Because every aspect of Chinese is different from Latin-based languages.
Imagine you’ve been playing tennis all of your life. Then, you have the choice to learn volleyball or ice hockey.
Most people will take the path of least resistance and go for the more familiar route.
It’s true that Chinese is very daunting at first:
Chinese writing is pictorial, not phonetic. You can’t construct Chinese words intuitively through a phonetic alphabet as in English or Korean. You must learn the character radicals and the characters themselves and look for patterns.
There is little-to-no relationship between a Chinese character and the phonetic pronunciation. Yes, there is pinyin once you get started, but for those unfamiliar with Chinese they may not know much about romanized pinyin.
There are too many characters to ever know or memorize in a lifetime. Sure, you only need 2,000 to 2,500 characters in your head to read and comprehend reading a newspaper. Sure, there are many English words, but the alphabet is easy to learn from the get-go.
Chinese culture is not well-represented abroad, aside from the food and the firecrackers. While not many American children can speak French or Italian, for example, there is some cultural knowledge of the names and the accent. It’s more common to see characters on TV and movies that come from these countries than it is to find Chinese characters. Once in college, many students will have seen international movies, but not likely any from China. Therefore, Chinese language and people just seem a bit more “out there” and unfamiliar.
The 4 speaking tones. Chinese is tonal. If you’re a beginner to Mandarin, or any other dialect of Chinese, the four speaking tones will be an obstacle that you must confront from Day 1.
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So, is learning Chinese as hard as many people think? If you get off on the right foot, balance out your learning between a native-speaking qualified teacher and proper self-study, no.
Here are a few reasons that Mandarin Chinese is much easier than you (and your friends) think:
Grammar: Similar to English, Chinese sentences generally use a subject, a predicate and an object. The Chinese language does not contain gender or even singular/plural identifications. Chinese syntax is familiar as it follows the familiar subject-verb-object word order. Also, say ‘goodbye’ to tenses and articles (a, an, the). Say ‘hello’ to the much more simpler 前(qián).
Pinyin: The romanized pinyin alphabet is entirely phonetic. This process will come in handy in the beginning. However, do learn characters as you gain momentum.
Characters: Reading characters isn’t as difficult as it seems at first(
https://www.echineselearning.com/blog/learn-chinese-characters). You can begin to build more complex words by learning the individual components of Chinese writing and then putting them together. Additionally, you don’t actually need to know the tens of thousands of characters to read a newspaper. Generally, around 2,000 characters will do.
Emphasis on Meaning, not Sound: With just a few hundred unique sounds that sprawl across thousands of characters, Chinese is very much a visual language and reading/writing is intuitive and efficient when you reach that point of comprehension. Chinese words generally have fewer syllables than the same words in English.
Study Buddies: It used to be that Chinese were limited to a few cities. Now, with Chinese students pouring into cities, Chinese speakers are everywhere nowadays! If you live in a big city, it’s likely there is some kind of Chinatown nearby. In the past, Cantonese was more prominent in Chinatowns; however, the recent influx of Mandarin speakers has tipped these districts towards Mandarin (普通话 Pǔtōnghua).