Is Chinese Difficult to Learn?

If you ask someone if they’d be interested in learning how to speak Chinese, the usual answer is something along the lines of, “It would be so useful to know but it looks so hard!” We can’t say learning Chinese is easy but it may not be as hard as you think. Here are some of the ways that it may be more possible than it seems.

1) Chinese grammar is a lot easier than English grammar.

One of the many complicated aspects of learning English includes conjugating verbs and past, present, and future tenses and both of those things are far simpler in Chinese. Chinese does not have tenses at all and you won’t have to learn all of the different forms of verbs to communicate fluently.

2) You don’t necessarily need to learn how to write Chinese characters to start understanding the language.

While you should definitely learn how to read and write in Chinese as part of your language learning process, you don’t need to be an expert at it to start communicating. You can learn how to conduct a basic conversation and start growing your vocabulary by speaking and listening while you’re still learning the written language.

3) Many of the Chinese words that seem more complex are combinations of simpler words.

One of the most daunting aspects of learning a new language is vocabulary and while there are still plenty of new words to learn in Chinese, you may find it slightly easier than expected. This is because many more complex Chinese words are combinations of some more common words. For example, if you know the word for “picture” and the word for “electric”, you also know the word for “movie” as the Chinese word for ‘movie’ is diànyǐng, which translates to “electric picture”!

4) Simplified Chinese is more commonly taught so there is an increasingly large number of people who speak the same dialect of the language.

It’s no secret that a lot of people speak Chinese, but what you might not know is that there are many different regional dialects. It’s the same in American English – slang terms you hear in the South are different from the ones you hear in the Midwest. Although this diversity in language is common, it does make learning and applying what you’ve learned a little more complicated. That said, there is a version of Chinese called Simplified Chinese that is the version most commonly taught in schools and the version most typically studied by overseas learners. This means that more and more people are speaking the same dialect which makes it much easier to learn and use the Chinese language.

All in All

One of the best ways to learn Chinese is by taking lessons and MingoSpace offers one-on-one tutoring that will help you learn at your pace and practice the things that do make it challenging such as pronunciation. Click here to learn more about MingoSpace’s offerings and their Mandarin Chinese source and get started on your language learning journey.