{"id":260,"date":"2018-01-19T14:09:04","date_gmt":"2018-01-19T14:09:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/myexpatdiaries.com\/?p=260"},"modified":"2018-01-19T15:07:14","modified_gmt":"2018-01-19T15:07:14","slug":"chinese-is-a-yoda-language-or-7-most-difficult-things-about-learning-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myexpatdiaries.com\/index.php\/2018\/01\/19\/chinese-is-a-yoda-language-or-7-most-difficult-things-about-learning-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese is the &#8216;Yoda language&#8217; or 7 most difficult things about learning it"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>M\u01cemah<\/strong><strong>\u01d4<\/strong><\/em><em><strong>hu\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>is a Chinese word. If we<em><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>dissect the word for it&#8217;s internal composition parts it becomes: <em>h<em>orse horse tiger tiger<\/em><\/em>.<em><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>Translated from Chinese it means <em>so-so<\/em>,\u00a0 mediocre. Not what you expected from horse horse tiger tiger&#8230;? 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?&#8217; And, I do not lie to them&#8230; 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 &#8216;classes&#8217; + self-study time, another 6 hours per week), I would be able to speak by now quite well&#8230; But with Chinese &#8211; I just feel like I struggle. Every day. And I am starting to fear that I will not make it&#8230; So, let&#8217;s recap what I find difficult about the Chinese language:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Tones!<\/strong> So, there are 4 tones in Chinese language. And yes, you guessed correctly, they completely change the meaning of the words&#8230; The most famous example is:\n<div id=\"tw-target-text-container\" class=\"tw-compact-ta-container tw-lfl\">\n<pre class=\"tw-data-text tw-ta tw-text-small\" data-placeholder=\"\" data-fulltext=\"\">M\u0101 = mother; M\u00e1 = plant; M\u01ce = horse; M\u00e0 = kind of a curse of someone...\r\n\r\nSo 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...<\/pre>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>There are so so so&#8230;so many <strong>homophones<\/strong> (words that have same sound, but have different spelling, and different meaning) ,homographs (same spelling)\u00a0and homonyms (something is same, smth is different&#8230;) that it makes me mad! A few examples?\n<pre class=\"tw-data-text tw-ta tw-text-small\" data-placeholder=\"\" data-fulltext=\"\">Sh\u00ec = to be;Sh\u00ec = to try (clothes); Sh\u00ed = ten;<\/pre>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Damn you counting\/measure words!<\/strong> 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 (Sh\u016b), you also need to learn the counting words for books and dictionaries (B\u011bn), and then you can say:\n<pre id=\"tw-target-rmn\" class=\"tw-data-text tw-ta tw-text-small\" data-placeholder=\"\" data-fulltext=\"\">Y\u012b B\u011bn Sh\u016b = one book<\/pre>\n<p>And as you guessed already, there is a separate counting word for pens, papers, cups, bottles, family members, tins, bikes and cars&#8230;etc.<\/li>\n<li>Chinese is a &#8216;<strong>Yoda language&#8217;<\/strong>&#8230; 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: &#8216;<em>Much to learn you still have<\/em>&#8216;,\u00a0 &#8216;S<em>tudying Chinese I am<\/em>&#8216;&#8230; etc. (P.S. you can go to The Yoda-speak generator online and have some fun if you want: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.yodaspeak.co.uk\/index.php\">http:\/\/www.yodaspeak.co.uk\/index.php<\/a>) Basically, you get a feeling that everything in Chinese is inverted, miss-placed, and if translated word by word &#8211; does not necessarily make much sense&#8230; Example?\n<pre id=\"tw-target-rmn\" class=\"tw-data-text tw-ta tw-text-small\" data-placeholder=\"\" data-fulltext=\"\">Xi\u00e0nz\u00e0i j\u01d0 di\u01cen? = Now how much o'clock? Aka, What time is it now?<\/pre>\n<pre class=\"tw-data-text tw-ta tw-text-small\" data-placeholder=\"\" data-fulltext=\"\">W\u01d2 z\u00e0i b\u011bij\u012bng g\u014dngzu\u00f2. = I at Beijing work.