Mandarin Chinese

[CronoTriggerfan]

Well, in lieu of my high school not offering any languages other than Spanish and French, I've opted to take Chinese at a local community college after school. I've heard it's the most difficult language to learn, next to Japanese, Arabic, and English. Can anyone else speak to this effect? On broader terms, does anyone here speak the language? What should I expect?

 

[Alghazanth]

I don"t know any chinese except basic words and greetings , but I know japanese (have passed jlpt level 2 last year) and have a big interest in kanji , memoriizing and writing up to obscure ones especially
(sorry if off topic I was just bored and guessed it would be lonely if nobody else replied)

 

[8PK8]

I have studied a variety of Asian languages and would say that Chinese is difficult when it comes to the characters and pronunciation. Chinese grammar is similar to English so it is not that difficult.

"Wo de zhongwen bu tai hau" ^^

Reading and memorizing characters takes time, but if you do it everyday practicing reading and writing, it will become easier, but you have to do it everyday.

Pronunciation is the most difficult as there are 4-5 different tones for the same sound so if you say a particular sound in the wrong tone, it can have a completely different meaning (eg: "ma" could mean horse, mother, etc). However once you train your tongue, it should be no problem.

Listen to lots of Mandarin/Taiwanese pop music and watch movies/TV to improve your listening.

I would say Japanese is quite easy except for grammar.
Korean is one of the easiest to learn but grammar is similar to Japanese and pronunciation is very difficult, even more than Chinese.

 

[PokeParadox]

Nope... not Mandarin... some Cantonese (mostly bad word or phrases :lol
I also know some basic Japanese, which is a little bit more useful than just being able to swear... not by much though.

 

[icurafu]

Korean is the easiest Asian language to learn to read. It's very geeky, the way the symbols make sense. (have patterns that relate to the sound)

Pronunciation is a little hard. There are some verbs that are hard to get right, like "ui" or "eu".

 

[CronoTriggerfan]

Thanks for the advice guys, I start today. Any recommendations of good pop/rock Chinese music to listen to so I can start gauging the pronunciation of stuff by ear?