The Top 5 Untrue Myths About Learning Mandarin

By Casey Burridge from Talking Mandarin

I know for a fact that there are a lot of people that want to learn Mandarin but never start due to sheer intimidation of tackling the so-called by many “hardest language in the world.”

There is a huge gap between most people’s perception of the Mandarin language and what it’s actually like and so there exists a wealth of terrible information out there about learning Mandarin. I’m talking stuff that will make you NOT want to learn the language. And that’s a shame!

An example of this is the Foreign Service institute classifying Mandarin Chinese as a category 5 language – a language which is exceptionally difficult for native English speakers. They say it takes approximately 2200 hours to reach general proficiency in speaking and reading.

That means you would have to study for three hours a day, every day for just over 2 years to achieve a general proficiency. I mean, that’s pretty bleak, isn’t it?

And so,

After some research of my own, I’ve come up with the top 5 myths about learning Mandarin that just aren’t true!

Let’s explore each myth in depth.

1. You have to go to a Chinese speaking country to learn the language

For a long time, there has existed this idea that you have to go to the country where a language is spoken in order to learn that language to a reasonable level.

While I agree that it can be easier to learn a language in the country where it’s spoken, it’s been proved that it is not essential to go to the country to attain a high level of proficiency.

These days the internet provides us with a way to virtually immerse ourselves in a language without ever needing to leave our house!

With tools such as Skype and italki (a platform which allows language learners to get one-on-one lessons from native speakers), face-to-face (through webcams) exchanges with language teachers and native speakers are at your fingertips.

iTalki CEO Kevin Chen says “technology is not only offering the personalization but is encouraging users to take a more active approach to their learning. "There is a sense from [italki] students that they have to take responsibility for their own education," he says. "More and more students are trying non-traditional methods to educate themselves.”

You may argue that due to the challenging nature of learning Mandarin Chinese, virtual immersion may not work as well.

However, I beg to differ.

The difficulty with virtual immersion is not that it’s virtual but that it’s difficult to maintain. If you were in China or Taiwan, you wouldn’t have a choice about using Chinese to communicate or having to listen to people speaking Chinese while out.

But at home, it’s easy to break out of immersion and watch your favorite American Netflix series.

The key is to stay motivated.

You don’t need to immerse yourself in Chinese 12 hours a day, but you can integrate the language into your life in such a way that you’re getting a few hours of exposure to Chinese every single day.

For example: find Chinese shows to watch, change your Facebook language to Chinese, schedule regular chats with an italki tutor, etc.

Online learning is the way of the future, and there is no doubt about it. Did you know that there are more people studying languages on DuoLingo (a popular language learning app) than in the entire United States public school system?

2. Chinese is one of the hardest languages in the world

Let me just say that Chinese is far from the hardest language in the world. The perceived difficulty of Chinese comes from comparing it to European languages like English, Spanish or French. And yes, when you compare it to these languages, it’s very different!

However, different does not always mean difficult.

From the outset, Chinese looks very intimidating. All those funny symbols, those crazy tones. I get it. But trust me, all it takes is a bit of exploration to find out that learning conversational Mandarin is just as easy as learning conversational French or Spanish.

To back this up, the number of foreigners learning Chinese as a second language is increasing all over the world, and as of 2014, there were over 480 Confucius Institutes set up in various countries around the world. For those who don’t know, the Confucius Institute is a non-profit, educational organization which is affiliated with the Ministry of Education in China. It aims to promote Chinese language and culture.

There are also more and more schools in the US offering Chinese programs. In fact, from 2013 to 2015 there was a 100% increase in the number of such programs. In 2015, former US president Barack Obama announced the ‘1 million strong’ initiative – which aimed to have 1 million people around America studying Chinese by 2020!

Robert Davis, director of the Chinese language program in Chicago’s public school system, goes so far as to claim that ‘Chinese is the new English.’

Recently, in South Africa, Mandarin Chinese was even incorporated into the country’s national teaching curriculum.

And even in the UK, a new ‘Mandarin Excellency’ program has been implemented to see at least 5,000 young people achieve fluency in Mandarin by 2020.