<\/pre>\n<pre id=\"tw-target-rmn\" class=\"tw-data-text tw-ta tw-text-small\" data-placeholder=\"\" data-fulltext=\"\">W\u01d2men xu\u00e9xi\u00e0o f\u00f9j\u00ecn y\u01d2u h\u011bndu\u014d c\u0101ngu\u01cen = Our school not far has many restaurants.<\/pre>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Less is more.<\/strong> Omitting words&#8230;and taking shortcuts. So, first you learn the words, and then how to make the <em>yoda sentences\u00a0<\/em>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&#8230; When you think about it, that is very Chinese way to do, <strong>functional and practical<\/strong>, why to use more words if one is enough?\n<pre id=\"tw-target-rmn\" class=\"tw-data-text tw-ta tw-text-small\" data-placeholder=\"\" data-fulltext=\"\">Xi\u01ceog\u01d2u z\u011bnmey\u00e0ng? = Small dog good? Aka, how is the small dog?<\/pre>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>&#8216;Composed verbs&#8217; can be decomposed&#8230; <\/strong>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 &#8216;decomposition&#8217;. So, there are some verbs in Chinese language that are considered as composed verbs, a few that I learned: sleep (Shu\u00ecji\u00e0o), dance (Ti\u00e0ow\u01d4), swim (Y\u00f3uy\u01d2ng)&#8230; And, if wanted, they can be shortened. So,\u00a0Shu\u00ecji\u00e0o becomes\u00a0Shu\u00ec,\u00a0Ti\u00e0ow\u01d4 becomes\u00a0Ti\u00e0o,\u00a0Y\u00f3uy\u01d2ng shortens to\u00a0Y\u00f3u&#8230;And those shortened verbs become\u00a0<strong>homophones<\/strong>\u00a0,homographs or&#8230; homonyms&#8230; True story.<\/li>\n<li>Last, but not least&#8230; <strong>The Chinese characters.\u00a0<\/strong>So, by now, I have finished two books in Chinese that cover the &#8216;basic levels&#8217;, aka A1 and A2 in Europe. And I learned that this is where the fun begins so to say&#8230; As a foreigner learning Chinese you can choose how you want to learn the Chinese in the beginning. You can learn just the <em><strong>pinyin\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>(Chinese that uses latin alphabet, like the examples I gave above) or learn both: <em><strong>pinyin and the Chinese characters<\/strong><\/em>. As my focus was to speak, at least some Chinese, as fast as possible, I chose just\u00a0<em><strong>pinyin.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>So, I got a simpler beginning, easier one. And this easy choice is about to end&#8230; After basic level books &#8211; the following books have only the Chinese characters&#8230; What does it mean for me? Now I have to learn hundreds of characters just to be able to read my new books&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>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!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>M\u01cemah\u01d4hu\u00a0is a Chinese word. If we\u00a0dissect the word for it&#8217;s internal composition parts it becomes: horse horse tiger tiger.\u00a0Translated from Chinese it means so-so,\u00a0 mediocre. Not what you expected from horse horse tiger tiger&#8230;? Yeah, me too. And that is the word I chose to describe my level of Chinese after having studied it for&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/myexpatdiaries.com\/index.php\/2018\/01\/19\/chinese-is-a-yoda-language-or-7-most-difficult-things-about-learning-it\/\">Read More <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Chinese is the &#8216;Yoda language&#8217; or 7 most difficult things about learning it<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myexpatdiaries.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myexpatdiaries.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myexpatdiaries.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myexpatdiaries.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myexpatdiaries.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/myexpatdiaries.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":275,"href":"https:\/\/myexpatdiaries.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions\/275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myexpatdiaries.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myexpatdiaries.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myexpatdiaries.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}