Learn Foreign Languages

Many people say that Chinese is difficult, but is this really true?

It is true that Chinese is not familiar to English speaking people because it’s quite another thing than alphabet-based languages. Chinese characters look strange. The tones in Chinese pronunciation are elusive. That might be the really reason why people hesitate to learn Chinese despite of the importance that it’s gaining.

If you’re one of them, that’s okay. It might make you feel better to know that more than 1.4 billion people have no problem in speaking this language in the world. Of course, it doesn’t imply that the language that more people can speak is easier to learn. But it means that difficulties in learning this language can be conquered.

Actually, Chinese is not as difficult as English in some aspects. In this post series I will focus on the most interesting one, i.e. the ways of vocabulary building. It might be surprising if I tell you that a relatively small Chinese vocabulary can enable you to read as well as write.

At the beginning, you can just use the phonetic system to learn to speak Chinese. You don’t have to focus on the “complicated” characters at this stage. Eventually, of course, you will come to the Chinese characters, but skip it just for now.

The second thing that you need to understand is the way Chinese words are composed. The reason I say that a small vocabulary can enable you to read and write in Chinese is because Chinese words can be liken to bricks in building houses. Any characters that you have learned can vocabulary-multipliers.

Chinese words are all composed of single characters. And the meaning of the whole word has a kind of relationship with those of the building characters. If you understand the one, you will understand the other almost immediately.