The growing interest in Chinese globally contributes to the argument that Chinese can’t be one of the hardest languages in the world! In fact, learning Mandarin is becoming more and more mainstream!

Forget what you’ve been told about the immense difficulty of the Chinese language because the truth is that a lot of foreigners have learned Chinese to a high level. One of the teachers at a school I worked at in Beijing had learned to speak Mandarin in only six months.

Need more convincing? Have a look at Benny Lewis, Moses Mcormick, and Steve Kaufman – all of whom learned to speak Mandarin in a relatively short period of time.

On the other hand, if your goal is to master Chinese and speak with native-like fluency, that is going to take a long time. But achieving that kind of level in any language is going to take just as long! For most people, their goal isn’t to achieve mastery in Chinese anyway.

So then, why are there these two differing beliefs? Why do some people claim Chinese to be one of the hardest language in the world and others (like myself) claim that it isn’t?

I strongly believe a lot of it has to do with accessibility and a difference in mindset.

Many young people nowadays recognize the importance of China. Thanks to initiatives like the Confucius Institute and various government-funded bursary programs for studying in China, people are excited to study Chinese. And once they actually BEGIN, they realize it’s not as difficult as they once perceived.

3. Chinese tones are too difficult to master

A lot of the perceived difficulty around Chinese tones comes from the way they are traditionally taught.

Let me illustrate this with an anecdote from when I started learning Chinese.

I had Just arrived in Beijing, keen to start learning Mandarin and excited to begin classes! The agency that I worked for at the time had arranged some Chinese lessons for me and some other ‘fresh off the boat’ foreign teachers.

Our first lessons were on ‘Pinyin and tones.’ The entire lesson consisted of the teacher standing at the front of the classroom, writing words in pinyin on the blackboard (like má, yǔ, shū, yào, etc.) and drilling us on pronunciation.

She would say the word, and we would repeat. I hadn’t learned a single useful thing by the end of the lesson, and even after all those pronunciation drills I still felt myself struggling to wrap my head around the different tones.

I never went back to her class.

Anyway, my point is that after an hour of practicing tones and failing miserably, I too thought Chinese tones were difficult.

Following the correct approach, however, makes learning tones a lot easier.

Trying to get students to pronounce the tones correctly right from the beginning is unrealistic.

You need to spend time listening to the language and developing an ear for the tones before you can even attempt to pronounce them correctly. It’s quite logical really. It’s like trying to perform heart surgery on your first day of medical school – it just isn’t going to happen.

Also, learning to pronounce single tones in isolation is not only boring but can lead you to making mistakes when you try to say whole sentences (this is because tones often change slightly when preceded by certain other tones).

So, to remedy this, practice pronouncing tone combinations and full sentences instead!

4. You have to learn to read and write Hanzi to be fluent in Chinese

Chinese is an interesting language in the sense that being able to read and write the language are not skills that you will acquire naturally throughout your studies.

A lot of the claims that Chinese is one of the hardest languages in the world also arise from the difficulty of the Chinese writing system.

According to the Great Dictionary of Chinese Characters (汉语大字典), there are more than 50,000 Hanzi– a staggeringly large amount! However, knowing around 3000 (this number is debatable) is sufficient for reading almost any Chinese text.

Many European languages share the same alphabet and learning to read and write them is relatively easy.

With Chinese, this isn’t the case.

Being able to read Chinese requires you to learn around 3000 Hanzi and being able to write is a completely separate skill that takes a lot of time to develop.

3000 is still a huge number, and many people are scared when they hear this. What people don’t consider, however, is that Hanzi need not be learned right away.

Where many people come unstuck is trying to learn to read and write Hanzi from the beginning, and when they realize the enormity of the task at hand, they give up on their studies altogether and claim that Chinese is too complicated.

Polyglot and Mandarin Chinese interpreter Vladimir Skultety divulges that one of the techniques he used to learn Mandarin to advanced fluency was to learn things in the correct order.

This order being learning to understand first, then learning to speak, then learning to read and lastly learning to write.

