It's all about the tones! Mandarin operates with four different tones, meaning that the way that you say a word can give it four different meanings! It is this tonality – this pronunciation – that causes most trouble for nearly all new speakers and makes Chinese a difficult language to master.
The Chinese language has a unique structure and pronunciation system that is vastly different from English. Chinese is made up of tens of thousands of characters, each with its own meaning, and often multiple pronunciations. This makes the language extremely difficult to learn, especially for non-native speakers.
It takes about 4-7 years (roughly 2200 to 4000 hours) to become fluent in every aspect of the language, if you spend at least an hour and a half to study every day. However, it's quite common for learners to become more fluent in some areas than others depending on how they allotted their study time.
One reason Mandarin is seen as the most challenging language to learn is because its writing system uses characters that might be difficult to grasp for those accustomed to writing with the Latin alphabet, Babbel says.
Mandarin Chinese
Interestingly, the hardest language to learn is also the most widely spoken native language in the world. Mandarin Chinese is challenging for a number of reasons. First and foremost, the writing system is extremely difficult for English speakers (and anyone else) accustomed to the Latin alphabet.
When linguists rank languages for ease of learning, both Japanese and Mandarin are toward the top (Category 5), especially for native English speakers. However, since you'll be learning a language with brand new sounds and symbols no matter what, they'll both be at about the same level regarding difficulty.
Complexity & Time
Learning expert Scott H. Young states that speaking Mandarin is not only harder than speaking Spanish, but it is fundamentally different. Everything from tones, vocabulary, and character is vastly unique compared to the latin languages, and the learning curve would be quite steep.
Korean vs Chinese: Which one's the easiest to learn? In conclusion, the Mandarin Chinese writing system is far more complex than its Korean counterpart. Hangul is far easier to learn than Hanzi. But, while Chinese grammar is rather predictable and stable, Korean grammar has some extra layers of difficulty.
In general, Japanese may take longer to learn due to its three writing systems (hiragana, kanji, and katakana). However, there are many similarities between Japanese and Chinese pronunciation so if you have prior knowledge of Chinese then learning Japanese may not be overly difficult.
So you think you can teach yourself Mandarin? I did. So can you. With the right combination of a clear motivation, effective resources, and a deep understanding of core language learning concepts, you can be well on your way towards fluency as you self study Chinese.
A child's ability to grasp new and multiple languages at an early age is well documented. Pre-school children from ages as young as 3 or 4 can start learning Mandarin simply by being exposed to the language at home, or in structured play activities (such as those run by Fun Languages).
However, to become fluent, experts estimate that it'll take 2,200 class hours. If you put the rest of your life on hold and focused only on studying Chinese – at 5 hours of practice a day, it would take you 88 weeks. Here's the long story. When it comes to Chinese, you have two options - Mandarin or Cantonese.
Researchers found that learning Chinese exercises your brain more than any other language. Mastering the tones and characters in Chinese requires many parts of the brain to function, thus eating up more brainpower.
Learning Mandarin gives you access to communicate with many people and connect on a deeper level, not just in Asia but across the world!
As we've already mentioned, Japanese is considered the fastest language in the world. It is always mentioned as the first on the list. So, here are 6 of the fastest spoken languages in the world, based on the average number of syllables spoken per second (SPS): Japanese - 7.84 SPS.
The language almost entirely lacks inflection; words typically have only one grammatical form. Categories such as number (singular or plural) and verb tense are often not expressed by grammatical means, but there are several particles that serve to express verbal aspect and, to some extent, mood.
A recent French study of the density and speed of 20 languages found Mandarin to be one of the slowest languages examined (in a group including French, English, and Japanese), in terms of syllables spoken per minute.
Mandarin Chinese is generally considered to be easier to learn than French due to its simpler grammar, phonetic writing system, simpler vocabulary, and more logical structure.
Though this can provide you with some useful phrases, it will not help you to become fluent. To learn Chinese, you really need to get a good grasp of the grammar principles, so for this reason Duolingo alone will not help you (especially at the higher levels).
While both languages can be challenging for English speakers, Mandarin is generally seen as being more difficult. This is due to the fact that there are thousands of Chinese characters, while Arabic only includes 28 letters in its alphabet.