Learning Mandarin

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14-09-2012, 08:07 PM
LiquidLuck.

Learning Mandarin

So, I'm 16, and I'm in my senior year of high school.

I always loved to learn new languages as some of you might know and these last two years I was having a higher level English classes outside my school. Since I was in what was possible my last year of English classes there (because of my level), and I didn't feel like take the exam if I don't really need it right now for any professional/educational reasons, I decided to quit.

Since this year I have so much free time from school, my parents didn't let me just come home and spend the rest of my day online (sorry to my managers? xD), so they told me I'd be fine with my current timetable if I included another language in my schedule.

My father tried to convince me to go back to English or French. My mother wanted new languages so she asked about German or even Spanish.

English and French, I know pretty well. I had two years of Spanish so I can work my way out. German, I can only pray in it xD

Since I was tired of my parents' choices, I decided to take Mandarin. Problem is I suck in arts and I can't even draw a straight line, so I really don't know how I'll get out of this. Good thing about it, it's the most spoken language in the world and since I'm good with languages and probably will make a career out of it, it'd be a good thing to bet on.

Has anyone learned Mandarin? Could you tell me a bit how difficult it is? Will I totally fail? Did I make a wise choice, or not so much? >.<
14-09-2012, 08:22 PM
karter

As of what I have heard, mandarin is one of the most difficult language to learn. I myself had taken mandarin as an additional language but dropped it and took tamil instead.

these have mentioned mandarin as hard :

http://mylanguages.org/difficult_languages.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difficu...ning_languages
15-09-2012, 02:47 AM
LiquidLuck.

Quote:

Originally Posted by karter

As of what I have heard, mandarin is one of the most difficult language to learn. I myself had taken mandarin as an additional language but dropped it and took tamil instead.

these have mentioned mandarin as hard :

http://mylanguages.org/difficult_languages.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difficu...ning_languages

Really interesting articles. About the first one, I got tired of reading it mainly by the fact that if someone is writing something that is supposed to be seen by millions of people, how can they make the mistake of calling the language ''Chinese''?
About the second one, I definitely learned a lot, and I'm just hoping that the Portuguese will help me a bit with the pronunciation since we have so many nasal sounds that most languages around us doesn't.
I guess what I'm really worried about is the writing.. I'll need to be so extra careful, I admit it's a bit scary.

Even so, I don't regret my choice even if I'd have time to step back. It will help me in the future, or so I hope..
15-09-2012, 04:25 AM
October

What is your first language?
15-09-2012, 06:56 AM
Eric

The only difficult thing about learning Chinese is knowing/memorizing how to write the chinese characters. Speaking chinese fluently would be hard for non chinese speakers though and studying the classical Chinese is kinda difficult as well. Not the hardest language imo, you just need to understand. I'm a Chinese I have been learning it for 10 years yet i still can't recognize some words and cant entirely understand classical Chinese.

Learning Chinese is a wise choice, it's challenging lol.
15-09-2012, 11:53 AM
LiquidLuck.

Quote:

Originally Posted by J-Raviv

What is your first language?

Portuguese. :P

---------- Post added 15-09-2012 at 12:58 PM ----------
@EricYong!; My first class is in two weeks. I just hope I don't totally fail.. I like challenges actually so that's why I chose it as well so I'm just waiting to see if it was really a wise choice xD

Are you able to speak fluently?
15-09-2012, 12:53 PM
Eric

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kikali31

Portuguese. :P

---------- Post added 15-09-2012 at 12:58 PM ----------
@EricYong!; My first class is in two weeks. I just hope I don't totally fail.. I like challenges actually so that's why I chose it as well so I'm just waiting to see if it was really a wise choice xD

Are you able to speak fluently?

Yea I speak Chinese and a little malay with my classmates and friends ( no idea why cause most of them speak Cantonese to each other but they used Chinese talk to me instead ) and cantonese with my family. I usually speak Cantonese more than Chinese, it makes me sound and look polite when i speak Chinese lol.

good luck with your class!
15-09-2012, 01:29 PM
LiquidLuck.

Quote:

Originally Posted by EricYong!

Yea I speak Chinese and a little malay with my classmates and friends ( no idea why cause most of them speak Cantonese to each other but they used Chinese talk to me instead ) and cantonese with my family. I usually speak Cantonese more than Chinese, it makes me sound and look polite when i speak Chinese lol.

good luck with your class!

