I see posts describing how an English speaker could learn Spanish, French, and Italian, all together before mastering Chinese.

As a native English speaker I am sure that it is true that some languages such as French and Spanish are much easier for us to learn.

But I feel that compared to non Romance languages, Chinese could be one of the easiest languages to learn for some.

For me I picked up Russian as a third language. I learned the Cyrillic alphabet very, very quickly, probably because my memorization skills have been improved from character memorization. I could read and write and pronounce words with a basic level of proficiency.

But then comes the grammar. Everything is conjucated, verbs, nouns, even pro-nouns! I could not understand how a pro-noun such as Moscow changes with tense (along with the verb).

I don't want to get too long here, what I am driving at is the difficulty in Chinese is clearly in the reading and writing system, but the grammar and thought process of a Chinese person is very close to that of an English speaker; I think of it as caveman English (not at all in a derogatory sense). Just basic clear concise communication.

I think this is something we don't give the Chinese system enough credit for, and in fact discourage people from the language by advertising it as the most difficult in the world.

I've actually heard the Chinese versus Russian debate a few times. In the end it always boils down to grammar versus sheer volume of characters. Personally, as you mentioned the conjugations of Russian, I find it more difficult than Chinese. It always baffled me that changing a single part of a Russian sentence could result in changing the entire sentence haha.

I think for most languages, it depends on the proficiency you're aiming for. E.g., what I hear often is this comparison between German and English: While it's pretty easy to get to basic and mid-level, it' pretty damn hard to make progress from that level onward because it's a comparatively vague language. German on the other hand is very precise, which makes it a pain in the ass to get to medium proficiency. But since you'd have to learn all the nuances to get there in the first place, it's not that big a step to high proficiency from there. Sure, this is oversimplified, but you get the idea.

So, on topic: I know nothing about Russian, but there are two languages I think are harder than Mandarin Chinese: Cantonese and Japanese.

I've studied very basic Cantonese, and it seemed OK to me since I know the closely related Mandarin. But with its 6 tones and consonant endings and even more characters, I'd imagine it's harder to learn from scratch than Mandarin.

Japanese vs Chinese is, I think, an example like the English-German one above. Sure, Japanese has less syllables to build words from, and you don't necessarily have to get the pitch and pronunciation right to say and convey what you mean. Unlike in Chinese, you can start saying meaningful things right away. If you're aiming for being mistaken for a native speaker, though, certainly it's much harder than Chinese. Not only is it more likely that you've neglected to learn the correct pronunciation (because unlike in Chinese, it's not that essential), but you also have to know politeness levels, gender-specific ways of speaking, loads of pronouns you have to know how to use at the right moment in the right context, and listen to (and make sense out of) incomplete sentences.

@josh
Glad I am not the only one pulling my hair out over Russian!

Japanese sounds tough

Steven Pinker resumed complexity of languages by saying that naturally evolved languages are complex and you either going to be Chinese or Russian.

@ Frank Pereny

You write and think like a native English speaker. A Chinese person would not write what you just wrote unless they are trying to imitate a westerner.

Chinese grammar is nothing like English grammar.

Conjugation makes a language easier to learn for English speakers, not harder. Same thing applies with pronouns. One difficult part of Japanese is learning not to use pronouns in sentences. I, he, she, it, they and we are some of the most common words in the English language. None of these words are used often in Japanese. Two other really common words -- a and the -- don't even exist in Japanese. It's hard to wrap your head around this concept at first.


@Schnabelhund

"Sure, Japanese has less syllables to build words from, and you don't necessarily have to get the pitch and pronunciation right to say and convey what you mean."

I used to think this until I actually studied Japanese. In theory, it makes sense; in reality, it's the opposite. It's like saying English pronunciation is easy because the first words you learn are all monosyllable (cat, dog, hi, he, she, it, etc.) instead of complex polysyllabic ones (inimitable, for example).

Japanese pronunciation gets very difficult after you get past the early stages. Even after two years of full immersion I am still at an elementary school student level when it comes to speaking.

@ icecream

I really need to disagree about Chinese grammar being nothing like English. If anything, it is English without grammar.

Chinese is so flexible, often nouns and verbs are the same, no tenses, no conjugation etc! (I think the noun-verb duality of Chinese makes things especially easy.) Like in English we would say "The Pastor is preaching. I like his sermon." In Chinese if you know preach you can be pretty sure you got the noun too! (牧师在讲道。 我喜欢他的讲道。）

Now that I speak Mandarin relatively well I understand why Chinese people speak English the way they do.

Chinese people learning English say -

"My family have 3 car."

"Yesterday I go store buy 3 milk."

The reason is Chinese grammar is English grammar; spoken like a caveman (with a few particles to remember like 了，被 etc.)

@icecream

My point exactly! Many Japanese learners underestimate the importance of proper pronunciation in the early stages, then struggle hard to get rid of their quirks later, often in vain. Whereas in Chinese, you can't even get to said early stages without cramming the pronunciation first. Anyhow, what I mean is that it's easier to become a mediocre Japanese speaker than a mediocre Chinese speaker, but it's easier to get to native speaker level Chinese than to native speaker level Japanese once you're on intermediate level.

I haven't ever touched Japanese but I can believe it. Chinese pronunciation can be perfected as it has limited combinations of single syllable words.

