Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 12:35 am Post subject: Post Rating: 0
Well, if you know Chinese well, you'll notice Chinese also has many different politeness level. I can argue that the number of levels is more than that of Japanese. Try watching Chinese ancient series from time to time and see what I means. Try this one for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_honorifics
Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 12:35 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0
well, i know chinese (not trying to brag), and i found it quite hard, mermorising it all, i think the characters are much harder then the speaking, but that's my view.
Best if you learn simplifed (mandrian) too, because many more people it then traditonal (cantonese)
hehe i'm a newb at simplifed though lol
Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 12:56 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0
For the oral language, it depends on the Chinese dialect that you are learning. The easiest would be Mandarin. An English native speaker will have an extremely difficult time trying to learn how to speak Cantonese - the spoken language is quite different from the formal written langauge. It contains a lot of slangs, of course besides the various tonal sounds. The only person who's a non-native Cantonese speaker and can speak the language fairly well is the the Australian Caucasian TVB actor...even then, the tones on some of his words takes a bit to decipher...I know a lot of Chinese born Canadians and since Cantonese is barely their second language, it's kind of amusing to listen to them mangle the language, even though they don't realize it. lol
Maybe it's because I know Chinese fluently that when I took Japanese classes, it's really not very difficult at all. I find that a lot of Native English speakers can pick up both Mandarin and Japanese (spoken) quite quickly. Korean sounds very different from either of the two languages. Some people think that Korean sounds like Japanese but to me, it doesn't...I really don't think it matters what you want to study first - it depends on the reason why you want to study the language. If you don't really watch any Chinese Mandarin shows and don't really plan on immersing yourself in the language and the culture, then I would say it's basically pointless. Then study Korean if you're more interested in the Korean culture...vice versa as well.
Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 6:17 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0
from what i know, chinese and korean have different sentence structures and such. in my opinion, chinese is definitely more versatile and since some korean words are derived from chinese characters, it'll help a lot learning chinese first. but it won't help you much for grammar, i think.
Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 1:26 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0
Chinese and Korean originate from different language families, Sino-Tibetan and Altaic respectively, so learning one won't help you with the other. But learning Chinese is definitely more useful and practical since we're at the "dawn of the Chinese Century." In a couple decades, China may supplant the U.S. in terms of global influence and economic output. But if you adamantly plan on marrying a Korean or living in Korea, learning Korean would be the better choice (obviously).
abcd99 wrote:
Well, if you know Chinese well, you'll notice Chinese also has many different politeness level. I can argue that the number of levels is more than that of Japanese. Try watching Chinese ancient series from time to time and see what I means. Try this one for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_honorifics
That's odd, I speak Chinese and I've never used any of those honorifics except for the suffixes referring to family/relatives and occupational titles.
Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 1:51 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0
berserk wrote:
Chinese and Korean originate from different language families, Sino-Tibetan and Altaic respectively, so learning one won't help you with the other. But learning Chinese is definitely more useful and practical since we're at the "dawn of the Chinese Century." In a couple decades, China may supplant the U.S. in terms of global influence and economic output. But if you adamantly plan on marrying a Korean or living in Korea, learning Korean would be the better choice (obviously).
abcd99 wrote:
Well, if you know Chinese well, you'll notice Chinese also has many different politeness level. I can argue that the number of levels is more than that of Japanese. Try watching Chinese ancient series from time to time and see what I means. Try this one for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_honorifics
That's odd, I speak Chinese and I've never used any of those honorifics except for the suffixes referring to family/relatives and occupational titles.
is that so..
so for me i think it better to learn chinses even though korean is also ok..
it depend what language do u want to learn n use it practically...
if u have the ability to learn both...so do it ..
it better that way..
Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 2:21 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0
abcd99 wrote:
Well, if you know Chinese well, you'll notice Chinese also has many different politeness level. I can argue that the number of levels is more than that of Japanese. Try watching Chinese ancient series from time to time and see what I means. Try this one for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_honorifics
You can listen to the podcast for free. If you want to download anything from there, you need to pay.
Japanese has tons of honorifics as well. But like in chinese, only a very small number of them are used in conversation and even then it's rare. Even native japanese speakers aren't that good with them.
I just started my first chinese class this saturday and the tones really weren't that hard to grasp. Not saying that it was easy as hell and that I'm the tones master or anything, it will still take a lot of work, but it's not as hard as I thought it would be.
I had some friends take chinese in college and they told me the language was not hard at all. the simplified characters quickly become the hardest part, but even then I'm told it's not as hard as many believe. Even though japanese has fewer characters the onyomi and kunyomi make them harder to remember.
