I’ve been learning Mandarin since summer of 2006 and it’s been such an interesting journey so far. English and Chinese are so different, but surprisingly not so difficult to learn. In school I had to learn French and Spanish and didn’t get along with any of them. In many European languages the verb changes depending on the context. Consider the verb to eat:
- We want to eat
- We’re eating
- We’ve eaten
- We ate
In Chinese, verbs don’t change; it stays the same no matter what. That’s one less thing you have to learn when studying Mandarin.
I totally agree! I learnt Spanish for 2 years in college and it was quite good but mandarin is such a different language, considering all french, spanish and English derive from latin. And, mandarin is derived from pictograms.
ReplyDeleteI learnt some mandarin in college and hopefully this blog will help me pick it back up in university!