endeavor, but hey, if I have 5 years, I would try to do the research and polish the experience to the point where it would be perfect. I do have to admit, 5 years is a long time for me at this point (only been developing for a little more than a year now) so I might be totally off on my estimates and whether this would be a good value for my time. But based on the prompt of this post and where I am at today, this is what I would work on if I had the freedom to focus on something of my own choosing.

by drucken 14y ago

zeckalpha 14y ago

As a linguist, I don't think it is fair to say English is one of the easiest languages to learn, and Chinese is one of the hardest.

nicholas73 14y ago

I don't think people choose languages to learn based upon difficulty. As a side note, Chinese (and English too) has been simplified over time, both in terms of sound and vocabulary, and writing. In the old days, not only did you have up to 9 tones and more consonants, you also had regional variations from village to village. You needed a tremendous understanding of the culture and history to comprehend it all, not to mention any special idioms related. For writing, a standardized system had to be implemented to deal with all the variations, which read like nothing you would speak. Now today the standard Mandarin has much more simplified tones and vocabulary, and it's written in vernacular. And yet here we are...

zampano 14y ago

Part of it is personal value. I spent years learning Japanese and frequently felt that, while there were many resources for learning kanji, there were few routes that one could take to mastery that were not mostly self-guided and didn't take years to accomplish. The market for something like this would obviously be niche to those learning Chinese/Japanese characters, but I'd also argue that the absence of a comprehensive way to learn the characters has turned off many learners who were otherwise perfectly capable of learning those languages. Considering the growth of the Chinese economy and the enduring size of the Japanese economy (still one of the largest in the world even after years of recession), I'd bet that the pool of those learning Chinese or Japanese for business purposes will not be dwindling in the near future, even if Chinese and Japanese learners would have an easier time picking up English. On the other side of things, Chinese and Japanese students also have their own issues learning their own characters. Many young Japanese struggle to master the kanji and it is not uncommon to meet university level students in Japan who would not be able to write a simple character like "turtle" without looking it up first. While I would no doubt love to change how the Japanese school system teaches kanji, that might be a little bit ambitious for only 5 years time, but tools to help students learn at the same pace as their peers could probably be extremely valuable (especially in a society that frequently expects students to go to after-school education to keep an edge on their competition for prestigious colleges). Now a lot of this is making a lot of assumptions about my success in this endeavor, but hey, if I have 5 years, I would try to do the research and polish the experience to the point where it would be perfect. I do have to admit, 5 years is a long time for me at this point (only been developing for a little more than a year now) so I might be totally off on my estimates and whether this would be a good value for my time. But based on the prompt of this post and where I am at today, this is what I would work on if I had the freedom to focus on something of my own choosing.