Greek Might Be Easier Than Chinese

You know that phrase, "It is all Greek to me!" Currently, I feel like Greek might be easier than learning Chinese. I think people arleady know that Chinese is difficult but let me break it down for you as to why.

First, there is no alphabet in Chinese to equal phonetic sounds like in English (a=ah, b=buh). Instead, each character is equal to a word and there are over 50,000! Well, that includes ancient Chinese characters. In the common Chinese language there are about 3,500 characters (Saenz Garza, Jose de le Luz). When I first started learning Chinese I figured, "Why bother learning to read. It is too complicated anyway." So I only learned to speak and listen in Chinese. That does not get you far when you have a menu or a map in front of you. Needless to say, I am learning to read the characters now.
If you translate to Chinese characters you will get two options. The first option being Chinese Traditional and the second being Chinese Simplified. I use simplified and have not really come into any problems with it.

Second, you actually need two alphabets to write in Chinese. Have you ever looked at a keyboard and thought, "How do people who speak Asian languages type?" The answer is that they phonetically spell the words out using the English alphabet! So if I want to type the character for thank you in Chinese I have to type out how they are phonetically said in English on my keyboard xie xie.

Third, let us say you have all the characters down and you know how to type them in phonetically in your keyboard, you are probably all set right? NO. WRONG. Each vowel in Chinese has 8 different pronounciations. The perfect example is the word bei in Chinese.
Said with a flat e it means cup.
Said with a scooping sound it means 100.
Said with an upwards sound it means white.
Said with an open mouth sound means eight.
So if I say, "I would like a cup of water," it could also sound like, "I would like 8 water."
Usually native speakers can get your meaning by context.

Fourth, China is a big country which means many accents and dialects. The two foreign teachers I was hired with both are fluent in Chinese but when we came to Jaixing they were stumped. They found they could only understand 50% of what people were saying. The reason was that the dialect in the area was different than "standard" Chinese (AKA Beijing Chinese). So what a Jiaxing person says as street, versus what a Hong Kong person calls street, versus what a Tibet person calls street can be very different.
In China there are two different Chinese languages too. Mandarin and Cantonese. Cantonese is for southern speaking regions but everyone else uses Mandarin. And you thought British English and American English were different!

What I am doing to learn Chinese is first using the app Chinese Skill. I talked about it before but it is free and very useful. The second app I use is Duo Lingo which just came out with free Chinese. Duo Lingo has been teaching me how to read the characters. When I am around my bilingual friends I practice my Chinese and they correct me. It an be frustrating getting a 100 on my app and then being corrected by my friends but if it helps me speak, then that is fine.
I know there are schools that teach Chinese to foreigners in my area but I have been hesitant to sign up for a few reasons. First, I am afraid of being scammed. The second reason is that I would have to commute there which takes time and money. Third, I feel like learning on my own has been going okay. If it really comes down to it, I may sign up.

Chinese can be difficult but I found myself comparing it to English complexities as well. In English, we have long and short sounds for vowels, silent letters, and words that are borrowed from French, Scandanavian, and Greek. When I teach English to my adults they ask why ch changes from "chuh" like in chocolate to "kuh" like in choir and I tell them that we stole the word. When they asked the rule I felt bad for saying, "It is just kind of a know when it is a Greek word rule" and their faces fell. We have words that are different based on area too like Australia, Britain, and America and even in America we have the Georgia, Boston, and Californian accents. I tell them the standard accent is the Midwest accent because that is what news casters study and they seemed okay with that.

Learning any new language is hard but I think we can all agree, Spanish is pretty easy and French sucks. Honestly, French has so many silent letters it boggles my mind.

                  Saenz Garza, Jose de la Luz. How Many Chinese Characters Are There? 2018. 28 January 2018.