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 right tone. Otherwise, it would mean something different. We often joke about "westerners' Chinese" because that is a common mistake for foreigners.

On top of that, the combination of single characters can create numerous words. Chinese is a precise language. For example, we have four different words to describe "aunt." Your mother's elder sister, your mother's younger sister, your father's elder sister, your father's younger sister are called different "aunt" in Chinese. We also have words to describe cousins depending on if they are from your mother's side, your father's side, and if they are older or younger than you. Crazy, right? But isn't it great that you can immediately get the family relationship when you hear the word from a conversation without further explanation?  

A fascinating part of the Chinese language is Chenyu, most of which consists of four characters. They came from ancient literature. Each Chenyu represents a Chinese story that almost everyone knows since childhood. For example, "樂不思蜀" means "too joyful to think about home." It originates from the incompetent Chinese King Liu Shan, who lost his country but enjoyed his detained life with good food and entertainment. If you know the history, these idioms make perfect sense and bring a vivid impression.

With all of these together, ancient Chinese can create extremely concise but fantastic literature. The Tang Dynasty (7th - 10th century) is famous for short poems. Most of them have only 20 characters to describe a whole story. It will take a long paragraph to explain the story in English, plus a ton of footnotes explaining the historical connections.  

Chinese and English are indeed very different. But learning Chinese can be fun. You get not only the language but also the culture, the traditional value, and history.

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