For those that don't know what onyomi and kunyomi are:
Hidden:
Onyomi and kunyomi are two different methods of reading the characters. Onyomi is completely japanese. Usually each character has it's own onyomi and that onyomi is sometimes followed by hiragana to finish the sentence (especially in verbs).
kunyomi is the pronunciation that characters get when combined with each, I'm pretty sure it's derived from chinese. Kunyomi sounds are usually following the left part of the character (of the character looks like two smaller characters mixed in one), and the meaning is derived from the right part, of course there are exceptions.
Kunyomi sounds are not always the same for every word. Sometimes they're a bit different.
Example: the character 山 means mountain and is pronounced "yama" in onyomi.
the character 火is pronounced "hi" and means fire.
But the kunyomi is different. When you put them together you get 火山 which is pronounced "kazan". The kunyomi of fire is "ka" and the kunyomi of mountain is "zan". the word means volcano btw.
But the kunyomi is not always the same. For example, here 富士山 the kunyomi for mountain is not "zan", it's actually "san". The word is "fujisan"-figure out the meaning.
For english speakers who have been brought up to distinguish words based on one simple letter, grasping the kunyomi is very difficult.
Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 5:08 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0
It really depends on where you start. If you start from Japanese, learning Chinese isn't too hard and vice versa. I learnt Chinese first and then Japanese. To me, learning Japanese is much less painless than learning Chinese, even with onyomi / kunyomi. Kunyomi is easier to me because it sounds very similar to Chinese counterpart.
Chinese tones are pretty easy to understand. Just wait until you actually have to pronunciate it fast (like in day-to-day speech). I think long Chinese sentences make pretty good tongue twisters to westerners. Whereas, I have yet to find any pronunciation problems in my Japanese.
Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 5:13 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0
abcd99 wrote:
It really depends on where you start. If you start from Japanese, learning Chinese isn't too hard and vice versa. I learnt Chinese first and then Japanese. To me, learning Japanese is much less painless than learning Chinese, even with onyomi / kunyomi. Kunyomi is easier to me because it sounds very similar to Chinese counterpart.
Chinese tones are pretty easy to understand. Just wait until you actually have to pronunciate it fast (like in day-to-day speech). I think long Chinese sentences make pretty good tongue twisters to westerners. Whereas, I have yet to find any pronunciation problems in my Japanese.
I guess pronounciations isn't hard for me because I speak russian as well. and russian has killer pronounciation.
Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 5:48 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0
Difficulties in Russian pronunciation is different than the difficulties in Chinese pronunciation. Russian has unusual consonants that are hard to pronounce and vocal stresses, but Russian is by no means a tonal language. Chinese consonants are not as hard to pronounce, but the tones are. Tones are different from stresses.
Try this... Take a piece of Chinese newspaper and read it like a newscaster. Have a Chinese friend listen to you. If your tones are wrong (though you pronounced the other things right), your friend can't understand you. If your tone is approximately right, your friend can understand you, but perhaps with some difficulties. It's especially more difficult since Chinese language is right-recursive. (e.g. "Yesterday-night's wear-pink-dress's that young lady, is it?" as opposed to "Is that the young lady who wore pink dress last night?") So, if one mispronounce the word "young lady", the entire sentence is gibberish in Chinese.
That was also my first experience in pronunciation. I thought I did it right, but they couldn't understand me. Well, if all else fails, resort to English.
Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 10:55 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0
In my opinion coming from an Western background with not past asian language experience. Korean was easier for me to learn then Canto. Simply because the charecter structure.
But to be honest - after learning Korean, i realised that apart from yes things like Drama's. Its pretty much useless.
I wish i spent that time learning more about Cantonese.
Oh and Cantonese for the win! I never liked learning Mandarin. >_>
(Yes there is a bias)
Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2006 12:47 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0
JPAU,
How come you prefer Canto over Mandarin .
I am getting into Mandarin as here in Singapore every one speak Mandarin and my wife speak a few dialects but her Mandarin is strong .
Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2006 1:04 pm Post subject: Post Rating: 0
if you want an easy language to pick up, learn Korean. If you feel challenged and want a useful language to pick up, learn Chinese. I don't know about the Chinese grammar structure being easy. But I speak Cantonese and I can't write a proper sentence structure at all. I took some classes, but the teachers can't seem to teach me how to write a proper sentence, they only say its wrong and mark up my paper.
Also, I've read some of the short writings kids wrote in class (Someone post it online) They were pretty hilarious. There were so many spelling mistakes (using wrong character cuz they sound the same) and some sentencse sounded so "spoken" its not how its suppose to be written. Spoken and written language are abit different in Chinese maybe due to formality.
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