Quote:
Originally Posted by kirakira
Again you are totally off base. Chinese characters is harder to learn, for natives as well, you will need to put in more effort no doubt about it. Doesn't mean English is less expressive because of this fact. Chinese pronounciation is next to impossible, in fact 90% of the Chinese speakers cannot speak standard Mandarin properly even if they wanted to. Japanese pronounciation on the other hand is idiot proof. Still, doesn't make Chinese more expressive because of impossible pronounciation.
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Some of the things you said here didn't sound right to me, so I asked my 3 chinese flatmates for their input. Here it is:
Yes, Chinese characters are hard to learn for the simple reason that there are so many you have to learn. On average, 10 per day when starting school. Other than this, chinese chars are no harder to learn than English vocabulary. Remembering how to write them isn't difficult because there are rules to how you write characters. Remembering the character writing is like remembering the spelling of words in English etc. So as a native chinese learner, the characters don't cause as much difficulty as people may think.
Chinese pronounciation is not so difficult. There are only four tones (unless you count the neutral as another tone) and the more advanced in the language you get, the less noticable they are. i.e. The tone becomes very very subtle unlike when you first start learning where you speak in tone perfect. The tones are only difficult when someone isn't a native chinese speaker. Even then, it's not as difficult as people think.
90%? Where did you get this number? Chinese and many asian languages are pretty known for the fact that the litteracy rate in their respective countries is always extremely good compared to western countries and their languages. If you mean on a speaking level, it either comes down to the fact that people have their own dialects and don't learn Mandarin as well as they should, or just accents.
Back to me:
I'm not sure what you guys meant by "expressing", but out of all the languages I speak, I find English the best for expressing myself in a quick and direct way (of course, this isn't always a good thing. In more complex subjects, I'm prety rubish at debating in English). Kabyle (Mother tongue), hasn't evolved very well in recent history, therefore, there are many borrowed words now. To speak purely in Kabyle without borrowed words becomes extremely difficult. Arabic (Algerian spoken arabic. Literary arabic is a nightmare) is fine for expressing myself. French... well, I dislike French because for me it's a language that just beats around the bush. It's rarely direct and to the point like English. To many, that could be the beauty of it (and I understand). But, with French, it'd probably be because I'd call my level Advanced at most, unlike the other languages, which to me are at a Native speakers' level.