@ Frank Pereny

I think we have different definitions of the word 'grammar'. I understand what you are trying to say, but saying Chinese is English without grammar is the exact same as saying English is Chinese without grammar. Neither one makes any sense if you understand the meaning of the word 'grammar'. Grammar is just a set of rules for a language. Each language has a different set (though I will admit there is some overlapping).

Both Japanese and Chinese are topic-prominent languages. There is no equivalent in English. How do you explain that using your caveman theory? Did cavemen in Europe at one time speak that way?

I have experienced similar situations with Japanese people speaking English. It's common for there to be linguistic interference when learning a new language.

@Schnabelhund

Your second post is an opinion so I'm going back a bit.

"Not only is it more likely that you've neglected to learn the correct pronunciation (because unlike in Chinese, it's not that essential), but you also have to know politeness levels, gender-specific ways of speaking, loads of pronouns you have to know how to use at the right moment in the right context, and listen to (and make sense out of) incomplete sentences."

I don't agree with any of this. Pronunciation, because there are so few syllables, is very important to get right. Japanese also drops pronouns often -- loads of pronouns is misleading. You think that the sentences are incomplete; Japanese people don't think so.

As far as Japanese pronunciation goes, I have never found a good explanation of the nuances like there seems to be for Chinese "tones". There are definitely tones used, but (to my knowledge) nobody has taken time to categorize them, I don't know if it would be possible.
Just to give you a flavor, there are 3 basic meanings for the word "hai" - "yes", "ashes" and "lung". The intonation on all are different. I know of no rule to tell what the intonation should be other than to memorize the intonation you hear from a native speaker.
Although there is no rule to figure out the correct intonation, people usually get what you're saying by context regardless of the intonation you use.

@ thayne

Japanese does not have tones.

http://www.skritter.com/forum/topic?id=192319766

You're right. I read somewhere that it only takes a native English speaker 110% of the time to learn spoken Mandarin that it takes to learn spoken Spanish/French.

It's reading and writing that means overall it takes four/five times longer to learn as Romance languages. And twice as long to learn as Russian.

Practically speaking, listening is not as easy as one might think from a classroom. To learn to comprehend putonghua is easy, but there are few native speakers of putonghua and there are a huge range of accents. Older people can't speak putonghua and will use a different Mandarin dialect.

@icecream

«Pronunciation, because there are so few syllables, is very important to get right.»

Agree to disagree on *how* accurate your pronunciation has to be. In any case, not as accurate as you have to be in Chinese, right? That’s what I mean.

«Japanese also drops pronouns often -- loads of pronouns is misleading.»

It doesn’t mean you don’t have to know a lot of them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_pronouns#List_of_Japanese_personal_pronouns
Where most languages have one I, two you, one we, one or two you (plural) and a couple of third persons.

«You think that the sentences are incomplete; Japanese people don't think so.»

Well yes, I think the sentences are incomplete. I’m also a Japanese person and a native speaker. But I’m not talking about dropped subjects (it’s common in other languages too, like in Spanish), I’m talking about interrupted sentences like

「その色がダメならこっちでも。」
「そんな事言ったって。」
「早くしないと映画が！」

where you’re supposed to finish them in your mind.

Keep in mind that these are difficulties on high levels, or as I worded, if you’re aiming for being mistaken for a native speaker. Of course you don’t need to know *all* of the pronouns on intermediate level!

@thayne

Yeah, the pitches aren’t taught properly and I don’t really know why that is.

http://www.excite.co.jp/dictionary/japanese/

This is a dictionary where the pitch is indicated with tiny numerals next to the word. Do you need an explanation?

@ icecream

I just want to clarify that I don't mean Chinese is actual "caveman" or ancestral English. What I am saying is Chinese is exactly like English spoken with no grammar, just the basic words required to put together a thought.

Saying English is Chinese without grammar doesn't make sense because English uses plurals, tenses, and a lot more voices than Chinese.

Like all languages Chinese has grammar. Grammar is a set of rules for that language. But unlike most other languages, the rules are very few, very consistent, and very forgiving. And the reason it is so easy to learn is the fact that when you study Chinese you don't learn the grammar, you learn patterns of grammar.

For example once one learns the difference between 我去，我去过. The 过 indicates it has been done before. Now practically any verb in Chinese coupled with 过 allows you to construct that thought. Most Chinese grammar is this way. Learn the pattern and idea it conveys and apply it to almost anything.

Is that grammar? I guess; but personally I don't classify it as the same type of grammar other languages use because there is no rule, just practical and flexible patterns.

Of course there are a few grammar items in Chinese in the classical definition such as when to use 的，地，得.

I tend to agree with Ice Cream. I find English to Chinese difficult. While there is sometimes a certain simplicity to what I would call Chinese grammar, I still find that putting sentences together like a native to be extremely challenging. When I learned Spanish (some time ago), I recall that constructing sentences could be a find and replace exercise, English for Spanish. With Chinese, the uses of 对 and 跟 for how things affect other things, the descriptions of time and place, the use of 把，the placement of descriptive phrases, etc. etc. all depart strongly from English, in my limited experience.

My 2 cents.

@ Schnabelhund

Ok. You win.

@ Frank Pereny

I was joking.