Conquered Japanese? Try Chinese!.. Look at These!

[GuyJean]

China launches Web site to teach Chinese
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060708/wr_nm/china_language_website_dc

China launched a Web site, http://www.linese.com, on Saturday offering free Chinese lessons and materials to promote the study and use of the language abroad.

The site includes audio-visual presentations, interactive exercises and advice for teachers of Mandarin Chinese, with photographs and descriptions of cultural icons such as the Great Wall, kung fu actor Jackie Chan and basketball star Yao Ming.

Many of the exercises touch on China's mythical and imperial past, including practice sentences such as "how can you be a hero if you are unarmed" and "I find that Tibetans like worshipping heroes."

GJ

[Harvey]

This is old news, but for anyone who hasn't seen it... Why Chinese is so freakin' Hard!

http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html

I get a kick out of this every time I read it!

[Uhhuh35]

Even with a cable internet connection, the......site.....loads.....very..............slow............ly.

[Ptyx]

This is old news, but for anyone who hasn't seen it... Why Chinese is so freakin' Hard!

http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html

This was a great read, even though i only studied japanese i can find a lot similar frustrations in this article.

[6810]

That guy's a dickhead.

The article can be summed up like this -

Since Chinese is not an Indo-European language and uses something different to an alphabet, it's weird and complicated.

a. Japanese is not that hard.

b. Neither is Chinese.

Just got to study. That guy, as much as he tries hard to demonstrate otherwise, is just (or was at the time of writing) a beginner. Everything he said is what I went through as a beginner in Japanese. After a year of study, I don't feel the same way.

[Charles]

Everything he said is what I went through as a beginner in Japanese. After a year of study, I don't feel the same way.

Ah, ichinensei are such a wonderful combination of arrogance and ignorance.

I have bad news for you: you're still a beginner. Now that you've completed a whole year of study, you know your kana and probably 100 kanji. That was as easy as it ever gets. Wait a few more years until you know 4 to 600 kanji, that's when it gets difficult. They call this level "the plateau" and most students never get past it. Only once you've reached the plateau will you be qualified to comment on the difficulties of kanji, and you might recall that essay and you would certainly admit he was right.

[Samurai_Jerk]

Ah, ichinensei are such a wonderful combination of arrogance and ignorance.

I have bad news for you: you're still a beginner. Now that you've completed a whole year of study, you know your kana and probably 100 kanji. That was as easy as it ever gets. Wait a few more years until you know 4 to 600 kanji, that's when it gets difficult. They call this level "the plateau" and most students never get past it. Only once you've reached the plateau will you be qualified to comment on the difficulties of kanji, and you might recall that essay and you would certainly admit he was right.

I have to agree with Charles on this one. I didn't think Japanese was that tough until I hit the intermediate level. And it just keeps getting harder and harder. The plateau happens to students of all languages. I used to see it with my ESL students in the US. They'd be zipping through levels then they'd get to high intermediate and get stuck there for six months or even longer. Either they got through it and went on to really learn English or they gave up and went home.

[QwertyJPC]

I know about three students at SJSU who are taking Chinese and Japanese at the same time. And I know of some Chinese people in my Japanese class.
Of those three people I mentioned above, only one of them probably learned Chinese at home or in China..don't know. That guy is actually making Chinese his major. And Japanese his minor. For the other guy who didn't learn Chinese at home or in China, and is learning Japanese at the same time, he's in a bad position since Chinese and Japanese are somewhat similar. I read somewhere that it's bad to study two similar languages at the same time unless you're already fluent in one of them, like the Japanese girl studying Chinese (she's one of the three I mentioned).

I am now considering studying both traditional and simplified Chinese Mandarin after I finish my Japanese minor. I mean, it's just that Japanese seems like a stepping stone to Chinese since maybe half of the Japanese writing system and spoken words are Chinese. Not only that, there were some old Japanese scholars who learned Chinese to study some Chinese Literature.

--So..does anybody actually know the total number of Chinese characters out there? I heard 50,000 somewhere. How about the total Chinese characters used in modern times today? Would that be around 20,000?

--Anybody out there who knows how many romanization systems in Chinese Mandarin are there?

[watashinicksan]

I don't think I would EVER learn Chinese, I don't even like kanji in Japanese.
This is pretty funny to read for students of Japanese:

http://pepper.idge.net/japanese/