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China Elevator Stories
What is The Hardest Part Of Learning Chinese?
I reveal what I consider to be the biggest challenge when studying Chinese.
05/11/2013
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
What’s the hardest part of learning Chinese for someone whose mother tongue is German?
Having graduated with a degree in Chinese studies and lived in China for more than two years, I consider myself fluent in Mandarin Chinese.
Oddly, the part of learning Chinese I consider the biggest challenge is not something I often hear others complain about when discussing mastering the language.
Many people believe the hardest part of learning Chinese is the characters. Chinese characters are beautiful, with each one containing a lot of meaning. They require effort and dedication to learn and practice, but they are not as hard to master as people who haven’t studied Chinese might assume.
The tones can be challenging, but they are also not the hardest part. While they can be difficult to remember, and I’m sure I don’t always get them right, they are manageable if you listen closely to the melody of the language and work on memorizing them from the start.
What about Chinese grammar? People often say it doesn’t exist. I would argue that it does, but it’s structured very differently from German grammar, which might make it less recognizable as grammar.
So, what do I consider the most difficult part of learning Chinese? I think the hardest part is figuring out what people mean when they use abbreviated words.
Let me explain.
Take the term “mother tongue” as an example. In Chinese, the word for mother is 母亲, and the word for language is 语言. Together, they form the term “mother tongue” (literally “mother language”), which is similar to the German word Muttersprache. However, in Chinese, you wouldn’t say 母亲语言. Instead, an abbreviated form is used, combining the first characters of each word: 母亲 + 语言 becomes 母语. It’s like saying “mo-to” instead of “mother tongue” in English.
If you see the Chinese abbreviation in writing, it might not be as challenging, but if you only know the words for “mother” and “language,” you might not immediately understand that 母语 means “mother tongue.” This is a simple example, but there are more complex ones.
It’s not always the first characters that are combined. For example, the word for “school uniform” is 校服, which combines the first character of 学校 (school) with the second character of 衣服 (clothes).
Sometimes, when a two-character word is combined with a three-character word, they might take the second character of the first word and the second character of the second word to form a new word. For example, “central television” (中央 + 电视台) becomes 央视. Alternatively, they might take the first character of the first word and the first and third characters of the second word, depending on the combination.
Chinese has a limited number of syllables, which can make it harder to understand what an abbreviated word represents. And there are plenty of these abbreviations in Chinese, which can be a real challenge for learners.
German is a language known for long compound words, while Chinese takes the opposite approach with concise abbreviations.
However, there’s a positive side to this: these abbreviations are fixed and standardized. You can’t mix and match them freely. Once you know that 母语 means “mother tongue,” you can memorize it and use it confidently in the future.
What did you struggle with most when you learned Chinese?