which language is the best one in the word?

I never said it was impossible to learn outside of china. Ever heard of chiense school? asian kids go there every wekend to learn

The_Zergling said:

I'm a little confused here. In China, how do kids learn the language when they're growing up? I know that Taiwan uses 注音/Juyin, and I assumed that China used 拼音/Pinyin... but the posts above are giving me mixed messages.

Can someone clear this up? Thanks.

Personally I prefer it when "Westerners" use Juyin to learn Chinese, because it forces them to adopt to the different language nuances, for instance a lot of 'foreigners' tend to mispronounce 'ㄕ' (shr or whatever, I'm not good at pinyin) and it tends to come out like 'sh'. You know, the twisting the tongue thing? Argh, I'm losing my touch with words.

To me, pinyin lets non-native speakers "cheat" a little because they can relate to the English alphabet, which makes it arguably harder to adopt to the correct pronounciation, because it's easy to get into the bad habit of pronouncing the words as if they were in English. But that's just what I think.

Click to expand...

pinyin for pre school and the first year then you move on to readin and writing simplfyed chinese

MIGleader said:

I never said it was impossible to learn outside of china. Ever heard of chiense school? asian kids go there every wekend to learn

Click to expand...

you make sound so hard its impossible for westerner to learn. one of my friend born and raised in Canada can speak chinese fluently + some readin and writing all he recived was some instruction from his parents

never said that. you know who da shan is, right? He can converse well in english and mandarin.

ive met other like him, especially u.s businessmen.

darth sidious said:

pinyin for pre school and the first year then you move on to readin and writing simplfyed chinese

Click to expand...

Um... so basically it's pinyin all the way?

For instance in Taiwan, you start off by learning Juyin, when you see a Chinese character in beginner's reading books it will have Juyin next to it, and you'll learn how to pronounce it from there.

Now after you grow up and increase your vocabulary there will still be words that you haven't memorized or seen before. When you have to learn them, you still use Juyin to figure out how to prounounce them.

And I take it that's the same with China? Just replace Juyin with Pinyin? Which is interesting if true, because you'd have to learn the English alphabet first.

MIGleader said:

http://www.sinodefenceforum.com/showthread.php?t=428&highlight=brainpower

Chinese is dependent on environment, if you learn in China ,its easy. outside, its not. most schools in america list chinese as their hardest language.

Click to expand...

Off course Americans will find it difficult. Ask Koreans and Japanese, they will say it is quick easy.

And the article only say you need to use more of your brain to learn Chinese, it did not applied Chinese is very difficult to learn. BTW using more your brain is always a good idea, no wonder us Chinese are so smart:roll: .

In HK, I don't remember I learn any pinyin except in Mandarin class. Oh well since they use Cantonese, probably it will be better not to apply pinyin.

Gollevainen said:

I hope so...what I meant, was that how those guys that have propaly born in china but came to live in west before school age have build their national identity, what languages have their home used and how have they adjusted to the 'foreing' languacic outside world...from my experiences whit htis forum, it almoust seems that strongly represented chinse-nationalism (as blindtied as all nationalist brusts comes) by these 14-17 years old outside chinese could be somesort of counter mechanism to the immigrant/alien situation where they currently live....if it isent the case, feel free to correct me...but do confess about when and why did the chinese identity of yours to begun to build, or was it there from the beging

Click to expand...

Oh, no.
What you've seen is the tip of the iceberg.
Most kids born in China and related regions and moving to the West at around 3 are pretty much the same as most ABCs(America born Chinese, in US' case.) They share the same kind of knowledge, fashion, culture, etc.
I can name two members in here that are true to your scenario, but the other kids, born in China and in the West by 3, don't give a care of China at all. So you don't really get to see a good distribution for such people.

Kids who had same schooling in China forst is a totally different case, though.
(I belong to neither case, I am ABC, born in Vermont, but I did go to school in Hong Kong for some years.)

Oh, and on the gender issue, French assignees gender to almost everything also, so we do have a gender language in Europe

Click to expand...

So does Spanish and German. In fact, I think English is one of the few that has a neutral gender.

To Goll: I think the development of the Chinese identity of the youth actually develops after you come to the West.

Click to expand...

Agreed. I've always seen myself as an ETHNIC American when I started living in Hong Kong. (I was a racist then....... Thinking China is evil.....) And now I am usually pro-China. (Well, Bush did help with that.) :rofl:

I'll be interested to see that list of "classifications" by difficulty. I'm surprised Spanish is considered easy, from the tales of grammar tests my friends told me, it seems not that way. But again, all natural languages are just arbitrary mish-mash that are more complicated than necessary, as any computer scientist trying to build a natural-langauge parser will tell you

One of the big differences between languages is the use of word ordering and inflection. Some langauges (like Russian?) use inflections (prefixes or suffixes) to indicate what job a word plays in a sentence, and the ordering is not important. On the other extreme, Chinese has no inflections in general and uses more words or word ordering to imply meaning. So people who learned langauges on one extreme will have extreme difficulty with languages on the other extreme. This is perhaps why some langauges are easier to learn as a 2nd language given your first langauge. I think English is somewhat in the middle. It uses ordering, but also has inflections to denote things like verb tense, adjectives/adverbs, and plurality, but not to the extent of, say, German or Russian.

Click to expand...

Yeap, I agree!

if you are Ms. Chan is not exactly the best chinese teacher, i played (chinese) computer games in her class in grade 10, didn't learn a thing.

Click to expand...

Try Ms. Kaiser(married a German.) I can guarentee to you after seeing Kaiser, Chan will seem a good teacher.

maybe you find it difficult but the rest of us agree 4-3 year of basic eduction will teach you good chinese

Click to expand...

Well, if you learn Chinese as a 1st language, I'd say it's easy. Every kid can end up speaking Chinese with little grammar error.(Contrary to English, with its, to me, weird grammar, I see a lot of kids end up speaking ebonics when they are out of school or just don't speak proper English. No offence.)
But as a 2nd language when you are from the West(Well, Chinese is to the East as English is to the West: The East is filled with Chinese), it can be very difficult due to huge differences in function and grammar. And if you are learning traditional, the strokes can be a hazzle. The different dialects and writing can be a problem too, though not as big as India's I'll say.

Personally I prefer it when "Westerners" use Juyin to learn Chinese, because it forces them to adopt to the different language nuances, for instance a lot of 'foreigners' tend to mispronounce 'ㄕ' (shr or whatever, I'm not good at pinyin) and it tends to come out like 'sh'. You know, the twisting the tongue thing? Argh, I'm losing my touch with words.

To me, pinyin lets non-native speakers "cheat" a little because they can relate to the English alphabet, which makes it arguably harder to adopt to the correct pronounciation, because it's easy to get into the bad habit of pronouncing the words as if they were in English. But that's just what I think.

Click to expand...

I think pinyin is better though. For the same point. It sounds more like Chinese, though I've never actually touch juyin, only seen some of it, like tsa or chi. I mean, wouldn't such "cheat" help? If you use english in Juyin, it's not going to help much.

I never said it was impossible to learn outside of china. Ever heard of chiense school? asian kids go there every wekend to learn

Click to expand...

I don't think those help THAT much. People can speak it usually fluently though sometimes with a little local accent due to English exposure 1st. But writing? Doubt it. It's on weekends anyway.

Um... so basically it's pinyin all the way?

For instance in Taiwan, you start off by learning Juyin, when you see a Chinese character in beginner's reading books it will have Juyin next to it, and you'll learn how to pronounce it from there.

Now after you grow up and increase your vocabulary there will still be words that you haven't memorized or seen before. When you have to learn them, you still use Juyin to figure out how to prounounce them.

And I take it that's the same with China? Just replace Juyin with Pinyin? Which is interesting if true, because you'd have to learn the English alphabet first.

Click to expand...

Don't know about China, but it's here in San Francisco all the time, even in the newspaper.

In HK, I don't remember I learn any pinyin except in Mandarin class.

Click to expand...

What the? Did you go to Mandarin school on the weekend or something? Hong Kong didn't standardize Mandarin into fully public/government schools until I think 1997. And still then, it was not present in other schools (public chartered) like those Anglican or Buddhist schools.

Not trying to offend anyone, but does it get annoying to you when people start speaking your language with sounds available only in their language?
And does ebonics count as a language?

Gollevainen said:

well more uniquer in terms of orgin...but finnish isent dying language in same extence as many smaller languages are....

Click to expand...

Gaelic is not a dying language. All of the street signs in Ireland are in Gaelic and it is taught in schools. Most Irish people speak because they learned it in school. In the more remote Western parts of the country it is actually spoken as frequently as English.

Basque is the worlds most unique language. It is unlike any other and linguists cannot trace its origin of put it in any larger language group.

100th post!!!!:nana: :china:

Gaelic is not a dying language. All of the street signs in Ireland are in Gaelic and it is taught in schools. Most Irish people speak because they learned it in school. In the more remote Western parts of the country it is actually spoken as frequently as English.

Click to expand...

Well perhaps not dying, but still in rather unpleasent situation, as it doesent really benefit from being the sole major language of ireland...

Spanish is the easiest language to learn.

Well if you know Urdu or the older proto-Indo-Aryan languages
like Sanskrit then you have the basis for English and Latin
Urdu also links to Arabic so once you know a bit of Arabic it's ashort
stepping stone to spanish.

Eg Urdu - Kia haal
Arabic - keef halak
Spanish - qe taal

Urdu is probably a lot more of a polite language than spanish or arabic

eg urdu dosnt use words like 'tu' instead you say 'aap'