to learn a language
We returned from France. Nice place. My wife speaks French rather well, and I seriously improved my listening comprehension on the trip. One night we were eating cheese and drinking wine with some friends and talking about language. There was a bit of translating back and forth for myself and one native French speaker whose English was just a bit better than my French. This situation called for repetition and explanation and further questioning. It was exhausting but what a great way to learn!
At one point discussion turned to the English form of the subjunctive and grammar rules in general. Talk turned to difficulties associated with learning languages. French is very difficult according to the French. Personally, I would claim English is very tricky. My wife tried in vain to convince the French speakers that Italian was actually more difficult than French. And I have never met a Chinese person who hasn’t told me Chinese was near impossible. It seems everyone wants their native tongue to be difficult to learn. We take pride in the crazy nuances of our languages. It’s no surprise really given how our identities are so wrapped in our language. But I felt myself disagreeing strongly with the concept that learning a foreign language is hard.
The problem, as I see it, resides in the idea that learning a foreign language means knowing all the rules and nuances. I prefer to think of language learning as merely learning to do things. The more things you can do (with more language and less gesturing), the more fluent you are. And learning to do things is really not that complicated.
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I've been teaching Chinese since 1998. This site was built to help my students practice the sounds of Chinese. Hope it continues to help others. Let me know if you have questions.
June 7th, 2006 at 2:05 pm
Funny. I would always think and claim the mother language as the easiest. And why not? You inherit it and live with it, it is like food and water and air.
June 8th, 2006 at 1:43 pm
Yes, Xun. Perhaps my writing wasn’t clear enough. Native language acquisition is indeed perceived as relatively effortless. But if I ask an Chinese native speaker if it is difficult for Americans to learn Chinese, the answer is unequivocally “HEN NAN”.
June 13th, 2006 at 4:15 pm
It doesn’t matter what language you’re acquiring. The truth of the matter is that constant practice through repetition will make learning a language a fun experience. Without a doubt, Mandarin Chinese is a critical language and an extremely difficult language to master its verbal production in tone and grmmar usuage. It’s a big challenge to speak well. No wonder this language was used in the old imperial court. Even the emperopr of China spoke and conducted business in this tongue.
June 13th, 2006 at 4:18 pm
I’m sorry about the spelling. It’s not grmmar. It’s grammar.
June 13th, 2006 at 11:37 pm
I’m not taking off any points for spelling
I’m curious, Carol if you are a native Mandarin speaker.
A challenge? I would agree. A big challenge? Nah. But I suppose it’s all relative (thank you George Harrison).
Constant practice through repetition could also be the most mundane activity ever.
June 14th, 2006 at 2:09 am
Hi Pei,
Thank you for your comments. I’m a native speaker of Cantonese. Yes, Mandarin Chinese is a big challenge for me. First, I don’t get to practice the language on a regular basis. Secondly, my home environment isn’t Mandarin Chinese oriented. Are you a native speaker of Mandarin Chinese? All the tongue twisting is driving me crazy. Cantonese has about 13-14 tones whereas Mandarin Chinese has 4-tone. They’re both very difficult to speak well. I ‘ve always wish to have a perfect Mandarin Chinese tutor to guide me through the intricate pronunciation of words. No, I haven’t mastered the verbal production of Mandarin Chinese in its element.