Chinese : no prepositions , no tenses , no articles Also Chinese : every word has 5 different meanings and pronunciations

As a native Chinese speaker, I think your explanation makes a lot of sense. Great job!

Thank you for posting this video. As a native Chinese speaker, I've always complained about the complexity of English when it comes to naming. One of the biggest challenges for me: it is almost impossible for me to understand 100% what my family doctor is trying to tell me, as I get lost in the complex terms used. Most of the illnesses or conditions have specific names and to me they are not descriptive. For example, diabetes, which is actually called "sugary-urine disease". Leukaemia, which is called "white-blood cell illness" in Chinese. I had so much hard time when just trying to fill in the in-take form when I first registered with a clinic. Another strange thing I can think of is in geometry/math. In english, there are "triangle, square, pentagon, hexagon, heptagon, ...", in Chinese, there are “three-sided shape, four-sided shape, five-sided shape, six-sided shape, seven-sided shape, ...". You get the idea. The same goes for "months" and "days in a week" (January as opposed to Month One, Monday as opposed to Week Day One). To me, the Chinese language system is more like a building block system: you learn the basic, and once familiarized, you can understand and create new elements easily as all you need is just the foundation (we have 3500 common characters and these are all you need for almost everything including in academic studies). English, even though it does have some "building blocks", to fully master it requires a way larger vocabulary. Also the sentence structure in English makes it very difficult for one to follow when it comes to describing complex ideas. Take most of the legal documents as examples (i.e. contracts). However, I can see why learning Chinese is hard for beginners, as all of the elements are very foreign for a Latin based language user. To associate a pronunciation with a character could present quite a bit challenge to start. English, on the other hand, how it spells is how it sounds (usually), creating a way smaller barrier for beginners.

It depends on what proficiency level you are talking about. Chinese is a fairly easy language to pick up if you just want to be able to communicate in your daily lives, certainly a lot easier than, say, Russian or Polish, either of which easily puts the Germanic and Romance languages to shame on difficulty. Mastering Chinese, on the other hand, is very difficult. The differences in the expressiveness of somebody proficient in Chinese and somebody highly proficient in Chinese are night and day, whether you are talking about casual conversations, written vernacular works, or just your garden variety League of Legend shoutcasts.

Chinese haven't created a new word for a few hundreds years .but still keep up with the development of science and technology of the world ..no mater what is happening or discovering in the scientific field .Chinese characters can name it and express it .

I'm not sure if Chinese is the hardest to learn, but sure Chinese character is beautiful.

Thank you for the awesome video! From my experience - I am a native Serbian speaker, I've been learning English since the 3rd grade in elementary school, so I'm pretty much fluent in it, and I learned Russian in middle and high school. I am interested in Easter Asian cultures, especially in the traditional aspect, and about a year and a half ago, I decided to start learning the Korean language. Korean used Chinese characters in writing until 1446., and many things in Korean language take roots from Chinese. I've come to realize that it would be helpful to learn Chinese as well, because the meaning of the words in Korean is defined or explained well by 한자 or 汉字 - the Chinese characters. Not only Korean, but some other Asian languages are based on Chinese. Learning more about Eastern languages, now I see that they are much more logical and effective than the other languages that I speak. It's just that we're not familiar enough with the characters and that's why it seems so difficult, but actually it is very simple.

I studied French for a decade and also lived in France for 2 years and I still feel like my Chinese is better than my French after 3 years of studying

Chinese：火车 汽车 自行车 摩托车 English ：Train car bicycle motorcycle

I think this really comes down to how close your language is to Chinese. I, for example, am from Vietnam, my only mother tongue is Vietnamese and I’ve been learning English for roughly 10 years now and Chinese for more than 1 year. To me, English is definitely the harder one since its grammar and vocabulary are completely foreign, it took me like 5-6 years to be able to hold a normal conversation and to be able to listen and understand what others are speaking. On the hand, Chinese and Vietnam share deep roots: most of Vietnamese vocabulary came from Chinese, our language has 6 tones, our pronunciation bears similarities to Chinese dialects like Minnan and Cantonese and even Mandarin. Not only that, our grammar structures are basically the same and also idiom (成语) has some that are the same. Right now I can understand to a certain extant what a Chinese person is saying after just more than 1 years, a lot faster than my English learning experience

This was a great video for a 7 minute break from class preparation. You just found a new subscriber! I've been living in Taiwan for one year and eight months and China for two years. Your Chinese is pretty good.