Wow Cantonese is a language I'd never try to learn to be honest xD If Mandarin is difficult, I can't imagine how much more Cantonese would be. xD
But it's really cool that you know both.
15-09-2012, 01:49 PM
Eric

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kikali31

Wow Cantonese is a language I'd never try to learn to be honest xD If Mandarin is difficult, I can't imagine how much more Cantonese would be. xD
But it's really cool that you know both.

Cantonese is almost exactly the same as Chinese, it's a dialect of Chinese. If you know Chinese, Cantonese won't be a problem. You just have to learn how to speak Cantonese. I don't know how i did it tbh, i've never actually 'studied' or 'learnt' how to speak Cantonese, probably because i've talked to my family with Cantonese since i was 5 and watched a lot of Hong Kong drama series.
15-09-2012, 02:03 PM
LiquidLuck.

Quote:

Originally Posted by EricYong!

Cantonese is almost exactly the same as Chinese, it's a dialect of Chinese. If you know Chinese, Cantonese won't be a problem. You just have to learn how to speak Cantonese. I don't know how i did it tbh, i've never actually 'studied' or 'learnt' how to speak Cantonese, probably because i've talked to my family with Cantonese since i was 5 and watched a lot of Hong Kong drama series.

From what I've googled and had people telling me, Cantonese is way more difficult to learn as it as many more tones.
And yeah I guess that's like french to me. I've been around french people since I was 2, so I just learnt how to speak it without actually knowing I was doing so. xD That's the good thing about learning languages when you're a little kid.

I just got to know that in my Mandarin classes I'll have have Chinese History included. That should be interesting, I love History..
15-09-2012, 09:42 PM
Sharon

errrr i speak cantonese which is the 'easy route' as i think mandarin is like x10 harder. all my family speak cantonese anyway so i wouldn't have a reason to speak mandarin, though my dad claims to be able to speak mandarin a bit. i think it's so much easier to speak than to write it. fact: i can't write my own name which is so ******* shameful and yep i'm ashamed, my parents probably secretly are too. i sat down, got my dad to write it out and tried to copy it but it's literally not as easy as tracing it/trying to draw a similar thing because chinese people legit can see when you've just tried to copy because there's a certain order you have to draw each little line thing in a chinese character. if you do it in the wrong order you can just tell as it doesn't look right and can easily be mistaken for another word.

lol sorry if it's a bit long but yeah. if you're passionate about it by all means go for it, but i can't even take in the easy option and it's rewarding if you can and i'd say it's something you can be proud of. lol a chinese person who doesn't know chinese, i feel embarrassed of myself.
15-09-2012, 11:33 PM
Eric

China has quite a lot of history so yeah it would be interesting.

Exactly like what @Sharon; said, you will have a lesson on strokes. And don't be embarrassed of yourself Sharon, at least you still speak cantonese, some Chinese can't even speak any chinese languages. And I realized that it's actually kinda hard for hong kong people to speak Chinese perfectly. weird lol.
18-09-2012, 01:12 PM
LiquidLuck.

@Sharon; @EricYong!; I've been told Cantonese is way harder than Mandarim since Mandarim has about 4/5 tones and Cantonese has like 9?
18-09-2012, 02:10 PM
Eric

Quote:

Originally Posted by LiquidLuck.

@Sharon; @EricYong!; I've been told Cantonese is way harder than Mandarim since Mandarim has about 4/5 tones and Cantonese has like 9?

Mandarin has 4 tones yes, not sure about cantonese as I didn't actually learn it. Forget about cantonese and learn mandarin, mandarin is more widely spoken. :P
18-09-2012, 02:31 PM
Johnathan

That's quite exciting! I honestly can't find the time nor patience in learning a new language... :(
18-09-2012, 02:57 PM
LiquidLuck.

Quote:

Originally Posted by EricYong!

Mandarin has 4 tones yes, not sure about cantonese as I didn't actually learn it. Forget about cantonese and learn mandarin, mandarin is more widely spoken. :P

Indeed and I checked the site where I found this information: Mandarin has, like you said, 4 tones. Cantonese has up to 9.

---------- Post added 18-09-2012 at 03:58 PM ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by Johnathan

That's quite exciting! I honestly can't find the time nor patience in learning a new language... :(

xD Luckily I have both and I enjoy doing so.