Mandarin Is The Easiest Language
Literally me this entire week, when I finally understand a single word anyone says:
Okay, so maybe there was a little dash of sarcasm and/or click-bait-ery in my title. But really, though. Mandarin is probably the easiest -- nay, the simplest -- language out there. “What? But everyone says that Mandarin is the hardest language in the world and you have to have perfect pitch to learn it and and and…” So why would I argue otherwise? Well, here’s some quick examples.
Mandarin Chinese has a total of 3 pronouns. That’s right. JUST 3. 我 (Wo, I), 你 (Ni, You), and 他 (Ta, He/She). Now, there are a handful of articles that can be suffixed to these 3 in order to imply plurality or possession (们, 的, etc.), but at the basis, you’ve only got 3 pronouns to worry about. Wow. So hard.
English, on the other hand, has at least 15 pronouns I can count off the top of my head. We conveniently mixed plurality and possession into the words themselves just to complicate things. Plus, we have to conjugate our verbs, while the Chinese use simple articles and context to get the point across WITHOUT conjugating. And English isn’t even the worst of them - Tagalog has around 24 pronouns and several different forms of conjugation in addition to tenses.
So yeah. Mandarin? Easy sauce. Sure, they have an extremely intricate form of writing and calligraphy, and they have 4 (or 5 depending on who you ask) tones that need to be used correctly or you’ll be saying a completely different word, and they have several vowels and consonants that don’t exist in any other language, and those said vowels and consonants can vary in pronunciation depending on where you’re from… but other than that, it’s pretty easy… right?
Anyways, I can hardly speak a simple straight sentence in Chinese yet.
But I’m not worried. Language takes time. It takes patience to fail over and over again until you finally get something right, start using it, realize months later you’ve been using it incorrectly, and then start over again (happened to a friend of mine). It takes grit to push past all of the awkward encounters, the people talking about you in front of your face uninhibited by your lack of understanding, the dropped jaws, the wide eyes, the rapid movement of arms reaching for phones and a translation app… but my oh my, is it worth it.
It’s just that the beginning sucks, and there’s no way around it. So here I am.
Mandarin Chinese has a total of 3 pronouns. That’s right. JUST 3. 我 (Wo, I), 你 (Ni, You), and 他 (Ta, He/She). Now, there are a handful of articles that can be suffixed to these 3 in order to imply plurality or possession (们, 的, etc.), but at the basis, you’ve only got 3 pronouns to worry about. Wow. So hard.
English, on the other hand, has at least 15 pronouns I can count off the top of my head. We conveniently mixed plurality and possession into the words themselves just to complicate things. Plus, we have to conjugate our verbs, while the Chinese use simple articles and context to get the point across WITHOUT conjugating. And English isn’t even the worst of them - Tagalog has around 24 pronouns and several different forms of conjugation in addition to tenses.
So yeah. Mandarin? Easy sauce. Sure, they have an extremely intricate form of writing and calligraphy, and they have 4 (or 5 depending on who you ask) tones that need to be used correctly or you’ll be saying a completely different word, and they have several vowels and consonants that don’t exist in any other language, and those said vowels and consonants can vary in pronunciation depending on where you’re from… but other than that, it’s pretty easy… right?
Anyways, I can hardly speak a simple straight sentence in Chinese yet.
But I’m not worried. Language takes time. It takes patience to fail over and over again until you finally get something right, start using it, realize months later you’ve been using it incorrectly, and then start over again (happened to a friend of mine). It takes grit to push past all of the awkward encounters, the people talking about you in front of your face uninhibited by your lack of understanding, the dropped jaws, the wide eyes, the rapid movement of arms reaching for phones and a translation app… but my oh my, is it worth it.
It’s just that the beginning sucks, and there’s no way around it. So here I am.
Comments
Post a Comment