<p>Would it be possible for me to learn Chinese if I wasn't an Asian Studies major? More specifically, could I take Chinese for all four years while majoring in, say, History? </p>
<p>Just looking for everybody's opinions on learning the language.</p>
<p>Jux, when you say Chinese, do you mean Mandarin? I heard it's the hardest language class, period!</p>
<p>I've taken courses in Chinese at Cornell. I didn't take intro Chinese b/c I'm a Cantonese dialect speaker and can read/write Cantonese but not speak Mandarin. The courses I've taken are mainly for dialect speakers to learn Mandarin and also fourth-year Chinese. The introductory Chinese courses (based on what others have told me or what I've seen) is pretty intense. It's a 6 credit class, 5 times a week. You have to go to lecture every day and also go to section too. It's amazing though like after one year of Chinese at cornell, your pronounciation of Chinese will be amazing. I've seen lots of non-Asians take the course. </p>
<p>I forgot to add that there are a lot of non-majors who take Chinese. I know of engineers, grad students, comp sci majors, etc. take Chinese courses. If you're totally into learning Chinese, definitely go for it!</p>
<p>I am taking Mandarin Chinese right now in HS. Memorizing characters and tones are pretty hard.</p>
<p>just curious, but are you white (the thread starter)?</p>
<p>im also taking mandarin chinese in highschool...</p>
<p>i dont think it is that bad. you just have to remember that learning a language like spanish is one thing, there are actual letters. chinese- while i have an easy time speaking it, is just hard because of characters. </p>
<p>if you have a lot of time and are dedicated to learning it- i think it can be pretty easy.</p>
<p>If you take Chinese 109-110 at Cornell, be prepared for a lot of work and memorizing.</p>
<p>I heard from my sister that you have constantly refresh your memory with all the characters you learn and practice the pronunciations pretty much everyday. But I think its a good idea for you to learn the language so that when we, Chinese, take over the world...it might come in handy.</p>
<p>Yeah, I'm white.</p>
<p>What if I majored in something that came easily to me (English), so I would have more time to devote to my language studies?</p>
<p>I know the language is notoriously difficult to learn, but is it at least <em>possible</em> for a non-native speaker?</p>
<p>Okay, I'm looking over my last post and I'm realizing that I asked a dumb question. Of course it's possible; a better question would be, "is it probable that a non-native speaker who has struggled with languages in the past will be able to learn Chinese over four years, providing he gives it his best shot?"</p>
<p>That all depends on you :P.</p>
<p>four years is a long time in college. 1 semester of language study here is like 3 years in high school. so 4 years of college is like 24 years of high school.</p>
<p>just curiously, about what percentage of students in intro to mandarin are actually chinese?
about how many charaters a week do you have to memorize?</p>
<p>"four years is a long time in college. 1 semester of language study here is like 3 years in high school. so 4 years of college is like 24 years of high school."</p>
<p>hahaha</p>
<p>there aren't many chinese people in intro mandarin. that's because they are all in 109, because that class if for chinese students. there still might be some chinese students in 101, mainly the ones who don't speak or heard the language at all.</p>
<p>and characters. let's see. i remember it was at least 100 per week.</p>
<p>i hear russian is more difficult to learn but i am still deciding between that, hebrew, chinese, or japanese. i'm not confused..just interested haha</p>
<p>Another question:</p>
<p>If I sucked at French -- a comparably easy language -- in high school, would it be possible for Mandarin to drag down my GPA significantly?</p>
<p>I've been seriously considering signing up for Intro to Mandarin, but I'm afraid of the workload and the damage it might do to my GPA.</p>
<p>Language difficulty
The Foreign Service Institute of the Department (FSI) of State has compiled approximate learning expectations for a number of languages based on the length of time it takes to achieve Speaking 3: General Professional Proficiency in Speaking (S3) and Reading 3: General Professional Proficiency in Reading (R3). The list is limited to languages taught at the Foreign Service Institute. </p>
<p>It must be kept in mind that that students at FSI are almost 40 years old, are native speakers of English. and have a good aptitude for formal language study, plus knowledge of several other foreign languages. They study in small classes of no more than 6. Their schedule calls for 25 hours of class per week with 3-4 hours per day of directed self-study.</p>
<p>Category I: Languages closely related to English
23-24 weeks (575-600 class hours) </p>
<p>Afrikaans Danish
Dutch
French
Italian Norwegian
Portuguese
Romanian
Spanish
Swedish</p>
<hr>
<p>Category II: Languages with significant linguistic
and/or cultural differences from English
44 weeks (1100 class hours)
Albanian
Amharic
Armenian
Azerbaijani
Bengali
Bosnian
Bulgarian
Burmese
Croatian
Czech
*Estonian
*Finnish
*Georgian
Greek
Hebrew
Hindi
*Hungarian
Icelandic
Khmer
Lao
Latvian Lithuanian
Macedonian
*Mongolian
Nepali
Pashto
Persian (Dari, Farsi, Tajik)
Polish
Russian
Serbian
Sinhalese
Slovak
Slovenian
