The Joys of Mandarin Chinese

I arrived in mainland China two months ago well aware of the fact that Mandarin Chinese is considered one of the most difficult languages in the world to master.

Studies have shown, that for a native English speaker, it takes 8 times as long to master Mandarin as it does a romance language such as Spanish. The US Department of State designated it as one of the five most difficult foreign languages to master among 63 major languages analyzed.

I was hoping to prove the experts wrong, but after two months of intensive study, I must concede that it's reputation is well deserved.

My usual approach to a new endeavor is one of brute force. I find that if I spend enough time approaching a task from many different angles, eventually I will latch on to something that works for me.

In my attempts to tackle Mandarin Chinese, I have been:

• Listening to Pimsleur audio lessons on my IPhone
• Listening to ChinesePod online audio lessons
• Systematically looking up and recording new words that I learn on the fly using my Pleco Chinese dictionary for IPhone
• Testing myself using various combinations of Chinese characters, pinyin, definitions, and audio using the Pleco electronic flashcard software for IPad
• Watching Chinese cartoons with English and Chinese character subtitles
• Spending as much time as possible hanging out with native Chinese speakers
• Studying both a beginners and intermediate textbook
• Taking five hours a day, five days a week of one-on-one language tutoring from a variety of language teachers

Not to mention moving halfway around the world, so that I could immerse myself among native Chinese speakers.

Sadly, I feel that my language skills are still about on par with that of an infant. Although I can speak in simple sentences and carry out some basic smalltalk, I am still pretty much lost when a native speaker starts speaking to me in normal speed. At this point, I am still unable to follow along with even children's cartoons.

It doesn't help that I look Chinese and that native speakers naturally approach me speaking a mile a minute.

Learning the characters is another matter entirely. Unlike the Roman alphabet, which has 26 characters, the Chinese use individual characters to represent ideas. Conservative estimates place the number of Chinese characters at over 50,000 (in fairness, most of these characters are not in regular use and you ONLY need to learn a few thousand of these words to reach adult level literacy). These characters are then combined with each other to form an untold number of words.

Despite the Sisyphean nature of my task, I remain cautiously optimistic.

I just picked up a copy of Remembering Simplified Hanzi by James Heisig and Timothy Richardson. Heisig is well known for his approach in studying both Japanese kanji and Chinese hanzi. He comes up with seemingly ridiculous, yet highly systematic and effective, mnemonic devices to associate characters with their meaning. Since starting the book, I have been picking up hanzi at a dramatically increased pace.

Hopefully, once I have the basics of the written language under my belt, I'll be better able to read and write on my own time. From there, I will be able to build a firmer grasp of sentence structure and grammar. It will also help me in picking up new words as well as consolidating my new vocabulary.

I'll likely be moving to a different locale next week and continuing my studies on my own time. My intermediate goal is to be able to watch children's cartoons by the end of summer.

The bottom line is this... there are 1.4 billion people that speak this language fluently. How difficult could it really be? :)