 | HistoryFan (97)
12/06/2005 | Chinese would probably be the hardest because of the tonal aspect of the language. There are 26 letters in the English alphabet (also known as the Latin alphabet which is used by most Indo-European languages) and there are over 8,000 Chinese characters alone.
Schoolchildren who speak English and other related languages (or Romance languages) have already learned their ABCs by the first grade while Chinese college students (as well as other Asian-language-speaking students) are STILL LEARNING those 8,000 characters.
A Chinese character, I think, is made up of two parts: the sound and the meaning and I'm not sure which one comes first.
And that's not all. There are different kinds of Chinese accents (which sound like foreign languages) and forms of Chinese, such as Mandarin Chinese or traditional Chinese (not sure if these two are the same...someone correct me if I'm wrong).
No wonder some Chinese know more English than their native tongue.
(1 voted this helpful, 0 funny and 0 agree) |