Why Chinese is Hard to Learn
To many westerners, Chinese is a bizarre language. There are ~2000 characters, four tones in pronunciation, numerous combinations of single characters to form words, thousands of phrases derived from historical stories. Let's talk about the characters first. While you only need to write 26 alphabets in English, you need to master at least 600 Chinese characters to deal with daily communication. Each is a mini-drawing representing the subject. The good news is that most of them contain multiple "compartments," so you can master them by remembering the compartments. Knowing the meaning of each "compartment" can significantly help you to remember the meaning and pronunciation. The traditional Chinese character "愛" means "love." The top part means "family," the bottom part means "friend," and the center part means "heart." Second, Mandarin Chinese has four tones. Correct pronunciation also requires that you have the ...