I saw many discussion about "language X grammar is harder/easier than grammar Y"
but don't you guys forget that languages do not have grammar ? I mean naturally.
the thing you call "Grammar" is the set of rules which DESCRIBE existing language.
And there are many different ways to describe the same thing. It is also true for GRAMMAR. If you ever tried to read a grammar book for native speakers and for foreigner, you'd be amazed how different the rules are!
So if someone finds the grammar difficult for some particular language - try to find another book Of course there are some "common" ways of viewing grammar, but there are some "uncommon" as well. You know, heisig's method is "uncommon" way to study kanji, but how great it is !

HerrPetersen Wrote:http://www.sinosplice.com/lang/pronunciation/02/ (here it shows misconceptions, on the next page it is explained how to do it right)
Now I also am able to distinguish better between sounds.

Ｗｈａｔ　ｅｘａｃｔｌｙ　ｉｓ　ｔｈｉｓ　ｔｏｎｇｕｅ　ｂｌａｄｅ　ｏｆ　ｗｈｉｃｈ　ｔｈｉｓ　ｓｉｔｅ　ｓｐｅａｋｓ．　Ｔｈｅ　ｄｉａｇｒａｍ　ｉｓ　ｈａｒｄ　ｔｏ　ｔｅｌｌ　ｆｒｏｍ．

mentat_kgs Wrote:And japanese vocabulary seems to be more alien than chinese.
It is like if it was a mix of two languages: one that uses on yomi and names; and other that use kun yomi, adjetives and verbs.

Japanese is actually a mix of so many languages. Its grammar is like Korean, its writing comes from Hanzi + a set of 3 alphabets-writings (hiragana, katakana, romaji), and its vocabulary comes from all over the place.

Even its readings can come from traditional Japanese (kunyomi), Chinese-stylized (onyomi), or some weird 外来語 transform into カタカナ (many Western terms).

Immediately, we think katakana represents foreign words, but Japanese actually coin a lot of foreign Chinese terms in Kanji-form and some of these terms actually flow back to China.

All this makes the language extremely flexible/adaptable to change and foreign influence, but it also makes it difficult to learn. Due to these influences, the language is very dynamic; it really is a moving target... ...and I haven't even mentioned all those Tokyo subcultures that coin their own form of Japanese all the time...

numirabis Wrote:I saw many discussion about "language X grammar is harder/easier than grammar Y"
but don't you guys forget that languages do not have grammar ? I mean naturally.
the thing you call "Grammar" is the set of rules which DESCRIBE existing language.
And there are many different ways to describe the same thing. It is also true for GRAMMAR. If you ever tried to read a grammar book for native speakers and for foreigner, you'd be amazed how different the rules are!
So if someone finds the grammar difficult for some particular language - try to find another book Of course there are some "common" ways of viewing grammar, but there are some "uncommon" as well. You know, heisig's method is "uncommon" way to study kanji, but how great it is !

Not really. Grammar sure doesn't exist naturally in a language, but it is an objective way to define language with a set of rules. In Japanese, this is so hard that new concepts have to be imported into western grammatical theory just for it, more or less. If you use pure western grammatic ideas, Japanese suddenly becomes very convoluted. With Chinese, you don't really need all that many grammatical concepts. While the grammar might not be a natural part of a language, I'd say it's pretty easy to measure how complex languages are using it.

As someone learning Japanese out of personal interest, and Mandarin because of the Chinese gf and her family, I can comment on the difficulty of learning the two side by side.

The only real difficulties with Mandarin are the hanzi and pronunciation. Both are easily conquered. Heisig-like methods take care of the hanzi (really no need to say more on this site), and the pronunciation can be learned quite easily if you devote significant amount of time (2 weeks to a month) to just learning pinyin. I've got an Anki deck with a few hundred facts that are audio->pinyin and pinyin->audio taken from the FSI language course. Learn pinyin before anything else, and you'll do fine.