Tagalog
*Thai
Turkish
Ukrainian
Urdu
Uzbek
*Vietnamese
Xhosa
Zulu </p>
<hr>
<p>Category III: Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers
88 weeks (second year of study in-country)
(2200 class hours)
Arabic
Cantonese
Mandarin
*Japanese
Korean
Other languages </p>
<hr>
<p>German 30 weeks (750 class hours)
Indonesian, Malaysian, Swahili 36 weeks (900 class hours) </p>
<ul>
<li>Languages preceded by asterisks are typically somewhat more difficult for native English speakers to learn than other languages in the same category.</li>
</ul>
<p>I saw that earlier today.</p>
<p>This is from the following thread:</p>
<p>Quote from Mr. Payne:
Look at the total time requirement involved. You could likely learn all the other relevant Romance languages (French/Portuguese/Italian) for the time to learn a single dialect of Chinese. End of Quote</p>
<p>Mr. Payne hit it on the head. It's me again, Freemumia. Did you get into Johns Hopkins SAIS?</p>
<p>I know both Mandarin (took it at Berkeley undergrad intensively one summer covering a year, lived in Taiwan/China for 3 years, finished it off at SAIS) and Portuguese (I've learned it on the fly and my girlfriend/fiancee soon to be wife is Brazilian and that's all we speak together). I took a bit of Spanish and German at SAIS after testing out of Mandarin.</p>
<p>Anyway, the purpose you stated is inadequate to the difficulty of learning Chinese. Chinese has really simple elements -- the grammar is, frankly, baby grammar. But tones are hard for people and not initially intuitive for westerners. Getting out of the habit of speaking an inflected (where emphasis is put on how words are pronounced tonally) versus a tonal language where tones don't change (though volume and intensity can) can be very difficult. It's best just to do it in China. Do you want to live in China for a year or two? Furthermore, learning to read and write is laborious. I (wisely) gave up on writing. I can read it, but counterintuitively for westerners reading it and writing it are completely different abilities. Take a look at a simple line drawing for 10 seconds. Turn it over and then try to recreate it line by line. Then compare that to the act of RECOGNIZING the same picture if someone showed it to you; obviously passive recognition takes a lot less. That is what reading Chinese versus writing is like for me. Plus, there are good word processing programs that tie the language to a phonetic system and therefore involve passive recognition as opposed to active re-creation. </p>
<p>And that's another thing: think of a language that's not phonetic. If you don't know how a word is pronounced, you never will until someone tells you (or you read a phonetic representation done through one or another alphabets that have been created to guide you through Chinese pronunciation). It's anathema to say, but the Vietnamese did something very good for literacy when the eliminated characters in favor of roman letters. </p>
<p>Of my friends who have LIVED in China for more than 10 years, there is exactly one who speaks Chinese such that if you weren't looking at him you could suppose he is Chinese. And these guys are not slouches. Two years in Brazil and I guarantee you I would be at least at the level of a high school student if not a college student, and my accent would be disappearing (I have lived in other places where I've picked up other languages).</p>
<p>So don't think you can quite easily just throw Chinese in your arsenal. If you aren't willing to spend at least two years there, don't even begin.</p>
<p>Have I done enough to dissuade you?</p>
<p>The other thing: if you are in the running for a job that involves speaking Chinese, chances are there will be native Chinese speakers applying as well. Good luck, if that is an important factor in hiring.</p>
<p>So, if that hasn't put too much cold water on you, then you have the proper expectations and toughness to learn the language....</p>
<p>Actually, further to Mr. Payne's comment. There was a comparitive study done of elementary school children Spain vs. China. The Spanish kids learned a lot more of their own language in the same amount of time. It's more laborious for EVERYONE.</p>
<p>And it's key to note that the laboriousness is not really equated to grammatical complexities like switching tenses (this is much more the domain of Japanese, which is actually in the long run the harder language according to friends of mine who have actually mastered to some extent both). The complexities of Chinese are largely related to rote, in a sense boring, learning and recognizing shorthand allusions (proverbs) to Chinese history or other cultural elements that appear as vocabulary words often. In other words, it's all about memorization.</p>
<p>The proverbial studiousness of Chinese begins with their own language.</p>
<p>On a personal note: I had a Chinese history professor at SAIS who (I thought at least) loved me. I wanted her to write a rec. so I could go on and study for a PhD in Chinese history. Her reply was "absolutely don't do it." At first I was kind of hurt, but she later explained: Look, it'll take you 4-5 years just to get the languages you need (classical Chinese and Japanese and two European languages, which I already had by the way, in addition to your knowledge of Mandarin). If you were dissuaded by my dissuasion, you won't have close to the stamina to complete that PhD. It's the same with the language.</p>