Name: Qinglin Wang

Course: ESL
Instructor: Lyndsey Reed
Date: 2016/11/21

Why Chinese Is Difficult to Learn?

Its a common perception from people who are studying Chinese as
a second language that learning Chinese is very hard. According to Juan
Castillo (2015), Mandarin Chinese is also considered as the hardest
language to learn in the world. However, some people think Chinese is
not as difficult as it seems because for those people who have a great
memory, remembering characters meanings doesnt bother them at the
very beginning so that they can easily be able to make simple sentences,
stack words on top of each other or have some fun with carving Chinese
single characters on their desks. But they will find it becomes extremely
hard for further study, for example, according to Johnny Chiang (2015),
in Foreigners' Difficulties of Learning Chinese, one of the most
depressing aspects during Westerners studies is that they feel
uncomfortable about Constantly focusing on trying to pronounce things
correctly so people understand me. Chinese comes from a unique
language family, which is called Sino-Tibetan and is second only to the
Indo-European language family. According to Irene Thompson (2013),
Sino-Tibetan Language Family, the ancestral Proto-Sino-Tibetan
language originated somewhere in the Himalayan plateau. In other words,

it comes from East and Southeast Asia. Through the very long river of
history, it develops a unique language family which is very different from
other language families. Westerners complain that they have nothing to
relate to their first language building system because they have different
language organization systems and speaking habits. According to the
Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia (n.d.), in this family of languages,
there are some common features, for example, they show a tendency to be
monosyllabic, they have several settled tones for characters, the words do
not change its form or show any inflection, and Because of the relative
absence of inflection, word order is the key to expressing grammatical
relationships. So basically, Chinese is hard to learn because writing has
nothing to do with pronunciation, completely opposite use of tones and
stress, the transformation of the root and the part of speech is unique and
different word order structure.
In many common languages like Spanish, Portuguese, French,
German, and also English, words consists of alphabets. As long as you
are familiar with each single alphabets pronunciations and master the
rules, you will be able to read what you see, even if are not familiar with
the meaning of the word, but you still can read out the probable
pronunciation. Single characters in Chinese are monosyllabic, and they
are just used as the single words in English. If people are introduced to a

new character on a subway or a billboard, they may have no way to guess

how to read. Because each single character in Chinese is composed of
several strokes, and each stroke doesnt represent any part of the
pronunciation. Thats why you can hardly tell the pronunciation by
observation, especially for beginners. Also, the way of writing is
obviously not related to the pronunciation. So based on this, its easy to
make inferences that learning Chinese is time-consuming, not only
because the huge number of vocabulary that Chinese includes because of
its long history, but also because despite remembering the connection
between meaning and writing, you should also be aware of the
pronunciation, which is mostly isolated to both meaning and writing.
Imagine learning English is like learning a poem, but learning Chinese is
like leaning a new song. People would be able to make sense of the lyrics
with ease. But if they want to sing it, they have to spend much time on the
melody. Another research has confirmed that it takes more works to do
with your brain to learn Chinese. According to Tim Radford (2003), The
Chinese need both sides of the brain to grapple with challenges of
Mandarin, but English speakers listen with only half their minds on the
job, says Sophie Scott, a psychologist at the Welcome Trust. She brain
scans on volunteers when they listened to native language. We think
Mandarin speakers interpret intonation and melody in the right temporal

lobe to give correct meaning to the spoken words, said Dr. Scott. That
means while we speak Chinese, our brain works separately, the left part
deals with the meaning and the right part deals with the pronunciation.
Chinese has a completely opposite use of tones and stress.
According to Aihua (n.d.), Learning Chinese pronunciation is the
toughest part for foreigners, she said. Pronounced in different tones will
usually mean different things. Chinese is a tonal language; each Chinese
character has a tone. Compared with English, intonations are used to
indicate whether a sentence is a statement, an exclamation or a question.
But in Chinese, each tone is settled already so that the intonation doesnt
make any change in a statement, an exclamation or a question.
Correspondingly, in English, stress on which syllable is mostly settled,
because if it is changed, the part of speech will be changed. And in
Chinese, stress on a character on behalf of emphasizing its importance or
indicate whether it is a question or statement. Stress will never change the
part of speech. Many foreigners speaking out of tune. And this out of
tune becomes a foreign accent. According to David Moser (1997), a
Sinologist and linguist, holds a Masters and a Ph.D. in Chinese Studies
from the University of Michigan, when you say the sentence with the
intonation that feels natural, the tones come out all wrong. He finds
himself straitjacketed because the intonation and stress habits are