After that, Mandarin is pretty easy (for a native English speaker). You can start learning sentences without much difficulty. I agree with an earlier poster that said Mandarin is useful right off the bat, whereas Japanese has an initial barrier to entry. From the get-go I was able to make my own Chinese sentences from the examples I was learning, whereas with Japanese it wasn't until I hit around 500-1,000 sentences that I had a good enough grasp of how the language worked to feel comfortable conversing on my own.

Despite that, I think you'll have a harder time with Mandarin. Although there's a wealth of media out there, there's little interest in it from non-Chinese audiences, making it difficult to find until you have a grasp of the language (a chicken and egg problem). Also, you'll find more books than you will manga, which is less friendly to the beginner. Finally, English -> Japanese is a well trodden path, with an accumulated pool of knowledge on sites and forums like this that will assist you on your Journey. If you find such a resource for Chinese, please let me know :\.

mafried Wrote:If you find such a resource for Chinese, please let me know :\.

chinesepod.com

Based on my experience with both languages, which isn't all that much, I wouldhave to agree that Chinese is easier to an extent. (Or just to certain people like me.)

I spent a week and a half on Mandarin and I was able to use those words confidentally. I could underdstand them in songs and such. because they are almost always pronounced the same way with tones I can hear distinct words. In Japanese it took a year and a half before I picked things out od songs. I hate the multiple readings in Japanese.There is definitely a culture barries between English, Japanese and Chinese but I think Japanese grammar alienates every other language I know of.

Tobberoth Wrote:

mafried Wrote:If you find such a resource for Chinese, please let me know :\.

chinesepod.com

I wish I guess I should claify what I meant: a site where learners can share methods that work, and discuss new techniques for language learning. Chinesepod.com has a great community, but it definitely has a "learn chinese our way" focus, which is understandable given the commercial nature of the site.

The other big one, chinese-forums.com is is a large user community. But I was turned off by their anti-Heisig, anti-AJATT sentiments. At that time I was half-way through RTK, and had applied AJATT with some success. It works for me, and if they weren't wiling to give it a chance, then I felt I shouldn't be so trusting of other advice on that forum.

So those two are out, for me, and I'm still looking for a chinese-focused forum that's amenable to new ideas and developments (like the culture here at RtK).

Well, you can't really expect any AJATT-friendly forums. This is the only one in Japanese I've ever seen so I don't think it's so much about how easy it is to find resources for the language in question, we just happened to be lucky with Japanese. I would probably recommend you to make your own site if you can't find any decent one.

Personally, I find Chinesepod.com extremely easy to apply to AJATT style learning. I learned all my basic Chinese by it. Just listen to dialogues over and over, put the sentences from the dialogues in Anki with their sentences etc... it's basically a HUGE source of good natural Chinese. Once you're finished with their stuff, you can probably read more or less anything, so the lack of Chinese manga shouldn't be a big problem.

mafried Wrote:...
So those two are out, for me, and I'm still looking for a chinese-focused forum that's amenable to new ideas and developments (like the culture here at RtK).

Given the "simpler nature" of Mandarin,

http://www.iknow.co.jp

might become a good source for going from English to Mandarin (if the site will ever come back up - it's been in "maintenance mode" for almost 3 days now).

With their free lessons, you should be able to actively pick up listening, production (pinyin), vocabulary, and sentence patterns. Their materials aren't as extensive as the materials for Japanese, yet, but I think the resource will grow over time.

I'd say that Chinese is definitely easier for an English native to learn. The grammar is much simpler (no conjugation), the word order is the same as English, and the characters mostly only have one reading.

The increased number of characters isn't a big deal since a similar number is required in Japanese too for functional literacy (without furigana). The pronunciation is harder because of the tones, but I guess you get used to that with practice.

Jarvik7 Wrote:I'd say that Chinese is definitely easier for an English native to learn. The grammar is much simpler (no conjugation), the word order is the same as English, and the characters mostly only have one reading.

Not is it only one reading, but it's always monosyllabic! One syllable per Hanzi!!!
Think about how easy that is - if you hear 10 syllables in a sentence, you know there are exactly ten Hanzi.

