Steve said: “I am not of the opinion that Chinese is so much more difficult than other languages. It has its difficulties, tones, characters, no vocabulary in common with European languages. It has compensations. The vowels and consonants are not difficult to pronounce, the grammar is very easy and forgiving, and once you have enough characters, the new words build quite easily.”
If Chinese is not any harder, why is comprehension so difficult? I remember I sent you MP3s from random TV programs here and you admittedly understood very little. That still happens to me as well. In my opinion that shouldn’t be the case in a language we speak well. In other languages I never had that problem. I always understood the news even without especially working on the type of phrasing used there.
Chinese grammar being easier is not as helpful as you might think because meaning and relationships between elements of a sentence become sometimes more difficult to understand.
I find it rather difficult to build up vocabulary because Chinese words have so little “uniqueness” in terms of how they sound. They do not stick out like multi syllable words in English. Homophones are of course another complicating factor.
I find pronounciation not that easy, especially the rather subtle differences of the q, s, z, c and x sounds. In fact, many native English speakers don’t get the x sound right, “xiexie” always sounds like “shieshie”.
I know a Japanese who was working very efficiently, and very intensely, achieved C1 level in Beijing after 8 months. (Actually, I bought his learning method.) However, we, Japanese, have enough knowledge of characters before studying Chinese. I am wondering how difficult it is for Westerners to reach such a high level in just 9 months.
To understand something we need context. I understand Chinese very well if I am comfortable with the context, as when I am invited to participate in panel discussions on TV here in Vancouver. A random MP3 file from a program is more difficult, however and I would have to concentrate a little to get the hang of the context. In that regard, I have been doing so much listening to Russian that I really understand the spoken language very well, whereas I have not been listening to that much Chinese.
It does not matter that foreigners say Shieshie. It is the comprehension that matters. I don’t know if Chinese is inherently more difficult to comprehend, but it might be. I just don’t think in those terms. If I get enough exposure I will eventually understand it, whether the amount of exposure is more or less than in some other language does not really interest me. I just keep going till I get good at it.
As Steve says, it is about volume I think. That David Moser article is in a way a good summary of how many people in the English speaking (Western?) world view a language like Chinese. Generally, I believe this ‘Chinese/Japanese/etc. is so hard!’ view is held by people who attempt to master the language purely via some kind of ‘study’ without putting in serious amounts of time actually reading it, listening to it, talking to people, etc. This was certainly my problem with Japanese until I had my wake-up call after seven years of ‘studying’ in an ineffective way. Khatz puts it nicely here I think…
If you start off with a more realistic expectation that you will need to spend many thousands of hours in contact with the language to develop a good feel for it, and make sure that such contact is in the form of doing something you find stimulating and enjoyable, then the feeling of ‘difficulty’ can be largely removed, especially once past the initial stages.
Indeed! It frustrates and annoys me that I -still- cannot write in Japanese without making quite a few errors, even if I am slowing getting better. I also still have many thousands of words left to learn before I can claim to have the vocabulary of a college graduate. With the help of Anki I am squashing a dozen odd or so of these each day though.
That said, I have really had a ball enjoying TV shows, movies, podcasts, manga, books, conversations and such in the language over the last few years. In 2010 I had quite a lot of time on my hands preparing for entry to post grad at Kyoto U. where I am now (although I was in Australia at the time), and spent most waking hours on input, putting in some 4000 hours or so (not something you can easily recommend to people I know!). This really made the language open up for me in a way it never had before. I went from being unable to hold a real conversation or understand books, radio, TV, etc. to being able to do all of those things without difficulty. This process was almost entirely enjoyable for me, although of course I have to stress that I had lots of time on my hands, strong motivation, and access to heaps of great material thanks to the internet.
By no means should we play down the kind of commitment learning a language requires. However, I think the position taken by people like David Moser is common among people who have burnt out after a few thousand hours of traditional study -of- the language having not allowed themselves to enjoy doing things -in- the language enough (perhaps because they view that as a distraction from the -real- study that they should be doing). We need to be humble, patient, and persistent, but also playful, relaxed and optimistic.
The lingq system, by the way, has also shown me that the beginning stages of a language can also be quite interesting and relatively painless compared to what I went through in introductory classes. Then again, I am doing German now, which is perhaps not so intimidating to launch into for an English speaker. I will see how things go with Chinese.
@Peter: “…Also, Spanish might seem like a really easy language (comprehension etc.). But as David James said, it’s an easy language to speak poorly.”
You know, that’s a very interesting point. I do wonder whether this isn’t true of many so-called “easy” languages - English, Afrikaans, Indonesean, and so on?
It might be relatively easy to reach a kind of basic functional fluency in them. But to master them, to speak them really well - maybe that would ultimately take as much time as it would for a “difficult” language like Russian?
I think Benny is good at imitating and this is what he is selling as his trick. He is able to sound native quite quickly. This is just one aspect of language learning. Usually the right brain is involved. Left-brain learning such as grammar is not his strong point as far as I can tell. He seems to ignore this aspect, probably because he is not very good at it, and just think that when you imitate and “sound” right this is somehow fluent. Ok kids learn their native language in the same way but they are correcte by others throughout their childhood. Strangers probably won’t give you such a hard time.
Benny does not sound native to me, but he certainly tries to reduce his accents. Sometimes (for example in French) to the point that it sounds a bit like a caricature.
@Rank: I agree, English is not an easy to really master, and I don’t mean accent at all, I mean natural phrasing and all that.
I have a theory, Friedemann; I reckon that all languages require more or less the same amount of time and exposure in order to achieve a genuine level C2. (And this amount of time is probably measured in years rather than months!)
But if it’s level B2/C1 that we’re talking about, then I believe the whole thing differs quite considerably from language to language. An active level B2 in English (or any other easy-rated language) can probably be achieved much more rapidly than in Polish or Arabic, for example.
I believe there is, in every language, a great void between level C1 and C2. There are plenty of foreigners out there (everyone from sports-professionals to politicians) who can speak English well enough to do TV-interviews, etc. But in my experience it is somewhat rare to find a non-native speaker who truly has a full native-like command of English.
Benny is better than average in imitating the sounds of a language, but not outstanding. He does not sound native in any of the languages that he speaks, but then that is usually impossible to achieve. In fact he sounds somewhat unnatural and forced. I know people who speak more naturally, and closer to native, in the languages that they have learned. Luca and Richard Simcott are examples, on the Internet but I have met others. Benny certainly does not sound native in Chinese. But then again that is not a reasonable goal.
I also do not agree that kids learn to speak correctly because they are corrected. Kids are rarely corrected, or at least not enough to make a difference. The same is true of adults. We cannot rely on others to correct our mistakes. Kids and adults notice most of their mistakes themselves, or just adjust to more correct speech with enough exposure.