Mǎmahǔhu is a Chinese word. If we dissect the word for it’s internal composition parts it becomes: horse horse tiger tiger. Translated from Chinese it means so-so,  mediocre. Not what you expected from horse horse tiger tiger…? Yeah, me too. And that is the word I chose to describe my level of Chinese after having studied it for almost 5 months now. And that is what this post will be about: studying Chinese as a foreign language. My friends and family frequently ask me: so, is it difficult to learn Chinese?’ And, I do not lie to them… YES, it is not a walk in the park:) I speak 5 languages (not to praise myself, but just so that you know that I managed some languages before), but Chinese is by far the hardest, at least for me. I have a strong feeling that if I have studied any other European language at the pace that I was trying to master Chinese (every week, 3-5 days, 2-3 hours per day, totalling to 6-15 hours per week of ‘classes’ + self-study time, another 6 hours per week), I would be able to speak by now quite well… But with Chinese – I just feel like I struggle. Every day. And I am starting to fear that I will not make it… So, let’s recap what I find difficult about the Chinese language:

• Tones! So, there are 4 tones in Chinese language. And yes, you guessed correctly, they completely change the meaning of the words… The most famous example is:

  Mā = mother; Má = plant; Mǎ = horse; Mà = kind of a curse of someone...
  
  So basically, if you miss-use the tones, you can call mother a horse or curse her, and instead of a curse you can get a horse...

• There are so so so…so many homophones (words that have same sound, but have different spelling, and different meaning) ,homographs (same spelling) and homonyms (something is same, smth is different…) that it makes me mad! A few examples?

  Shì = to be;Shì = to try (clothes); Shí = ten;

• Damn you counting/measure words! How many are there of you out there??? So Chinese decided that many of their nouns deserve to have a separate measure/counting word. What does it mean exactly? To say one book, not only you need to learn how to say a book (Shū), you also need to learn the counting words for books and dictionaries (Běn), and then you can say:

  Yī Běn Shū = one book

  And as you guessed already, there is a separate counting word for pens, papers, cups, bottles, family members, tins, bikes and cars…etc.

• Chinese is a ‘Yoda language’… So have you watched Star wars? Or at least some parts of it and you are familiar with the famous jedi named Yoda? Remember how he speaks? To refresh your memory: ‘Much to learn you still have‘,  ‘Studying Chinese I am‘… etc. (P.S. you can go to The Yoda-speak generator online and have some fun if you want: http://www.yodaspeak.co.uk/index.php) Basically, you get a feeling that everything in Chinese is inverted, miss-placed, and if translated word by word – does not necessarily make much sense… Example?

  Xiànzài jǐ diǎn? = Now how much o'clock? Aka, What time is it now?

  Wǒ zài běijīng gōngzuò. = I at Beijing work.

  Wǒmen xuéxiào fùjìn yǒu hěnduō cānguǎn = Our school not far has many restaurants.

• Less is more. Omitting words…and taking shortcuts. So, first you learn the words, and then how to make the yoda sentences correctly. And all that just to learn later that you can frequently omit a verb, a possession particle, a subject, or cut your sentence to one word… When you think about it, that is very Chinese way to do, functional and practical, why to use more words if one is enough?

  Xiǎogǒu zěnmeyàng? = Small dog good? Aka, how is the small dog?

• ‘Composed verbs’ can be decomposed… Not sure if I can explain this very well cause I learned about this only this week. I am still very upset with the Chinese language about this ‘decomposition’. So, there are some verbs in Chinese language that are considered as composed verbs, a few that I learned: sleep (Shuìjiào), dance (Tiàowǔ), swim (Yóuyǒng)… And, if wanted, they can be shortened. So, Shuìjiào becomes Shuì, Tiàowǔ becomes Tiào, Yóuyǒng shortens to Yóu…And those shortened verbs become homophones ,homographs or… homonyms… True story.
• Last, but not least… The Chinese characters. So, by now, I have finished two books in Chinese that cover the ‘basic levels’, aka A1 and A2 in Europe. And I learned that this is where the fun begins so to say… As a foreigner learning Chinese you can choose how you want to learn the Chinese in the beginning. You can learn just the pinyin (Chinese that uses latin alphabet, like the examples I gave above) or learn both: pinyin and the Chinese characters. As my focus was to speak, at least some Chinese, as fast as possible, I chose just pinyin. So, I got a simpler beginning, easier one. And this easy choice is about to end… After basic level books – the following books have only the Chinese characters… What does it mean for me? Now I have to learn hundreds of characters just to be able to read my new books…

To motivate myself to study harder and not give up on Chinese just yet, I decided to take HSK exam (most popular exam for Chinese language certification), on the 11th of Feb I am taking HSK 2 = A2 in Europe. Wish me luck!!!