It sounds trivial, but you can't even say that about Japanese reading of Kanji (well, maybe onyomi comes close, but you can't get 10 onyomi in a row unless you are doing a Buddhist chant or something like that).

As for the 4 tones, don't sweat it - practice and you will get it over time. Many Chinese dialects are worse. For example, I think Cantonese has 6 or 9 tones depending on how you count...

Yeah, Vietnamese has something like 14 tones :O

Not sure what you mean when you say tone, but according to this English has more than 8000...

wccrawford Wrote:

QuackingShoe Wrote:Jesus, that didn't take long.

For the inevitable fight, you mean? I don't think this was intended as a troll topic, but I don't think a troll could have got people worked up much better.

Yes, based on the awful spelling and strange nature of the original post, I believe this was a troll topic, but I had to call Tobberoth out on his asinine comments such as "Mandarin is a joke." After going on about how "difficult" Japanese is and how much more "complex" it is than Mandarin, he goes and pulls the AJATT method out of his ass? Are you kidding me? Khatzumoto says grammar "doesn't even exist." Tobberoth, stop contradicting yourself. If you truly follow the AJATT method, then you well know that you do not even study grammar at all, so it is not a problem and has no basis in your argument.

As I recall, we were purely debating on pronunciation and grammar. If you learn grammar in context, then all languages are the same in terms of difficulty; it is impossible for one to be more difficult than another since you learn it naturally. If you learn a language in context and through immersion, it is neither "difficult" nor "easy," as you merely learn it as a small child would. Many English-speaking natives would call English the easiest language in the world because they naturally learned it, but many linguists classify English as one of the more difficult languages. This is the reason that this topic is utterly pointless and its main question negligible in the grand scheme. Like I said, the only reason I replied was to call Tobberoth out on his asinine hyperbole.

Chinese Pod + Audacity = Badabaaang!

All you have to do is cut the annoying English pieces =D

Tak47 Wrote:Like I said, the only reason I replied was to call Tobberoth out on his asinine hyperbole.

How was it an asinine hyperbole? All I said was that I find Chinese ridiculously easy to learn compared to how hard I found learning Japanese to be. Call me out on it all you want, it's still my opinion and I supplied proper reasons for why I think so and you haven't brought up a single thing to make me change my mind.

The only reason you felt you had to "call me out" was because you were offended that someone found a language you found hard to be easy. Sorry, I don't think intonation is as huge of a problem as you seem to think. Yes, i DO think it's easier to learn hanzi usage than it is to learn kanji usage. Yes, I DO think it's easier to comprehend mandarin texts than Japanese texts because of the difference in focus. I can get to a high level in Mandarin faster than I can get to a high level in Japanese. That's not an asinine exaggeration. It's a fact.

Actually, Khazumoto never says one can't study grammar, he even recommends textbooks which focus on grammar. Just because you learn from exposure doesn't mean you don't have to learn grammar from said exposure. Regardless, grammar is a way of describing a language, giving it structure. Even if you don't explicitly study said grammar, it can still be applied to said language and the results of such an analysis are just as true. Some languages have a more complex structure than others, trust me, I've studied latin. Creating a proper sentence in Mandarin is quite a simple process. Find the right words, put them in the right order. In latin, you have to find the right words then conjugate/declinate every single word to fit every other word in the sentence. After you've completed that bothersome work, you can generally ignore word order though there are guidelines as to what kind of word order is "beautiful" latin.

Tobberoth Wrote:The only reason you felt you had to "call me out" was because you were offended that someone found a language you found hard to be easy.

Since when did I say Chinese was difficult? I do not find Chinese to be difficult, nor Japanese. I said all languages are of the same difficulty if you learn them in context via immersion. Every single one of your points is negligible, once again.

Tobberoth Wrote:Yes, I DO think it's easier to comprehend mandarin texts than Japanese texts because of the difference in focus.

