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Hard how is it to learn chinese?

Hum...I'd say that if you're willing to give it 10-15 hours/week, you can learn the basic in less than 3 months (if you're a total foreigner I mean)
 
dreamer said:
Hum...I'd say that if you're willing to give it 10-15 hours/week, you can learn the basic in less than 3 months (if you're a total foreigner I mean)
WHAT???? Every day for 12 years for an hour more like. Every day I study for at least an hour and try to speak with my parents the whole day for the past 12 years and I can only speak. Now then, image writing which is about... 10 times harder then speaking.
 
Another Aoi Fan said:
The characters are pretty hard but they have like... VERY, I mean VERRRYY little grammer at all.

Where are you getting this idea that there is "VERRRYY" little grammar?
 
Another Aoi Fan said:
WHAT???? Every day for 12 years for an hour more like. Every day I study for at least an hour and try to speak with my parents the whole day for the past 12 years and I can only speak. Now then, image writing which is about... 10 times harder then speaking.
Well...the point is that you have to practice ^^
You can't compare a 15-20hours/week with a 1hour/week course.
You'd be surprised to see foreign student at my association who were barely able to read the alphabet in French going through our school's french program and be able to speak/read and write french without too much problems after only 2 months.
The same goes with a friend, he took a 3 months chinese course before he went to shanghai and he was able to survive there without too many problems.

Now it depends what you consider as basics...
 
What was the point in reviving a thread that died five years ago?
 
For full fluency in Chinese, including reading:

option 1- Move to Taiwan or China and attend school and study full time for 4 years.

or

option 2 - Major in Chinese in the west. Then move to Taiwan or China and study full time for 2 years.
 
I an Chinese, I think Chinese is hard to learn for new leaner, you can learn Chinese from Chinese culture and history.
 
You might check out Google translator. It will help you learn Japanese.

Asking Google to translate Japanese is like asking mischievous unsupervised three year olds with claw hammers and crowbars to clean and adjust your cuckoo clock.

And you'd be as well off trying to learn Japanese from the output as you would trying to tell the time from the clock.
 
And you'd be as well off trying to learn Japanese from the output as you would trying to tell the time from the clock.
Heh. Prolly, You are very fluent in ribben so You could see the difference. I am at the beginning of my language study and I found google translator very usefull. I am using Google translator as spell checker very often. Typing with IME is quite cool, and it is hiragana/katakana practice too, and google translator help with correct word spelling ... and grammar too.

Just 2C

About chinese. It is quite possible to get basic skills in conversation by using Pimsleur Practical chinese. There are three levels of that course, and each will take month-two to study. Writing/reading is little harder, but, as one my chinese friend told, there are many chinese people who can't read/write at all, and that is quite normal. :)
 
Chinese is my second language, English being my first, but I can speak both fluently.

Well, for me, I don't think Chinese is a hard language to learn since I already know it and had learned it from when I was really young. But I think for a complete foreigner who has no experience or knowledge about the Chinese language (and culture), it will probably be hard.

For one, there are different ways to pronounce the same... syllable, I guess, to say different words. My hanyu pinyin isn't the best, but, for example, the word mao (that's my attempt at trying to spell it out...) can be said in a higher way to say cat or in a more... I think of it as 'manly' and 'deeper' way to say anchor.

... So pronunciation will be a problem if you're not used to saying these sort of things.

But if you do decide to learn Chinese, good luck! :) It'll come in hand in the future.
 
Those are called tones (四聲 or 聲調, apparently). I thought native Chinese speakers considered them inseparable from the syllable, though. That is, mao1 (貓) is something completely different from mao2 (錨). I would have guessed the "manly" and "deeper" one would have been the third tone, though (like 也, 有, 友, 我, 你, etc.).
 
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Those are called tones (ナスlテ」テ or テ」テ溪?卍イ, apparently). I thought native Chinese speakers considered them inseparable from the syllable, though. That is, mao1 (貓) is something completely different from mao2 (窶「d). I would have guess the "manly" and "deeper" one would have been the third tone, though (like 窶禿ァ, 窶猫, 窶認, 窶ーテ、, 你, etc.).

Like different inflections? & Yeah, that's what I'm saying. They're different. Well... it's just my opinion. I have a hard time describing. I don't really know what some of them are, but I can read a yo, wo, then ni.
 
I mean, from what I understand a native speaker of Mandarin would consider mao1 and mao2 as different as mao1 and bao1, for instance. In that sense, the tone is inseparable from the rest of it (if that makes sense). In other words, the tones are as much a part of the syllable as the consonant or vowel quality. Is that how you feel?

The characters are ye3 (also), you3 (have/exist), you3 (friend), and you got the last two.
 
I mean, from what I understand a native speaker of Mandarin would consider mao1 and mao2 as different as mao1 and bao1, for instance. In that sense, the tone is inseparable from the rest of it (if that makes sense). In other words, the tones are as much a part of the syllable as the consonant or vowel quality. Is that how you feel?

The characters are ye3 (also), you3 (have/exist), you3 (friend), and you got the last two.

Yeah, that's how I view it too. & My pinyin is bad... lol
 
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