

Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard - dpritchett
http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html

======
pradocchia
To boil that down, Chinese is So Damn Hard due to:

1\. the writing system

2\. the lack of cognates

3\. tones

Comments:

(1) could be argued applies to all learners of Chinese, regardless of
background or age, _but_ it should be obvious that a Japanese student would
not find characters so daunting--in fact, they would probably find some
comfort relative to western alphabets. Characters _do_ form a system--highly
irregular yes--but there are definite systematic qualities that can be
leveraged once you reach a certain level.

(2)&(3) are relative to your linguistic background, obviously. Mandarin
Chinese phonology and grammar is much simpler for children to learn than
English or many other languages. It's the end product of centuries of
simplification.

If one were to postulate a universal budget for linguistic complexity, the
Chinese skimp on phonology and grammar, and splurge on orthography, while most
other cultures do the opposite. Note the Japanese have an even simpler
phonology, a moderately complex grammar, and an even more complex orthography.

I would add, Chinese is So Damn Hard because the pedagogy sucks, but that's a
separate issue!

~~~
xiaoma
After studying Japanese in school, getting to a respectable communicative
level and then later spending most my adult life in Taiwan, I've got to
disagree about the orthography. The burden of learning a couple Japanese kana
syllablaries of under 50 symbols is nothing compared to that of needing to
learn literally thousands more Chinese characters.

Additionally, I find that most learners have a much harder time with Chinese
phonetics. I've known many, many Taiwanese people who have studied Japanese
and many Japanese who have moved here to learn Mandarin and there is no
comparison between their abilities. In general, the Taiwanese learners of
Japanese do pretty well albeit with a few grammar hang-ups. The vast majority
of the Japanese learners of Mandarin I've known have had great difficulties
communicating and had to put in much more time to reach similar levels of
competence.

~~~
pradocchia
IMO, two syllabry + kanji w/ multiple readings is more complex than strictly
monosyllabic characters w/ the occasional secondary pronunciation.

I can _guess_ how a character I don't know might be pronounced in Mandarin or
other dialects, with fairly good accuracy. Even tone! But Japanese? Maybe an
On reading or two. But kun'yomi? Forget about it.

And yes, Chinese phonology is more complex than Japanese, but the grammar is
simpler. A wash, perhaps?

~~~
xiaoma
I have a strong feeling that as long as writing systems are ignored, just
about every language is "a wash". There's a limit to the difficulties a
natural language will throw at someone. Since writing systems are constructed
that may not be the case.

It's also possible that the very different experiences of Japanese and Chinese
learners learning to read are due to the expectations the locals place on
themselves. In Japan, once you know the Joyo Kanji, you can be pretty
confident that you'll have furigana to help you when tougher words show up in
newspapers, in video games or even on TV. In Taiwan, on the other hand, the
only place you'll find significant help from zhuyin is in materials made for
children. China has a bit more pinyin for the illiterate population, but it is
still nothing compared to the furigana in Japanese media.

~~~
pradocchia
that's a good point, two syllabries + kanji + furigana for non-joyo is a
finite set, whereas chinese is a open set (virtually).

some spoken languages _are_ known to be simpler than others, as measured
through their phonology, morphology and syntax. trade languages, creoles,
pidgins, etc.

mandarin is a trade language/pidgin of sorts, with resulting simplification of
its phonology relative to other dialects. bahasa indonesian is another well-
known example.

fun factoid: while the number of Chinese characters throughout history number
in the hundreds of thousands, the working set for any one writer at any time
has been shown through textual analysis to be ~8000 for a well-educated
person, with an upper bounds under 20K.