I would like to see you try to read 文言 since you find Chinese to be so "easy" compared to Japanese; most native Chinese cannot even understand it. Also, 3000 characters is nowhere near enough to read most novels. If you want to read 西遊記 you need to know around 4800 characters (not including the massive vocabulary needed) and know some 文言. Most novels use bookish language and incorporate 文言 to some extent; very few are written in 白話.

Oh I see. Just because I can't read one of the hardest works in Chinese, which even most natives can't understand, I HAVE to think Chinese is hard right? I can't simply say I find Chinese easier than Japanese even though I can learn Mandarin much faster, because there are some books which would take me a really long time to learn?

Come on. I never claimed a 3 year old can learn the highest possible level of Chinese in a week. I said I find it extremely easy compared to Japanese. I find the words much easier to remember, I find the structure more logical and clear (possibly because of it's similarity to English), I find the lack of conjugation and declination wonderful, like it takes a huge load of my shoulders.

You might feel all languages are equally easy to learn from context, I don't. Just a few sentences in my Chinese SRS and I can already create my own sentences and understand new ones using the same vocabulary easily. The same wasn't true for Japanese, not by a long shot. And it's not just Japanese, I've tried my hand at Korean too and found it similar to Japanese, even with quite a lot in my SRS I really couldn't use the language in any way because I would use incorrect grammar constantly.

stoked Wrote:Not sure what you mean when you say tone, but according to this English has more than 8000...

No relation. That is comparing the number of possible syllables in each language. It's kind of an odd comparison considering that Japanese doesn't have the concept of syllables in it (it has morae instead).

Tak47 Wrote:Since when did I say Chinese was difficult? I do not find Chinese to be difficult, nor Japanese. I said all languages are of the same difficulty if you learn them in context via immersion. Every single one of your points is negligible, once again.

Not true. L1 always has an effect when learning L2 (and L1+L2 when learning L3 etc). The only way every language would be equal in difficulty when learning through exposure is if you had no L1 (like when a baby learns its native language). This is why the more languages you know, the easier it is to learn another one. You have more background to draw upon. However, there is also the negative point of bringing assumptions that don't hold from one language to the other (like when someone uses English-like stressing in Japanese speech).

-edit-
..and you just contradicted yourself in the post that follows mine.

Tobberoth Wrote:Oh I see. Just because I can't read one of the hardest works in Chinese, which even most natives can't understand, I HAVE to think Chinese is hard right? I can't simply say I find Chinese easier than Japanese even though I can learn Mandarin much faster, because there are some books which would take me a really long time to learn?

文言 is not a novel, it is the Classical Chinese language (in which nearly everything written before the 1900's is written). 西遊記 is far from the hardest novel, as it is nothing compared to actual 文言.

Tobberoth Wrote:Come on. I never claimed a 3 year old can learn the highest possible level of Chinese in a week. I said I find it extremely easy compared to Japanese. I find the words much easier to remember, I find the structure more logical and clear (possibly because of it's similarity to English), I find the lack of conjugation and declination wonderful, like it takes a huge load of my shoulders.

You might feel all languages are equally easy to learn from context, I don't. Just a few sentences in my Chinese SRS and I can already create my own sentences and understand new ones using the same vocabulary easily. The same wasn't true for Japanese, not by a long shot. And it's not just Japanese, I've tried my hand at Korean too and found it similar to Japanese, even with quite a lot in my SRS I really couldn't use the language in any way because I would use incorrect grammar constantly.

While it is true that Japanese does have a slightly higher initial barrier in grammar, Chinese has a high initial barrier in pronunciation/tones. Of course, everything becomes easier with practice. This is why I stated that all languages are different and thus must be approached in different manners --though they are of no particular difficulty or ease as long as you learn through example and don't use your previous language as a crutch. You see, if your native language is of the Indo-European variety, it is much harder to initially get into an East Asian language, just as the opposite is true; however, once you are past that point it makes no difference.

