Is it really hard to learn Chinese as a foreign language?Is it true Chinese is difficult language to learn as a foreign language?Strictly speaking, it’s not so. Comparatively grammar in Chinese is much simpler than that of the European languages. At times, there is a complaint from English speakers that languages like Spanish have a perplexed grammar (masculine and feminine genders, verb conjugations, etc),, but the Chinese language has virtually no syllable structure or grammatical paradigms either to by heart. Each word has a fixed and single form: verbs do not take prefixes or suffixes showing the tense or the person, number, or gender of the subject. Nouns do not take prefixes or suffixes showing their number or their case. I do not mean that Chinese has no grammar; What I want to say is Chinese grammar is primarily concerned with arrangement of words to form meaningful sentences as they inflectional morphology. Plus each Chinese character pronounced in one syllable, that’s why when watching Chinese movies, you find that a few words can be translated into a syllable mapping in the English subtitle. Probably, you would say that the above is far from enough to convince you. Alright, there is another encouraging and definitive proof with me for you. A couple of days ago I fortunately came across one piece of inspiring news when reading Beijing Times. Now you can be allowed to read 90% of the current Chinese publication with less than 1,000 Chinese characters as per the survey conducted by the Education Ministry and Language Commission of China. The survey’s claim is based on 900 million characters used in more than 8. 9 million files selected from newspapers, magazines, the Internet and television. Nowadays, the Chinese media is using fewer characters, and to understand 90 percent of the content in publications, you need only to know about 900 of around 50,000 individual characters that are made up of Written Chinese. On the other hand, how many words are there in English? Nearly 100,000 and still increasing. There is one significant reason for this and that is Chinese characters focus on meaning, not pronunciation like in English, and further, many characters are primitive and a few are found only once in the entire history of the written language . Only about 6,000 are known by an average graduate of Chinese university. Now, would those all above relieve you a little bit in your Chinese language study? Hope so, but do not misinterpret this. I do not intend to convince you that Chinese is very easy to learn or other languages like English are much harder. What I mean is that Chinese is not as difficult as you imagined or heard about, but different from your mother tongue, but difference does not mean tough necessarily, Isn’t it?What it means is that Chinese is certainly simpler than you imagined or heard about, it’s just very dissimilar from your mother tongue, but dissimilar does not mean difficult necessarily, Doesn’t it? And that hard Chinese idea won’t be of any help in your study. Trust yourself, once that fear factor is overcome, the language is actually not that hard to learn. Wish you good luck with your Chinese language study.
Posts Tagged ‘Nouns’
An Average Graduate KnowS Only 6000 Words In Chinese Language
January 3rd, 2010Much Importance Should Be Given To The Accent And Pronunciations While Learning Chinese
December 10th, 2009Definitely, the spirit may be there to learn, but Chinese is a bit complicated to teach yourself, to say the reality. Chinese language emerged from a variety of tones and sounds which are not familiar to American speech patters. It is an appreciable effort for many to learn to speak and write Chinese language. There are a wide variety of books, CD-ROMs, and other formats available to help them along the way, if anyone has the inclination to learn how to speak Chinese Mandarin should get ready to purchase them. Actually, I don’t think so. Comparatively grammar in Chinese is much simpler than that of the European languages. English speakers sometimes complain that languages like Spanish have a complicated grammar (masculine and feminine genders, verb conjugations, etc), whereas the Chinese language has little or no bound morphology and there are no grammatical paradigms to memorize. Verbs do not take prefixes and suffixes to show the tense or the person, number, or gender of the subject as each word has a fixed and single form. Prefixes or suffixes showing their number or their cases are not taken by nouns. I’m not trying to tell you that Chinese has no grammar; what I mean is that due to the lack of inflectional morphology, Chinese grammar is mainly concerned with how words are arranged to form meaningful sentences. Plus each Chinese character pronounced in one syllable, that’s why when watching Chinese movies, you find that a few words can be translated into a syllable mapping in the English subtitle. Learning Chinese can be achieved with a grand wealth of books available out there from learning Chinese the ‘fast and fun way’, to Chinese for Dummies to Chinese ‘made easy for kids’. Of course, there are a wealth of basic courses on beginner’s Chinese, and let’s not forget a massive number of Chinese phrases and Chinese language dictionaries. However, these books are not produced at an economical price and the format is not comfortable for users . Now, would those all above relieve you a little bit in your Chinese language study? Hope so, but do not misinterpret this. I am not in any intention to convince you that Chinese is very easy to learn or other languages like English are much harder. What I mean is that Chinese is not as difficult as you imagined or heard about, but different from your mother tongue, but difference does not mean tough necessarily, Isn’t it?What it means is that Chinese is certainly simpler than you imagined or heard about, it’s just very dissimilar from your mother tongue, but dissimilar does not mean difficult necessarily, Doesn’t it? And that hard Chinese idea won’t be of any help in your study. Believe in yourself, the language is certainly not that tough to learn once that fear factor is overpowered. Wish you good luck with your Chinese language study. Many people who have spent hundreds of dollars on multiple Chinese language learning materials often wish they could utilize the services and expertise of a private tutor to help them grasp the many nuances and rules involved in speaking Chinese. Many people think it is expensive to engage private tutors and those who live in rural areas and want to learn Chinese language do not find them at all. The ideal way to learn any language is to be able to communicate with someone who speaks that language.
