<p>Really for Cantonese?? I never knew Cantonese was that different from English. I thought that Cantonese was highly anglocized b/c of British influence on HK.</p>
<p>Cantonese is Mandarin with different pronunciations. Really not anglicized.</p>
<p>Yea cantonese didn't originate from hong kong anyways</p>
<p>If you are a fairly visual person, lots of time to dedicate, and have an okay understanding of the theory behind language (interested in other languages, linguistics, etc.), Chinese is a good idea. For me, it's ideal, since the idea of words as pictures actually helps me to remember them. I also enjoy the process of working with a very foriegn feeling language. I find that learning Mandarin Chinese is easier than say, Korean, because the grammar is more congruent to that of English. Chinese, compared to Japanese, for instance, is no contest, since Japanese uses Korean-style grammar on top of Chinese characters. So get into Chinese if you feel you can be passionate about learning a language that requires a great deal of visual recognition and memorization, and it wont be so bad--otherwise, don't.</p>
<p>Would it be possible for me to double major in both English and Asian Studies, or would that take up too much time / too many credits?</p>
<p>i'm surprised by the asterisk next to japanese in that chart.. maybe it's because i've never taken it in college or something, but i find it ridiculously easy. & then also i grew up speaking chinese and english but there aren't that many similarities between the two that i've noticed.</p>
<p>if you're not learning chinese for your career/major you could always take it at a community college later. that's how my dad met my mom (her dad was the instructor) & admittedly his pronunciation is awful but that likely has more to do with him than the quality of the courses; my grandpa ended up teaching at the defense institute for foreign languages or something of a similar name. all i'm saying is that this is not your only chance to learn the language, if you do decide that it'll be too difficult.</p>
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maybe it's because i've never taken it in college or something, but i find it ridiculously easy. & then also i grew up speaking chinese and english but there aren't that many similarities between the two that i've noticed.
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<p>I imagine you think this because a big chunk of the inaccessibility of Japanese to English speakers -- the Kanji -- is out of the way for you since you speak Chinese; this table was not put together talking about people who know Chinese. That means it's easier for you. But that says nothing about the grammar -- which is tremendously more involved than Chinese grammar, I have heard.</p>
<p>I am a white dude, did not grow up in a bilingual household, studied Japanese for 5 years before college and Chinese for four semesters during college.</p>
<p>College language is definitely a challenge (here at Penn, four semesters of Chinese is enough to get you speaking sentences like "I feel the addition of private cars in this country is making the local regions unable to keep up with the country's economic development" or "this is the envelope containing the roll of 34-shot film that your mother gave to me 5 days before my birthday"). Chinese is really fun, but of course it is best if you have lots of exposure. Japanese verb conjugation can get annoying, whereas Chinese lacks verb conjugation. However, Chinese also has stuff like the "le" particle which can drive you mad because sometimes you just have to memorize when to use it because it "just sounds right." Chinese tones are definitely a huge thing you must master (otherwise people have no idea what you're saying).</p>
<p>The writing is definitely full of memorization. The systems are different (Japanese has Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana, whereas in Chinese you have just Hanzi, but there is a Simplified and Traditional set of characters), but I would say they are of comparable difficulty. Again, it's a tradeoff: Chinese is ALL characters, whereas Japanese often has simple hiragana mixed into a sentence, but Chinese characters TEND to have the same pronunciation regardless of context, whereas Japanese Kanji can have completely different pronunciations. For example, in Chinese if you see "middle," you will always call it "zhong," but that same character in Japanese could either be "naka," "chuu," or "juu" depending on how you are using it. Chinese has this too, but I see it much much more in Japanese.</p>
<p>Cantonese is much different from Mandarin and, in my opinion, much harder. If you aren't a native speaker, this is going to suck. Even in Cantonese movies, the white guys can't speak it properly. Mandarin Chinese has like 4 tones (5 if you count neutral), whereas Cantonese has around 9. It's a very sing-songy dialect, but very difficult to pronounce. Furthermore, the way you read Cantonese is different from how you speak it. </p>
<p>I'm not really giving these languages the proper comparisons, but I'm just trying to shell out the basic ideas. Mandarin and Japanese are really fun languages, but are a hell of a lot harder than stuff like German, French, or Spanish. The sentence structures are completely different and the systems are not always directly translatable, but that's what makes them interesting. In most languages, you memorize a word and its English meaning. In Mandarin, you memorize the word, its tones, its English meaning, and its character. Expand this across a crapload of characters, and you've got a large memorization task at hand. This becomes more natural the more you use it. Instead of "memorizing tones," you simply derive the tones based on how you are used to saying the word. For instance, the word for "student" is "xue2sheng1," but you wouldn't memorize it this way. You'd learn how it "sounds," much like how you know how a word sounds in English. But if you had to cough up the tone numbers, you could do it by thinking "this part sounds like tone 2, etc"</p>
<p>The best way to learn is to be exposed. The more you use it, the easier it becomes. I also think it makes you stand out, because most people tend to shoot for something like Spanish, etc. Stuff like Japanese and Chinese are so much more rewarding, in my opinion. It's a real challenge and also very useful to know.</p>
<p>i am a native spanish speaker and i found french to be very intense...as far as hw everyday and class everyday...i'm sure french (as a 6 credit course) will be very intense...i recommend you take all your required courses first and then take chinese your last year or your last 2 years, that way you wont have as much to focus on...alot of people have to take an extra year to focus on chinese...</p>
<p>and as far as spanish and french at cornell, i've heard that spanish is poorly taught...french on the other hand i hear is taught better, and i can say that i did learn tons...and yeah 1 semester of college french is like 2 years of HS</p>
<p>thats supposed to be "i'm sure chinese (as a 6 credit course) will be very intense..."</p>
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if you have a lot of time and are dedicated to learning it- i think it can be pretty easy.
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<p>The thing about Chinese is it takes TIME. It is not inherently more difficult. The grammar is really easy. It just takes TIME. TIME. TIME. TIME. TIME.</p>
<p>Shijian</p>