Why do people have such drastically different opinions on the difficulty of Mandarin Chinese?

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Saim
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Re: Why do people have such drastically different opinions on the difficulty of Mandarin Chinese?

Postby Saim » Thu Jul 15, 2021 5:45 am

thevagrant88 wrote:Exactly. I would find it really difficult to believe that someone struggling with Korean would jump over to Hindi/Urdu or Albanian and think, “Wow, thank goodness I’m studying this Indo-European language now. What a breath of fresh air!”

Don’t work that way kid.


Conversely, when I dabbled in Albanian I found it fairly intuitive. But that's mainly because I know Serbian. :P
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Re: Why do people have such drastically different opinions on the difficulty of Mandarin Chinese?

Postby thevagrant88 » Fri Jul 16, 2021 6:55 pm

Interesting! Is Albanian considered part of the Sprachbund?
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Re: Why do people have such drastically different opinions on the difficulty of Mandarin Chinese?

Postby Saim » Thu Jul 22, 2021 7:36 am

thevagrant88 wrote:Interesting! Is Albanian considered part of the Sprachbund?


Yes, Albanian is a core member of the Balkan Sprachbund and Serbo-Croatian is a peripheral member. :)
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Re: Why do people have such drastically different opinions on the difficulty of Mandarin Chinese?

Postby rdearman » Thu Jul 22, 2021 7:59 am

Saim wrote:
thevagrant88 wrote:Interesting! Is Albanian considered part of the Sprachbund?


Yes, Albanian is a core member of the Balkan Sprachbund and Serbo-Croatian is a peripheral member. :)

Is that an annual payment or a monthly subscription? :D
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Re: Why do people have such drastically different opinions on the difficulty of Mandarin Chinese?

Postby jimmy » Sun Jul 25, 2021 12:04 pm

thevagrant88 wrote:Maybe it's just me, but I can't think of any other commonly studied languages that seem to have no general consensus as to how hard it is. Spanish? Throw it in the easy(ish) pile with the other romance languages. Oh you're learning Russian? Have fun with those cases friendo. Finnish? Hungarian? Wow, you must really be a glutton for punishment. JAPANESE AND KOREAN AND ARABIC OMG YOU MUST BE A SUPERGLOT!!!

And then there's Chinese...

The other day I was casually googling "which is harder Japanese or Chinese?", not because I was looking for an objective, well-defined answer; I just wanted to read others' experiences with learning the languages. Most of the discussions I came across were depressingly shallow. Things like, "Well Japanese has hard grammar but Chinese has no grammar. Not one grammar. But it's got tones so whichever gives you more trouble" or something else to that effect. I guess not too many people actually attain very high levels in both these languages to compare the learning processes fairly. So naturally, I seek out the youtube polyglots and again, wildly different opinions.

Luca Lampariella, in an interview with Matt from MIA, said that Chinese was, "not all that difficult to be honest" while Vladimir Skultety has gone on the record many times saying Chinese is unchallenged as the most difficult language he's ever studied. He's made a video comparing the two, but to be honest, his opinion as stated in that video is terribly biased and not very well communicated, imo.

So why do you guys think this is? Is there something unique about Chinese that sets it apart for westerners? I have my own theories, but I was curious as to your guys' opinions, and more importantly your experiences. Thanks y'all!


really , how to say it :)
there are a lot of people speaking , but just speaking
why?
Do not know why. but sure that they would continue to speak in spite of their lackness of information.

I experienced it really. it sometimes ensures to be swtiched something to be sparklingly entertaining.
For instance, I remember someone or more properly many people saying : "mathematics is really difficult"
they weren't aware that I was a mathematician. (This are common content of my meeting with some types people)
anyway, they had been suddenly staring to me with their horrible and nice face when I expressed that I had had mathematics degree from a well known university here in Turkey :)

this was not just one action that I witnessed. I have come across many people expressing that chinese was very difficult as you said.
but no meaningful answer taken when I asked "Well, have you tried (to learn) anytime chinese language ?"
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Re: Why do people have such drastically different opinions on the difficulty of Mandarin Chinese?

Postby golyplot » Fri Jul 30, 2021 5:24 am

I'm a math major and I still think that math is difficult. :P It's just that usually when people say "math is hard", they mean stuff like basic algebra, whereas I think that say, research level math is hard.
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Re: Why do people have such drastically different opinions on the difficulty of Mandarin Chinese?

Postby jimmy » Fri Jul 30, 2021 8:17 am

golyplot wrote:I'm a math major and I still think that math is difficult. :P It's just that usually when people say "math is hard", they mean stuff like basic algebra, whereas I think that say, research level math is hard.


I think research level of maths is meaningless to deal with.
therefore, I left at MSc level (thesis based) and I am very happy with this decision.
I think you are wrong in your assertion. (you might have a tendency to say "I better know this than you")
I would recommend that you check please "what you could do when none is with you" ,meaning which types of achievements you have.
note please I do not discuss your personal properties ,nor do I criticize you.
But selection of maths as "research level" is itself wrong (unfortunately)

meanwhile, you are probably not unaware that the guidance was more effective than instructing people in education science.
consequently,to point out the negative properties of a content which might (but should) be instructed to someone is wrong strategy for a teacher.
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