Which language is harder and why?

[Ginger91]

^^

[Llamaber]

Chinese because it's a tonal language

[SNGGYU]

Chinese because it's a tonal language

[Gen_ki]

Chinese. 

 

It's tonal.

It has the most characters of the 3.

[Rapmon's Ahjussi Husband]

I can pronounce correctly all, specially chinese, but why German is not an option ?

[OldCottonAccount]

I've heard how Chinese is one of the hardest languages to learn along with Dutch.

 

Chinese because it's a tonal language

What's a tonal languge?

[violetvelvet]

I have motivation to study japanese since I'm otaku and korean since I'm kpop fans

 

But chinese is just too unfamiliar for me

[lovenatu]

Obviously Chinese. I speak Cantonese yet I'm still struggling to learn Mandarin.

[Tiroriii~]

In many languages there are phrases to refer to something that's difficult to understand like "this is like reading Chinese to me". For the Chinese, they say something like "this is like the language of the gods". 

So, above terrestrial language > Chinese > the rest of us (in difficulty)

[taigemei]

I've heard how Chinese is one of the hardest languages to learn along with Dutch.

 

What's a tonal languge?

 

Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning – that is, to distinguish or to inflect words.^[1] All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called intonation, but not all languages use tones to distinguish words or their inflections, analogously to consonants and vowels. Languages that do have this feature are called tonal languages; the distinctive tone patterns of such a language are sometimes called tonemes /ˈtoÊŠniËm/,^[2] by analogy with phoneme. Tonal languages are extremely common in Africa, East Asia, and Central America, but rare elsewhere in Asia and in Europe; as many as seventy percent of world languages may be tonal.^[1]

 

^{from wikipedia}

[silverlining]

I've heard how Chinese is one of the hardest languages to learn along with Dutch.

What's a tonal languge?

I'm on mobile but if Chinese characters wee Romanised to Zhang realistically it could have 4 different sounds when spoken, each with a different meaning. One is flat, up, down and up, down and then these is an accent one as well. Also different character might have the same romanisation and tone but different meaning.

[TrueColors]

Japanese, because it has three effing alphabets.

[Miekos]

Chinese

[coreofsoul]

Chinese seems really difficult to me. 

 

But from what I've read, each has areas that are harder.

 

Obviously the tones in Chinese are hardest.

The grammar in Japanese & Korean is supposedly harder.

Chinese has a lot more characters, but most only have one reading unlike in Japanese where you might have to learn up to 10 or so readings for the same character which can be extremely confusing. 

 

I (who studied Japanese first) thinks Korean is harder and quit Chinese right away because it seemed impossible, but my friend who studied Chinese first thinks that Japanese is way harder. 

[lovenatu]

Japanese, because it has three effing alphabets.

Chinese doesn't even have an alphabet. ._.

[Slayer619]

chinese>japanese>korean in DIFFICULITY

[Suga's GF]

look 

 

if u think chinese is hard you're wrong chinese is literally so easy... the tones are  a bit intimidating when you first learn but once you get them down it becomes a breeze. reading and speaking are the easiest, but admittedly, writing and listening gave me some trouble. imo thats the only thing hard about it. however listening does become easier when you use the words to build up context rather than paying too much attention to tones. also there's no real conjugation, it has a similar sentence structure to english, and there's so many more free resources out there than korean.

 

i haven't bothered with japanese, but korean is the hardest for me. the alphabet and overall pronunciation is easy but the grammar is ... nnn ... it doesn't help that most of the good resources to learn korean are paid. sure there's TTMIK and stuff but you have to pay to get the best information. the sentence structure is honestly the biggest barrier for me personally.

[SNGGYU]

Japanese, because it has three effing alphabets.

you can master hiragana and katakana in two weeks, and they're syllabaries, not alphabets

[PinkWhale]

Arabic

Jk chinese maybe?

[SJK]

To each their own, but it seems like more people agree tones (Chinese) are more difficult than grammar (Japanese, Korean). Not me, though, I'd take tones any day over 591023821 conjugations. My native language has eight tones, I'm used to it.

[Hosh]

depends on the individual's personal strengths and weaknesses in second language acquisition as well as their native language

people who struggle with grammar but find pronunciation to be easy might find chinese to be easier to learn, people who are alright with grammar but have difficulty with pronunciation might want to study japanese, etc. there's no such thing as an objective measure of what languages are 'harder' or 'easier' than any others.

[bambieyes]

they are all hard for an european like me 

[Queen's Mine]

 

 

“Shi and the Ten Stone Lionsâ€

 

 

Chinese

Pinyin

Translation

 

æ–½æ°é£Ÿç…å²

shÄ« shì shí shÄ« shÇ

Story of Shi Eating the Lions

 

石室詩士施æ°,

shí shì shī shì shī shì,

A poet named Shi lived in a stone room,

 

å—œç…, 誓食åç….

shì shī, shì shí shí shī.

fond of lions, he swore that he would eat ten lions.

 

æ°æ™‚時é©å¸‚視ç….

shì shí shí shì shì shì shī.

He constantly went to the market to look for ten lions.

 

å時, é©åç…é©å¸‚.

shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì.

At ten o'clock, ten lions came to the market

 

是時,é©æ–½æ°é©æ˜¯å¸‚.

shì shí, shì shī shì shì shì shì.

and Shi went to the market.

 

æ°è¦–是åç…,æƒçŸ¢å‹¢,

shì shì shì shí shÄ«, shì shÇ shì,

Looking at the ten lions, he relied on his arrows

 

使是åç…é€ä¸–.

shÇ shì shí shÄ« shì shì.

to cause the ten lions to pass away.

 

æ°æ‹¾æ˜¯åç…å±,é©çŸ³å®¤.

shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shí shì.

Shi picked up the corpses of the ten lions and took them to his stone room.

 

石室濕,æ°ä½¿ä¾æ‹­çŸ³å®¤.

shí shì shÄ«, shì shÇ shì shì shí shì.

The stone room was damp. Shi ordered a servant to wipe the stone room.

 

石室拭,æ°å§‹è©¦é£Ÿåç…å±.

shí shì shì, shì shÇ shì shí shí shÄ« shÄ«.

As the stone den was being wiped, Shi began to try to eat the meat of the ten lions.

 

食時, 始識åç…å±,

shí shí, shÇ shì shì shí shÄ« shÄ«,

At the time of the meal, he began to realize that the ten lion corpses

 

實å石ç…å±.

shí shí shí shī shī.

were in fact were ten stone lions.

 

試釋是事.

shì shì shì shì

Try to explain this matter.

 

 

http://onehallyu.com/topic/344252-the-reason-why-chinese-is-the-hardest-language-in-universe/

[yeokdae]

I've heard how Chinese is one of the hardest languages to learn along with Dutch.

 

What's a tonal languge?

 

certain words may "sound" the same, but have different meanings depends on how they are pronounced.

 

I'm making this example up because I don't actually speak Chinese (or any other tonal languages) but think of it like this: in a language the sound "fa" could mean 4 different things. Saying "fa"in a high pitch could mean "book", saving "fa" in a low pitch could mean "river", saving it in starting low and ending high could mean "uncle" and starting high ending low could mean "rain". Chinese is even more complicated because I'm told there are also words that change meaning depending on how long you hold them when you say them and words where the pitch changes 3 times.

 

this is why Chinese music videos have subtitles. because the tones aren't followed when singing (in most music genres),

[kpopisnotmylife]

Chinese because it's a tonal language