Ïþͮͮ

In fact I think to learn chinese is not so hard(may as I am a chinese),you learn it and you should practise everyday or it wiil be harder to learn the second time. I learn english I think it's not easy ,too.As some old words in china:ÊÀÉÏÎÞÄÑÊ£¬Ö»ÅÂÓÐÐÄÈË¡£(may means:nothing is really hard in fact if you decide to do). I may help you in learning chinese if you need,and I need your helpin learning English as well.

chinoise

Things will be much easier if you're staying in a Chinese speaking country and around Chinese people. This rule applies to any language, in fact. Some foreigners speak pretty good Cantonese/Mandarin, even if they don't know much about the writing system, in just one year, by working among Chinese people and have to speak Chinese every day. Some HK born foreigners, on the other hand, speak less than 50 words of Chinese even though they're born and bred here, since they have 0 contact with the local Chinese people and go to International schools. The point is they're unwilling to learn Chinese.

Believe me, many foreigners speak better Mandarin than I, since I've never learnt the language.

italiafree

Yes.chinese falls into the chinese-tibeten language system while many western languages the indian-european language system.chinese is the only existing absolute-independent language of the world which is not pronounced through the alphabets.congratulate that you choose the right language to learn!
It is really a fun to learn the chinese characters.and if you can master 9 hundreds there will be no difficulty to understand 90% of normal newspaper!
ENjoy yourself!

michaelcn

Chinese, It;s good.....

Yau

it depends on your lingual background. Vietnamese can often speak fairly good mandarin in 4 months, because of the commonality between Chinese and Vietnamese language. Educated Japanese and korean can also achieve the same proficiency in very short time.

the most difficult parts of Chinese is its tones and characters, but it's the language without genders, tenses and conjugation. It should be a good news to learners.

Yau

you've raised an interesting issue about the definition of literacy.

I believe 900 chinese characters is still not enough to read newspaper. In simplified Chinese, the official literacy for peasants in farmland is 1500 characters (should be more if you write in Traditional Chinese) and for citizens in a city is 2000 words.

This definition was made a few decades ago, when the Mainland China government was still struggling to solve the serious problem of iliteracy with poor resources for education. But the definition has been controversial. Most--- if not all--- teachers and linguists reckoned that the gov't made the 'wrong' definiton of literacy. Some even argue that the syllabus which intended to teach only 1500 characters are depriving peasants' rights to read 'normal readings' (including newspaper).

But i often feel that learners tend to exaggerate the difficulty of learning chinese characters. I just met some chinese teachers in vietnam. they told me it may take a year to teach the first 100 chinese words, but as students learned more, the progress will be huge.

italiafree

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My version is not from decades ago but the year 2005.
The link:网上å�‘言 符å�·è¦�比汉å*—多/è�šç„¦ - 北京晨报

Mastering 900 characters will enable you to read 90% of the newspaper!Learn chinese now!