<p>Is this feasible? I plan on majoring in international relations and was originally planning on double majoring in a foreign language, but can't quite decide on which one. I was thinking about taking Spanish and Mandarin. Spanish shouldn't be too hard because I've been taking French for three years and I've lived in a predominately Spanish-speaking area since I was born. Mandarin is a different story though. I didn't really know where to post this, so I decided to ask you all. Am I crazy? Would I still be able to enjoy the college life or would I be sentenced to long sleepless nights studying in my dorm? Any advice would be appreciated.</p>
<p>Learning Mandarin from scratch would require a serious commitment, so you might think about scratching it off your list.</p>
<p>I went into college intending to do because I’m essentially fluent in Spanish anyway but the Mandarin is too much for me.</p>
<p>I take Mandarin. More difficult than Japanese by a long shot, but feasible if you put your mind to it. Double-minoring with no former experience though? I wouldn’t risk it.</p>
<p>Well, it is definitely going to be very difficult and arduous for you to master BOTH languages. Any language, whether Spanish or Chinese, would take you at least two or three years to become fluent. That is if you try you hardest. </p>
<p>I don’t know about the tie between Spanish and French. It seems to me that you believed you have it in the bag. So I will leave it like that. :)</p>
<p>Now to Chinese. From what I heard, a lot of people have troubles learning Chinese. And to be honest, I think you will struggle too. There are so many faucets to the language that I can guarantee you will make your head spin. You have to learn about Ping Ying (Different alphabet system and ways of pronouncing them.), idioms (A lot are based on ancient events. So you have to understand the story behind each idiom to get the meaning), Chinese character (You need to be able to recognize both traditional and simplified version of a character. Normally, you only need to learn to write simplified because that’s what most people use and also because it is a lot easier. Also, you also need to learn the proper way of writing a character, like where to begin a character and where to end the last stroke of the character), and different dialects (A lot of Chinese speak with a heavy accent that sometimes, it can be very difficult for even native speakers. Taiwanese are the most articulate speaker; they actually pronounce sound by sound very clearly). Those are the main ones. There is no easy way to learning Chinese. You need to practice, practice and practice on a daily basis. Even for native speakers, when they first started on writing Chinese, they also have to suffer the painful process of writing a character ten, twenty, fifty times or more before they are comfortable with it. Hope this helps. :)</p>
<p>Whoa there. O-o Ping Ying? xD Um…Pinyin? I’ve never heard it called Ping Ying before. </p>
<p>Anyway, the above poster has a point. Stroke Order, endless character memorization, tones, words with double/triple meanings- sometimes with the same symbol too…it’s a lot.</p>
<p>Hey, at least the grammar is pretty simple. xD</p>
<p>The sheer amount of dialects is really impressive, but you likely won’t get into dialects for a long while. Learning standard mandarin comes first. </p>
<p>Speaking is difficult because there are tones. Some tonal combos are really tough to say…I have issues going from 4th tone to 2nd tone and 3rd tone to 2nd tone. @-@</p>
<p>No matter what language it is, a minor definitely WON’T make you fluent. I’ll barely be fluent when I graduate and French is one of my majors…</p>
<p>As someone who grew up speaking both English and Chinese - don’t do it.</p>
<p>It takes so much longer to achieve Chinese proficiency from scratch compared to another language with a Latin-based orthography. It’s not worth it - I honestly doubt that after four years, you’ll have much beyond what you need to “get by” in daily life (compared to other languages where you can reach that level in one or two semesters).</p>
<p>I studied Chinese for ten years (1st to 10th grade) and I’ve spoken to friends who’ve done other languages besides Chinese, and we all all agree that even with ten years of the language, we’re only barely at the level where we can read a newspaper comfortably. Admittedly we didn’t put in much effort into the Chinese language, but I can tell you the Chinese we were studying was at a MUCH higher level than AP Chinese (AP Chinese is probably about 4th grade, where I come from).</p>
<p>Put the effort into something else.</p>