Advice learning languages

Pre-College Issues High School Life
21

<p>Chinese does not sound ugly -_-"</p>

<p>I know how to speak both Japanese and Chinese, and as UCLAri said before, Chinese grammar IS more logical. There are too many conjugations and different tenses in Japanese that is not needed, especially for a foreign student.</p>

<p>Chinese is hard because of the sheer number of characters a student needs to learn. However, compared to nearly any language out there, Chinese contains extremely little grammar. There are no past-tense conjugations (or any verb conjugations whatsoever), and nearly all time-references and tenses relating to time are implied in the sentences in the form of other characters. I personally think Chinese is more logical than the Romance languages.</p>

<p>I'd say you probably need 3-4 years of college study to gain even basic competance in Chinese. Again, the hardest part is memorizing and writing all the characters. If you want to be fluent, it'll probably take you 6+ years (supposing you stay in America as a student). If you travel to China and Taiwan (note: we use Traditional chracters, which is even harder), you'll probably pick up the language faster. Most foreigners here come over just for the sole reason of learning Chinese...they are able to gain fluency in about 3 or 4 years, if they are committed. But again, there are Americans here who can still only say "ni hao ma?" after 7 years...it all depends on your attitude, really.</p>

22

<p>Chinese does sound ugly with the tones. And notice that I said, imo. IN MY OPINION. </p>

<p>Also, I said Japanese grammar is suprior imo. </p>

<p>Why? </p>

<p>Because agglucative langauges do me hard. That's why.</p>

23

<p>Go buy "How to Learn Any Language" by Barry Farber. Its humourous, concise, and really useful. He gives a language review that could sway you toward one of your language choices. -but why not try to learn both?</p>

24

<p>i dont know anything about chinese, but i take latin and really like it.
there are a lot of english words that derived from it, so thats pretty useful. i saw some that we learned on the psats. and its not that hard. and i also started taking spanish this year, and i find that knowing latin really does make it easier to pick up spanish</p>

25

<p>I would rather take Chinese; it actually has a use in the real world besides understanding test English.</p>