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Why learning chinese is a waste of time.

WaterlilyWaterlily Member UncommonPosts: 3,105
in Off-Topic Discussion

For anyone interested in learning Chinese, and by Chinese, I mean standard Mandarin of course, this argumentation is for you.

I think it's a waste of time, and after about 8 months of study, I'll tell you why I think it's a waste of time.

 

It's an overly complex language..

Why you ask.

First, the overly complex script. Chinese has no alphabet, it has characters, thousands of them. It will take years, before you master them all

Second, Chinese characters have no tonality. What do I mean by that...it means characters aren't usually associated with a particular sound, some are, but many are not. This issue is why Chinese in the West and in China, is learned through a secondary romanic alphabet, called pinyin. You're not really learning 1 language, you're learning 2.

Third. Tonalities. Chinese is a tontal language. It means it uses multiple sounds to distinguish different words. It often causes issues, since there's ambiguity, even for Chinese speakers, it often results in ambiguity.

Fourth. Chinese takes constant repetition, because you start to forget things because of it's complexity. If a Chinese person stops writing, they forget to write.

Fifth. A keyboard can't type thousands of characters. So you are required to use a program called a pinyin IME from MS or Google or the popular Sogou. That means you always need to rely on third party apps to get around on your PC in Chinese. Very cumbersome.

Sixth. The fact many Chinese don't know Chinese. People love to claim, there are X Chinese, so if you learn chinese, you can talk to X people. WRONG. If you go to China, you'll realise not every Chinese can read, and many chinese can't write Chinese. Many Chinese also don't quite master the spoken language, especially in rural areas, they have a basic grasp of the language, but not much beyond that. This is a direct result of the complecity of the language. Don't let someone tell you that 1,3 billion people master Chinese, they don't, not by a long shot.

Seventh. China has is a population that isn't growing. Quite the opposite, it's an aging population crisis. While a lot of people speak mandarin, this number is going down yearly.

Eight. The fact the language is useless for foreigners in every day communications. Many Chinese will automatically switch to English, English is an easy language to learn (I should know, it's not my mother tongue), so everyone switches to English for you. The chance you speak better Chinese than a Chinese person speaks English, is nihil unless you lived there for decades. So it makes the language pretty pointless to use in every day settings.

 

So, should you learn Chinese or learn another language. My personal adivce, no. Don't waste your time learning Chinese. You could have learned 3 languages in the time it takes to become even half decent at Chinese.

 

Comments

  • withouthardwithouthard Member Posts: 10
    Our company has business with Chinese company. It is convenient for us to learn some Chinese, since we need to have meeting in China. Learning more is better.
  • NickNameFreedomNickNameFreedom Member Posts: 43
    It would not difficult to learn if you have a Chinese friend. Chinese become useful as well as English. It really worth to learn.
  • AdamantineAdamantine Member RarePosts: 5,094
    The main reason why you shouldnt learn Chinese, or more precisely Mandarin, is thats its only used in China, and as mentioned, even then not by everybody, but many people speak languages like Cantonese, which are related but not the same.

    The reason why China still uses a script in which every word has its own letter is because this way you can still communicate, even if you dont use the same language.

    Russia by the way had the same problem and their solution was that everybody learned russian. I think thats overall the much easier and better solution. For starters you can use a regular alphabet which can be used to both write your own tongue as well as russian.



    The main language for anybody to learn is english. Its the language of the previous empire, the UK, and the language of the current empire, the USA. Thus its used all over the world. Including, as mentioned, in China.

    And, as mentioned, basic english isnt that hard to learn, compared to many other languages.

  • CleffyCleffy Member RarePosts: 6,414
    English is one of the harder European Languages to learn. There are many words that sound the same but are spelled differently with different meanings. There are also words added solely to make a sentence rhyme. 
  • AdamantineAdamantine Member RarePosts: 5,094
    Cleffy said:
    English is one of the harder European Languages to learn.
    Thats simply incorrect.

    I am german and I had french in school, and I know a bit about other languages.

    English is the easiest of them all.


  • AdamantineAdamantine Member RarePosts: 5,094
    edited July 2022
    Uh-hu.

    Or you could learn 5 other languages with the same amount of effort.

    Lets see, how about:

    - Spanish

    - Arabic

    - Japanese

    - Russian

    - One freebie of your choice

    These together with english, and you can go basically anywhere on the planet and speak with people.

    While Chinese, more precisely Mandarin, literally only allows you to access parts of China. And not all chinese speak that language, either, some speak Cantonese etc.

    If you're a language genius and look for a challenge, sure. Otherwise I wouldnt recomment it. Educated chinese people CAN speak english.

  • Kenny39Kenny39 Member UncommonPosts: 21
    Cleffy said:
    English is one of the harder European Languages to learn. There are many words that sound the same but are spelled differently with different meanings. There are also words added solely to make a sentence rhyme. 

    Yeah, and there are also more than three tenses, exceptions, and other stuff. But it doesn't make English such difficult. 

    Any child speaks English these days. It doesn't take that long to learn how to speak English or read any documentation, for example.
This discussion has been closed.