Foreign Language Learning Resources – Which is Right for You? Part 1 – Total Immersion Programs
December 5th, 2009Most of you have seen the commercials touting a foreign language program using a very well known Olympic gold medalist swimmer. This popular and very polished software package, known as Rosetta Stone, is an excellent example (but not the only example) of a total immersion language program. But the commercials touting ‘The Fastest Way to Learn a Language – Guaranteed’, don’t necessarily paint the complete picture for the prospective buyer.
What is it?
Let’s start by exploring what is meant by ‘total immersion’. A total immersion system is any program that thrusts you into a foreign language without any (or difficult to access) assistance in your native tongue. The basic idea is to learn by picture/video and audio reinforcement – the same way you learned your native language as a child. The concept is very simple – present a situation, dialog, or group of pictures and challenge the user to (initially) ‘guess’ the native word or phrase that applies to the situation. Variations on this basic theme include audio and picture only, sentence building and grammar reinforcement lessons. Other DVD based programs present common situations in video with on screen clues (sometimes pointers to what the actor is describing), eventually providing the answer with no user interaction. More extensive computer programs include voice recognition to assist you in learning the native accent. Through these methods, the student is expected to easily and quickly absorb the new language. In practice, however, it’s not as simple, nor as fast as advertised.
Where it Succeeds
As you might guess, some aspects of a language are easier to convey with pictures than others. Immersion programs do the best job at teaching object vocabulary – otherwise known as nouns. It’s expected that when someone sees a cat, they will eventually figure out the word that corresponds to the cat over time. A cat is a concrete easily identifiable object, and I am sure you can think of thousands more. Similarly, colors and numbers are easy, because they are easy to represent in pictures. These programs also do a good job at conveying the meanings of action verbs, particularly in the present tense. It’s obvious to the student when someone is eating, drinking or walking and so on.
Immersion is also a great way to introduce a pre-teen to a foreign language. By their nature, kids are more responsive to this type of teaching and tend to soak up that material like a sponge – the younger the better.
Where it Fails.
Naturally, since these types of courses perform well with nouns, action verbs in the present tense, you will see a lot of them. Some of the cheaper programs rely exclusively on the present tense, while some of the more costly programs make attempts at past and future tenses. It’s fairly difficult to represent past and future verb tense using pictures and video, and it’s often done after reinforcing the concepts of ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’, which also require fairly creative pictures! Abstract verbs are also fairly difficult to represent in pictures, such as ‘to have’, ‘to feel’, ‘to believe’, etc… Other problems include object vs. personal pronouns. Specifically, the concept of him/her vs. he/she is almost impossible to convey in pictures.
But, perhaps the biggest issue of all concerns the adult learner. Many studies (as well as personal experience) have shown that adults learn much faster using native language cues and explanations. As adults are already versed in a native language, they can more readily relate native grammar to the differences in the new language. Total immersion programs can actually lengthen the amount of time it takes to learn a language in an adult when used as an exclusive learning tool.
In Summary
Despite these potential shortcomings (particularly for adults), don’t write off total immersion entirely – just don’t expect to use it as your primary language learning source. At the very least, make sure you accompany any total immersion program purchase with a good phrasebook, dictionary, or beginner’s course book – especially if you are dealing with a different alphabet or script. The presence of these native language ‘helpers’ will go a long way to enhance your learning experience, and quell any frustrations you might experience. For even better results, take the immersion course after taking any beginner course with English reinforcement. I will explore these other methods in coming articles, and until then, best of luck!
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By: Chris Katheman