Edit: Jarvik, what I mean by this is that you are familiar with the grammar and writing system used in one of these categories. What I meant by not using your native language as a "crutch' is that you should not try to understand the other language in the context of your own (ie. translating it and trying to apply your native grammar), but once you know one Indo-European language and one East Asian language, it is obviously not as hard to start learning another language in those categories since you already broke the barrier.

Tak47 Wrote:文言 is not a novel, it is the Classical Chinese language (in which nearly everything written before the 1900's is written). 西遊記 is far from the hardest novel, as it is nothing compared to actual 文言.

I'm sorry but that makes even less sense. I thought I was clear enough that I was talking about learning Mandarin, not "the Classical Chinese language". Just like I'm not comparing it to classical Japanese.

Tak47 Wrote:While it is true that Japanese does have a slightly higher initial barrier in grammar, Chinese has a high initial barrier in pronunciation/tones. Of course, everything becomes easier with practice. This is why I stated that all languages are different and thus must be approached in different manners --though they are of no particular difficulty or ease as long as you learn through example and don't use your previous language as a crutch. You see, if your native language is of the Indo-European variety, it is much harder to initially get into an East Asian language, just as the opposite is true; however, once you are past that point it makes no difference.

And I clearly said my experience with Chinese was limited. And that I had a bias because I've already learned Japanese, giving me a huge boost in hanzi usage/recognition. Yet you still felt the need to use ad hominem.

I find the structure of Chinese to be more logical and easier to remember than Japanese structure, I find Chinese words easier to remember. How do you suppose this changes just because one has studied the languages for some time? "Once your past that point, it makes no difference". If I find it easier to remember words in a language I have little experience in compared to a language I have lots of experience in, I doubt time will change that fact. One could even make the case that once I'm past the initial hurdles of Chinese, it will be even easier since I'm on equal ground with my Japanese in that regard.

Indo-European variety, it is much harder to initially get into an East Asian language, just as the opposite is true; however, once you are past that point it makes no difference.

That is rather extreme. I come from speaking Spanish as my first language later into english, now japanese and I have Chinese and Korean on right now. Korean has similar grammar to Japanese and has even further conditions for particles changing based on consonant/vowel endings, more politeness levels, etc. Its still really hard

Chinese initial grammar. Not hard. If anything the korean should be a breeze since I already "know" it all, but its still work.

Tobberoth Wrote:

Tak47 Wrote:文言 is not a novel, it is the Classical Chinese language (in which nearly everything written before the 1900's is written). 西遊記 is far from the hardest novel, as it is nothing compared to actual 文言.

I'm sorry but that makes even less sense. I thought I was clear enough that I was talking about learning Mandarin, not "the Classical Chinese language". Just like I'm not comparing it to classical Japanese.

Yes, but the fact still stands that some amount of 文言 is used in the majority of novels written today, so you still have to learn at least basic 文言 if you want to read literature (and Taiwanese newspapers use bookish language as well).

Tobberoth Wrote:I find the structure of Chinese to be more logical and easier to remember than Japanese structure, I find Chinese words easier to remember. How do you suppose this changes just because one has studied the languages for some time? "Once your past that point, it makes no difference". If I find it easier to remember words in a language I have little experience in compared to a language I have lots of experience in, I doubt time will change that fact. One could even make the case that once I'm past the initial hurdles of Chinese, it will be even easier since I'm on equal ground with my Japanese in that regard.

Yes, you have already broken through the barrier by learning an East Asian language which makes others easier to learn.

Tak47 Wrote:Yes, you have already broken through the barrier by learning an East Asian language which makes others easier to learn.

Then why do I find Korean much harder to learn than Mandarin?

I'm sorry, but I don't see the connections you're making. And besides, even if I find Mandarin very easy because I already broke this barrier, how does that make what I said in my first post any different? WHY I find Mandarin much easier isn't important, the point is that I do. The basic premise is still true: The difficulties i had learning Japanese, the difficulties I have learning Korean.... aren't there when I'm learning Mandarin. Other difficulties are there, but I explained why I find them to be minor.