Friday, June 4, 2004
Learning Mandarin is hard for native English speakers
Jacob Sullum writes about how confusing it is for him to learn Mandarin. I can sympathize. I've been having a hard time learning Spanish this year, and it's supposedly the easiest language for English speakers to learn. From Sullum's experience described here, I'd go nuts trying to learn Mandarin.
The word ma, for instance, can mean "hemp," "scold," "horse," or "mother," depending upon whether your voice goes up, goes down, goes up and down, or remains steady. To make matters worse, the marks that signify tones in pinyin ordinarily indicate pronunciation: A flat line, for example, means a flat, high tone, not a long vowel.Link
posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:21:29 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments
