Learn Foreign Languages

4. Degree of Difficulty

Actually, this is a tricky factor. Some people say that some languages are difficult and some are simple. When choosing a foreign language to learn, you don’t want to hear that a language is too difficult to learn, which will probably discourage and intimidate you. Although some language seems to be difficult at first glance, you don’t have to think that way.

From my point of view, the truth is every language is equally difficult or equally easy. There’s always a balance there. For a so-called difficult language, it might be difficult at the beginning, but once the fundamentals are done, your improvement will be extremely (Chinese). Others (such as English) are easy at first but become more and more difficult as you progress.

Let’s take Chinese as an example of difficult language.

Yes, Chinese characters look very complicated. They consist of strokes. But after you have learned certain amount of basic single characters (800 or so), you are almost done with your Chinese learning. Every single word has its independent meaning. After combined together, they can form a new multi-character word that bears another meaning, which is related to the single words in it. This way you can understand the multi-character word by combining the meaning of each component.
Let’s take English as an example of easy language.

At the beginning, I found that English was simple. I had fun there and progressed well. But after I have learned it for more than 10 years, I looked back and found that there was not much difference between what I was and what I had been in my English level. You need to memorize a completely different word for another concept that is close in meaning with one word that you have already known. For example, cow and bull. They are of the same race – ox, one female, one male. In Chinese, they are called “female ox” and “male ox”. If you know what ox is, just add a gender to the front. Easy, right?

At the end of this post, I hope you have already made your choice of which language you are going to learn in your mind at least.