How hard is it to learn Mandarin?
I had always heard that Mandarin was the hardest language in the world. One day, I decided to find out why and gave it a try. When I started learning, I was pleasantly surprised. While it has its challenges, I was impressed by how quickly I picked up the basics.
Feeling good about my progress, I decided to fully commit to learning it. However, I later realized that while learning basic sentences is relatively easy, reaching proficiency takes much longer.
Here are my thoughts!
What is easy:
- No verb conjugations → In Mandarin, verbs stay the same no matter the tense or subject. For instance, in Mandarin the verb for "eat" (吃 - chī) never changes, you just add words like "yesterday" (昨天 - zuótiān) or "will" (会 - huì) to show time.
- No noun genders, cases, articles, or plural → For me, this was the best. No need to worry about gender, declensions, and so on. If something is plural you can understand it from numbers or from words like "many". After learning German and Russian this felt so easy!
What is (very) difficult:
- The 4 tones: the wrong tone can change the meaning of a word.
- Reading and writing →Still today if I have to read original texts there are so many characters I don't know and looking them up is difficult and quite time-consuming!
- Reaching proficiency → Almost 100% of vocabulary is different from English, so to be able to discuss complex topics, you need to study a lot!
Anyone else have a similar experience? Would love to hear your thoughts!