incredibly ingrained. He used to Basically import, mutatis mutandis, our

habitual ways of emphasizing, negating, stressing, and questioning (p.
153). But not so with Chinese, the intonation must always obey the tonal
constraints of the specific words youve chosen. Many people dont
believe Chinese is the hardest language in the world because the grammar
in Japanese is harder than Chinese. Japanese is ranked by the U.S.
Foreign Services Institute as the most difficult language for native
English speakers to learn (Foreign Service Institute Language Difficulty
Rankings, n.d.). Chinese grammar is also very different from other
languages, and the most important reason Chinese is harder than Japanese
is that Japanese has no tones. Only a few Japanese words are
distinguished by intonation. If you get the intonation wrong in Japanese,
itll probably still be understandable. But in Chinese, it sounds very hard
to comprehend. So, in order to speak Chinese in right way, many people
have to overcome their second-natural reaction. There is nothing else be
helpful to strengthen this skill, except to exercise speaking every day.
For the next step, people may need to remember more vocabulary
words. While speaking of vocabulary, Chinese does have root characters
or root words. But the principle of transformation is different. The word
which derived from this root must have related logic of the roots
meaning. In Chinese, people have to understand the affiliation, inclusion,

correlation or similarity relationship between the root word and the

derived word. For example, choose (house) as a root. Then the
(houses top) means roof, the (houses bridge) means beam,
the (houses mid) means room. And they are also very simple in
writing in Chinese. As it shows, the root character exists in every
derived word and their relationships are affiliation and inclusion. There is
some similar phenomenon like this in Greek, Latin and also English, but
they use these words only if two words have correlation or similarity.
Also, in Chinese, there are so many characters can be use as prefix and
suffix, no matter what part of speech they are. And this makes people
harder to figure out which part of speech does the word was appointed,
like when a verb as a prefix modifies a noun and they become a combined
word. Theyre actually combined as an adjective. So, on words
transformation and collocation, Chinese is more complex and flexible. As
a consequence, there is more vocabulary that people have to remember.
In addition to those difficulties, there is another major problem that
makes many foreigners give up studying Chinese, the grammar.
According to Fluent in Mandarin (2014), many people strongly agree that
Chinese doesnt have grammar. This problem often makes people
confused while making a long academic sentence. The order of the

modifying components is quite different. In Simplified Chinese, the

attribute is usually placed in front of the modified noun. In English, it can
also be a post- attribute. Generally, post- attribute can emphasize the
subject which is modified. Like The picture on the wall is beautiful.
But in Chinese, the emphasis on a noun can only be expressed by stress.
Moreover, in Chinese, there are verbs in phrases that act as attributive
words, and if the phrases are postpositional, they might be mistaken as
the noun is doing the action of the verb in attributive implies.
In conclusion, Chinese is hard because the characters cannot be
spelled and the pronunciation cannot be gotten by observation. Its hard to
develop the intonation, Chinese words are more complex and there are
more vocabulary words than in other languages, the grammar is not clear
enough. But there are still many people studying Chinese as a second
language. And the Chinese government has established many TV
programs to stimulate foreign college students on their mastery of the
Chinese language, such as Chinese Bridge. There are also many Chinese
language institutes, such as Confucius Institute, a non-profit public
educational organization, operating in cooperation with local affiliate
colleges and universities around the world, in order to carry forward the
Chinese culture.
References

Castillo, J. (2015). 25 Of The Most Difficult Languages To Learn In The World.

Retrieved from http://list25.com/25-of-the-most-difficult-languages-to-learn-inthe-world/1/
Chiang, J. (2015, Sep 3). Foreigners' Difficulties of Learning Chinese. [Video File].
Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=IMkDAWdwudU&feature=youtu.be
Thompson, I. (2013). Sino-Tibetan Language Family. Retrieved from
http://aboutworldlanguages.com/sino-tibetan-language-family
Sino-Tibetan languages. (n.d.). The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. Retrieved
from http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/society/sino-tibetan-languagescommon-features.html
Radford, T. (2003). Brain Buzz That Proves Chinese Is Harder to Learn Than English.
Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/jun/30/highereducation.science
Aihua. (n.d.). Day 1: Tones [Episode 1]. Pinyin Crash Course: Learn Chinese Pinyin
in 21 Days. Podcast retrieved from http://kidschinesepodcast.com/learn-chinesepinyin-21-days-day-1-tones/.
Moser, D. (1997). Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard. Mair, V (Ed.). Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Department of Oriental Studies.
Effective Language Learning. (n.d.). Language Difficulty Ranking. Retrieved from
http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty
Fluent in Mandarin. (2014). Does Chinese have grammar? [Video File]. Retrieved
from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRyuNQTc7IU