Chinese is more logical, for expressing the same meaning, it is the shortest in length. The hard part is mainly the reading and writing For daily speaking is not as difficult if you are not too bad at tones.

Is Mandarin Chinese the hardest language to learn? *Laughs in Cantonese*

I can agree so much with this video. The language itself makes so much sense, but yet the writing is so complex.

this is such a quality video from you. It covers lots of linguistic knowledge but easy to understand. Well done.

Very interesting and informative stuff. Keep it up.

Great perspective, thanks for such inspiring videos! I never considered that I could visit China to study Mandarin and explore but you've really opened my eyes to this possibility. I actually plan to visit and study in Chengdu next month! Wish me luck!

as italian i can say: learning english was "ok" but a mess at the same time. The biggest obstacle was definitely the inconsistency, especially phonetically speaking. It sometimes felt as if every word had a rule of its own. Very frustrating. Now I'm learning chinese and i realize what it means to take the first steps in a language that has no roots in common with yours. i've always admired all those people who once arrived in europe learnt to speak our difficult languages ​​so well, now i admire them even more Thanks for the video, very helpful

Very informative! Thanks for your video!

Great video! Thumbs up always mate.

I started learning Chinese 2 years ago as an adult student at my local university, For the first year I would have said Chinese is very hard to grasp but once you start to get your head around the grammar and how they construct words it does become a lot easier and more enjoyable. Will be travelling in China for 4 weeks starting next week and hopefully will continue to grow my skills while there. As always, great video.

I like your videos. I've never been to China, but I studied Chinese in the states for 2 years and then in Taiwan for 2 more years. I don't think Chinese is terribly difficult, but it does have a steep learning curve. In my opinion, the hardest thing about Chinese is writing (by hand) and reading. I learned traditional Chinese and at first it was hard, but after a while you just get used to it and it becomes second nature. The grammar is pretty easy especially when talking colloquially. Writing essays is a bit more complex as well as remembering 成語 and how to use them.

This is great content. Would love to travel and study like this.

Great vid dude.. makes perfect sense when you break it down like that

Thank you for thinking outside the box in analysing the two languages！As a native Chinese speaker and an English learner，I can’t agree with you more，but I think writing skills is very hard in both the languages，especially writing a good essay🤣🤣

Dude. This is probably the best video I’ve ever seen about explaining Mandarin. I totally agree about the conjugation. It makes it so easy to understand. But what’s the hardest thing are the tones. If you don’t get the tones right It is a completely different word.

Can’t agree more with what you said in the video and actually it is nice to see the way you explained about learning the two languages from a different perspective. And I am really impressed with your spoken Chinese , very impressed.

Very cool comparison! Wish you enjoy the process of learning Chinese and also the wonderful scenery in Yangshuo!

Kev, make more vids about chinese and your progress in chinese, like the one where you were selling fish on the street.

I like your video. Actually I am learning Chinese currently. On my observation Chinese is really very logical and much simple. It is difficult to remember hieroglyphs, but once you did that, you can see how much simple is reading and speaking process comparing to English. First of all, when you read in Chinese the text takes much less space on paper than English does. So it takes much less time to perceive ideas. It is so comfortable and once you become able to read some basic sentences in Chinese, you can understand why China does not refuse hieroglyphs and does not change them by pinyin. It is ridicules in the eyes of any Chinese person. And the pleasure of reading in Chinese can become a motivation to continue learning.

nice vid，man，keep up！

Very good vid !

Spoken Chinese is simple, tough part is the reading one and the written one. Bcz what you hear is disconnected with what you see.

As a non-native advanced English speaker and beginner Chinese Speaker.... I had say both have their difficulties. English - Grammar Chinese - Tones

Since I’m studying chinese myself for 2 years now, it’s really nice to see more footage spoken in Chinese. Please make more content spoken in Chinese

excellent video! thanks for sharing it! Am on my 5th month of learning Mandarin all by myself, and still very motivated to continue learning it until I become fluent. cheers!

I started learning mandarin on duolingo like 2 weeks ago and at first I was stressin, then I saw 是 and didnt have to remember 5 different forms of it and my heart was at ease.

Also i feel like chinese people sometimes might seem rude to foreigners when they try speak the language is because chinese is just so direct. When you translate something from chinese to english the meaning is so direct. LOL

Appreciate this video man. I am learning Chinese now and will be in China for in a couple weeks.

i knew it ! it's so much easier when you explain it !!

I agree with that girl who said Japanese... it's a combination of the complex characters of traditional chinese (plus two more alphabets) and the ridiculous grammar of english... :'(

I've been learning Mandarin and Russian for about a month and a half. I've been finding Mandarin much easier than Russian, and much easier than English also. Mandarin has almost no grammar to learn, you need to basically learn the character and it's simple repetition. The pronunciation is hard, tho, because of the entonations... Listening not as hard as speaking because you can assume the words based on context (was it mà or má? you can assume based on the other words). Overall I think Russian is the hardest language I've had contact with (a combination of different alphabet and very complex grammar).

Very good video. I was impressed.

Really insightful video! Great job. Greetings from the UK 👍

One of the great advantages of Chinese is that you don't have to think through the language. As long as everyone knows Chinese characters, you can communicate literally

Nice video. Of course the answer to this question always starts with which language family is native to the learner? It's easier for a Portuguese speaker to learn another romance language like Italian compared to something like Russian, while a Serbian would have little challenge with Russian grammar because their word endings decline in a similar way. Generally, the farther back your respective language families diverge in the language tree, the more foreign you'll find the grammar, syntax and pronunciation.

Great great video sir!!!

Thanks buddy, the video kind of changed my misconsumptions and opened my heart not HATE the Chinese language as before.

IMO there are only two aspects of the Chinese language that are difficult, one is the writing, the other is those tones. However, nowadays you hardly need to write anything because of phones and laptops. But the tones are the real reason why Chinese is hard. Correct phonetics but wrong tones cause much more confusion than the other way round.

Your point about English pronunciation/spelling relation is true, especially the 'ough' nonsense. Your point about the tenses is wrong however, because abstract articulated time allows for synchronisation to a far greater extent, which allowed for GMT, timezone standardisation etc. Chinese is easier to learn grammatically but not pronunciation or contextually. The characters are like logic pieces which gives it an air of simplicity, but in actual usage theres a ton of ambiguity making using the language significantly more difficult in different circumstances imo.

Love the insight that only someone deep into a field sees.

Thanks it really motivated me to keep going with my Chinese study 😩👍

I actually got a Chinese tutor a few months ago and my wife says she can actually understand “some” of my Mandarin. I suppose that’s an improvement, although I have a long way to go before I can eavesdrop on people on the metro.

Grammatically I think Chinese is very similar to English, far more in common than most people thinks.

Occasionally found this video, Good job! Rose:)

Very educational video. Good job 😀😀👍👍

As a german i need to say that they should try to learn german. I mean we have 6 different articles (der, die, das, ein, eine, einen) only in nominative which have nothing to do with the meaning of the word (so you simply need to memorise it) Finnish and Icelandic are even more difficult English is nothing compared to that^^

I have been saying this all along - Chinese makes so much sense. Colloquial, as well as speaking Chinese in daily conversation is something that, at least in my opinion, can be taught, and learned fairly quickly. As long as you're exposed by the language quite often, for example by living in China. However, mastering Chinese is truly what makes it such a complex language, since there are endless of characters and different structures to literature, as in news articles, poems, novels etc. As well as being able to always apply the suitable word in all contexts which takes again; serious amount of skill.

Solid video dude

Love your channel

I’d say Slavic languages, like Russian.. And Chinese would be the hardest. Chinese because it is tonal, and if you produce an incorrect sound it could mean something else no one will understand you. Tones are very difficult, my tongue is too stiff haha

Here in Mexico, where we try to help those folks who want to learn English, we always hear folks complain about how unnecessarily hard English can be. It is true! For me, I have a double threat. I live in the Yucatan, and there are a lot of Mayans here some that only speak Mayan. I am constantly told that Mayan is much easier than Spanish. Please let me get Spanish down better before I attempt Mayan. Oh, BTW, if you visit neighboring Belize, English is everywhere, even the Mayans that live there speak English, no Spanish and even very little Mayan.

Good job man!

Fascinating.... and you're very engaging with your explanation. You'd make a great teacher. Now, I'm interested in the Chinese language

Bearing in mind that class, classroom, classmate in English all have one thing in common, namely "class", but its Chinese equivalent 班、教室、同学 does not.

As Japanese Chinese is one of the easiest languages to learn. We can read and understand about 70-80 percent Chinese without learning. The most challenging part for Japanese is indeed pronunciation. Sometimes it sounds almost the same but sometimes completely different which makes it complex for us.

Wow good explanation!

This is a really interesting video. I never thought about the English language as being a hard one to learn. Just staring to dive into learning Mandarin!!

Plain and simple! Im learning chinese right now.Thank you so much. As Sapnish spoken native I should say... Chinese people also find it difficult to deal with our "isuues" ;-)

I think Mandarin is easy to learn. I lived with a non- English speaking Chinese couple in the U.S. for 2 years. Every day I listened to their conversation. I became fluent after 2 years just by listening and then speaking. Chinese characters are combinations of radicals in different arrangements. The grammar is really simple. Unlike English, Chinese has no tenses, no conjugation, no plurals, no genders. Even the tones aren't difficult.

great infos... you took a lot of my fear and gave me a lot of interest in study mandarin

Huge inspiration, will move to Beijing in the spring and will certainly watch through your content for tips. I'm between hkd lv 3 and 4, but aim at 5! ☀️😊

I‘ve been learning Chinese through an english speaking persoective, but I‘m from Switzerland. And it made me realize how unnecessarily difficult German actually is. I mean we have a gender for every single object! Tell me that‘s not harder to memorize than chinese characters 😂

To be fair, every language has certain things more difficult than others and some things easier than others. I grow up with both Chinese and English, for me English is easier to read and write but Chinese is simpler in concept, so I totally agree with you, Chinese sentence structures make a lot more sense, though at times I got too influenced by English and got mixed up and vice versa. In department of pronunciation, Mandarin Chinese comes more natural to me; English isn't that bad but I get entangled at times, that's when I try to speak with the proper pronunciation, all my life, I've been speaking an sinicized, reduced version of English. 😅 I don't think it's fair to say what language is more difficult or easier, there will always be biased. Our minds are wired differently. It's just like trying to compared a string instrument to a blown woodwind instrument.

Fascinating. I've always noticed the irregularities in English. I didn't know any of this about Chinese. It may be hard to learn for a non-native but just from what you described it makes more sense than English.

Love ur video

English is extremely irregular. Chinese is very straightforward. So I think English is harder. I have no idea how non-native speakers even learn this language.

For daily communication use it will be very easy.But for creating classical literature like poetry you probably need a master or doctor degree in classical literature.

This completely changed my perspective! 😳

I feel so educated after this Vedio . Thanks for being articulate

Hello from Russia duude! Nice to see foreigners learn Mandarin

ask a non-native who has learnt both. i tell you something english is harder than chinese in terms of speaking, the sentence order etc . i was able to carry a descent conversation within a year of learning chinese, that wasnt the case in english.

wow that's an interesting comparison!

I like your way to interact with local people, so approachable and friendly

no,definitely not,Chinese grammar is like so easy,the hard parts are writing and spelling

from the 8 languages i know chinese was 1 of the easiest. the only hard part was the writing. the hardest language for me was korean or french

Interesting perspective !!!

do appreciate your accent and its enjoyable to listen to you speaking English. also may your Chinese make a faster improvement.

Arabic is definitly one of the hardest, you can learn alphabets they're easy but the writing,the pronunciation has thousands of rules

Is this video made because of Omeida Chinese Academy? They should give you VIP card..unlimited! But it is a good video, though, as all others you've made so far. :)

Hello from Rio dr Janeiro/Brazil. What a encouragment. You make it sound so easy. Wonderful explanation.

Verb tenses and conjugations are really important to me, they add complexity to the language and make it more precise

German has the most logical and precise number/math language system I've ever come across.

So, basically: Yes, but actually no

Thanks for posting this #respect

Putting ones self in the right conditions to learn Chinese helps a lot, all channels within an environment supporting your subject of learning, speeds up the process much faster. 📚✏️📖

Every time I talk about "he", "she", I'm so nervous....

2:16 "幺" means the youngest.

Great video! I think you make a great point that difficulty of a language is all relative pending on where you are from. As one learning Mandarin, I find the grammar (lack of conjugations and tenses) to be much easier than English. Chinese is so much more logical. An easy example is how “plumber” is “水工” which literally translates into “water worker.” Chinese is full of logical translations like that.

I'm a non-native English speaker and have learned basic Chinese in a country where English is the second official language. For me, English was incredibly difficult at first, and vast majority non-native English speakers struggled hard with it. It took us around 8-9 years to be comfortable with writing English essays. Chinese was straightforward to learn at the get-go but things got complicated quick as we were introduced to more Chinese words and their pronunciations, it really tested my memory, and I did not get the chance to resume learning it beyond the basics. For me, perhaps both English and Chinese are equally complex and take 10 years of practice to be proficient.