Why Chinese is so hard to learn?

Question

Yes. It is much harder even for Chinese native speakers.

Here are the reasons why:

1. China has long history. Characters could mean totally different even it is the same character. In different dynasty, same phrase could be very different too. For example, "内人“ which is " n e I r e n" in PINYIN , means wife. but you can't tell the exact meaning just by hearing the phase cuz they pronounce the same. So it could lead you to misunderstand as inside person or person inside or maybe just inside of a person. The truth is none of them will be right if you don't know the situation and Chinese history.
2. Chinese has so many borrowed character and homonyms. For example 凶， 兄， 熊， 雄，汹，匈，胸，芎 can you imagine they all pronounce the same but absolutely different meanings. X I O N G is the PINYIN of these characters. About borrowed characters, here's an example, 僵 borrowed from 强 in the old days means stiff but 强 could mean strong. I'll tell you guys more about it later as this is not allowed to type in PINYIN correctly.
3. Chinese has 4 different tones and 2 of them are very hard for most of the people unless you are good at singing. Singing is really helping for language study. The rules changes in so many situations so it is even hard for man to do that and of course languages have emotion which is hard for people to tell it's a lie or not when you say it.
4. That's all for today! I'm new here so if you wanna know Chinese better don't hesitate to contact me.

Answer 1

Learning Chinese can be challenging for many reasons. Here are some factors that lead to difficulties in learning Chinese:

(1) Chinese is a tonal language, which means the tone in which a word is pronounced can change its meaning. Mandarin has four tones and a soft tone, which can be an unfamiliar and difficult concept to grasp for learners who are not used to tonal languages.

(2) Unlike alphabetical writing systems, Chinese uses thousands of unique characters. Learning to read and write requires memorizing a large number of these characters, their meanings and pronunciations. There is no direct correspondence between the way Chinese characters are written and their pronunciation, which can complicate the learning process.

(3) Chinese has a large number of homophones, which are words that sound the same but have different meanings, which can be confusing for learners. Context is critical to understanding the meaning of intent.

(4) Chinese grammar is very different from many Western languages. The lack of verb conjugations, tenses, and noun plurals simplifies some aspects of grammar, but also creates challenges in articulating time, aspect, and number.

(5) There are many dialects and regional variations of Chinese, such as Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, etc. While Mandarin is the official language of China and the most widely taught language, learners may encounter regional variants with significant differences in pronunciation, vocabulary and even grammar.

(6) The language is closely tied to Chinese culture and philosophy, and understanding certain concepts, idioms, and expressions may require a deeper understanding of Chinese culture and history, which adds additional complexity to the learner.

Despite these challenges, many people successfully achieve varying levels of proficiency. Through continued practice, exposure, and perhaps most importantly, effective teaching methods and resources, learners can overcome these challenges and find learning Chinese to be a rewarding experience.

I hope above explanation helps.

Answer 2

It's often said that Chinese has no grammar. But that's wrong, every language has grammar. It's just that Chinese grammar is relatively simple compared to others. Chinese has no word form changes like English or Spanish, for example "do" and "did". Then why is it still so hard to learn? Probably it's because Chinese is not a phonetic language. Chinese remains the only logographic language in the world (Japanese kanji 漢字 is also logographic, but these characters originate from ancient Chinese), which means pronunciation is not relevant to Chinese characters. It means that you have literally "memorize" all the characters and their corresponding pronunciations instead of getting used to the alphabet system like most of the languages. It also means that even looking up a word in dictionary is complicated.

Answer 3

Well, if you got the right methods, Chinese is not that difficult to learn though.

According to my students from different parts of the world, except the tones, which need a lot of practice, Chinese grammar and phrases are easy to acquire. As to character writing, there are even tips to master it. In sum, practice makes perfect. Nevertheless, how to make practice way efficient depends on who you are learning with. If you have a right tutor you will even to master the four tones in an easier and interesting way. Please let me know if you have any further questions.