More and more people advocate internationalization, so a language indispensable in our daily life.
While we are learning English, foreigners are also starting to learn Chinese. Chinese is recognised as one of the most difficult languages in the world, so for foreigners learning Chinese is much more difficult than for us learning English. This cannot help but make some students feel that their great revenge against English has finally been achieved.
So how difficult exactly is Chinese to learn?
In the eyes of foreigners, exactly how difficult is Chinese to learn? In fact, the scene really feels somewhat familiar, just like many domestic students learning English, for example, after learning it they still cannot speak it.
After learning English in textbooks, students are always very proud, thinking their ability has become very strong. But once they meet a native-born foreigner, real spoken communication will make students so embarrassed that they flee in defeat.
Actually, for foreigners it is also like this. The difficulty of Chinese is even more obvious to them. The Chinese learned in textbooks and the Chinese people encountered in Chinese restaurants in real life simply cannot communicate smoothly.
So why is Chinese so difficult to learn? According to these meme pictures made by foreigners, we can actually summarize several reasons.
First, there are too many Chinese homophones. If only one pinyin is given but not the tone, many people simply do not know which Chinese character that pinyin represents, because one pinyin can represent too many Chinese characters. All of those characters are homophones.
We have lived in a Chinese cultural environment since childhood, so it is very easy to understand this matter and remember which characters share the same pronunciation. But foreigners cannot remember them. Therefore, once they encounter a large number of homophones in class, foreign students feel quite collapsed, just like when parallel universes appear while watching Spider-Man.
Second, Chinese grammar is very different from foreign grammar. The reason English can become a global language is because English is widely used, and its grammar is also quite simple.
But Chinese grammar is really difficult to grasp. Various inverted sentences, rhetorical questions, self-posed questions, and hypothetical sentences truly leave foreigners completely confused. Moreover, in some situations, one sentence can actually express two meanings.
The difficulty of Chinese is also reflected in other aspects, such as measure words and adverbs. Using measure words as an example, the unit we use to describe something is often ever-changing, such as one pencil, one table, one set of clothes.
If we explain why it is one pencil and one table, actually many people cannot explain it. They can only say it is a language habit, a convention formed over time.
When foreigners learn these measure words, they really get headaches, because they simply cannot find any useful shortcut or memory method. Therefore, they can only memorize them by rote, just like we memorize English vocabulary.
Finally, Chinese and the English alphabet are two completely different writing systems. English letters can be freely arranged and combined to express their intended meaning, while Chinese has no fixed arrangement and combination.
Every Chinese character has a different shape, and the way it expresses meaning is also different. This is another key point that foreigners need to memorize by rote. When they first begin learning Chinese characters, they become dizzy and overwhelmed.
Because in the eyes of foreigners, every Chinese character with a different structure looks like a mysterious symbol, a small square block. But since they chose to learn Chinese, they have to keep learning it even while crying.
Seeing this scene, students feel the picture is strangely familiar, and they certainly feel proud inside. After all, learning English was so difficult for them. Finally, the tables have turned, and now it is foreigners who are suffering.
Learning a foreign language has importance and benefits for students
With the development of globalization and the vigorous growth of the economy, learning foreign languages has become increasingly important. Whether in international enterprises or international exchange activities, mastering a foreign language is a major advantage.
While improving cross-cultural communication ability, it can also enhance personal cognitive ability and intellectual development, broaden fields of knowledge and obtain more information resources, and promote personal self-growth and the improvement of self-confidence.
Besides language itself, Chinese culture can also be a challenge for foreigners to understand. For example, the Chinese Zodiac is very familiar to Chinese people, but many foreigners have never encountered it before. The twelve animals not only represent years, but are also connected to traditional stories, cultural symbols, and the ancient earthly branches. For Chinese people, this knowledge is learned naturally from childhood, but for foreigners it is another new set of concepts that must be remembered and understood while learning the language.
Author: Sim K
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