However, the good news is that you don’t need to be able to read and write Hanzi to speak fluent Chinese anyway. Pinyin provides us with a way to read Chinese fairly effortlessly and being able to hand-write Hanzi is really not an essential skill.

In fact, most people who learn to hand write Chinese do it because they enjoy it, not because they think it will improve their command of the language.

5. The Chinese language has very little grammar

You have probably noticed that there are a lot of sources online that claim ‘the Chinese language has no grammar’. Unfortunately, this is quite far from the truth.

Chinese does have grammar.

The reason why many people say it doesn’t is that a lot of the grammatical features present in English and other European languages don’t exist in Chinese.

When I say ‘grammatical features’ what I am referring to is the following: gender, cases, tenses, verb conjugations and plural forms of nouns. Chinese has absolutely none of these!

Cool, right?

Well, yeah, it is! But don’t be fooled. Chinese grammar is actually quite vast and quite challenging.

The deeper you delve into the Chinese language; the more grammar plays a role. You see, it’s quite reasonable to be able to speak basic, conversational Chinese without having studied much grammar because, at an elementary level, you don’t need a lot of grammar to communicate.

Let’s look at some basic Chinese grammar

1. Word Order

For simple cases, the word order in Chinese is the same as that of English, i.e., subject-verb-object.

Examples:

• - 他在家 – He is at home
• - 她会说中文 – She can speak Chinese.
• - 他喝咖啡 – He drinks coffee.

2. Questions

The simplest way to form a question in Chinese is to add ‘吗’ (ma) to the end of a statement.

Examples:

• - 他在家吗？ - Is he at home?
• - 她会说中文吗？ - Can she speak Chinese?
• - 你喝咖啡吗？- Do you drink coffee?

3. Possession

In Chinese, possession is indicated with the particle ‘的’ (de).

Examples:

• - 这是我的 – This is mine.
• - 他的杯子 – his cup
• - 你的电脑 – your computer

Possession can also be indicated with the word ‘有’ (have) – similar to how it is used in English.

• - 我有手机 – I have a cell phone.
• - 他有两本书 – He has two books.

4. Negative

The negative is formed by putting the word ‘不’ (bu) before verbs and adjectives.

Examples:

• - 我不喜欢这个 – I don’t like this.
• - 我不知道 – I don’t know.
• - 他不想去 – He doesn’t want to go.

As you get more advanced, you’ll come to realize that the grammar that you thought was all you needed is just the tip of the iceberg.

Let’s look at some slightly more difficult aspects of Chinese grammar

1. Using the particle ‘了’ (le)

The correct usage of ‘le’ is a notoriously difficult thing to master in Chinese.

The Chinese grammar wiki has this to say about ‘le’ – ‘Unfortunately, learning to use 了 (le) is not a matter of following a few simple rules. It's a matter of learning many, many individual patterns and rules for using 了, and over time, gradually getting a feel for its usage.’ - The Chinese grammar wiki

Some of the many uses of ‘了’ are as follows:

• - Indicating completion with 完 + 了
• - Expressing a completed action with verb + 了
• - Expressing ‘now’ with situation + 了
• - Expressing ‘stop doing…’ with 别 + 了

Interested to see more? This page provides a great overview of the different uses of ‘le.’

2. Using the particle 把 (Bǎ)

The particle ‘把’ is used to manipulate objects. In Chinese, the ‘把 structure’ is often a difficult one for learners to wrap their heads around because it often doesn’t need to be used. Having said that, it’s very commonly used in spoken Chinese and having a good grasp of how to use ‘把’ will allow your speech to be more natural and understandable.

3. Words with similar meanings/functions

For example ‘一定’ (yīdìng), ‘肯定’ (kěndìng) and ‘确定’ (quèdìng).

Still not convinced that Chinese has grammar?

Check out the previously mentioned ‘Chinese grammar wiki,’ created by Allset Learning.

Currently, the wiki contains over 1,930 articles on Chinese grammar, and it’s STILL GROWING!

Conclusion

So, there you have it. The top 5 myths about learning Mandarin that just aren’t true! With all of this in the back of your mind, you can begin to tackle the Chinese language with confidence.

Remember, virtual immersion can work just as well as real immersion if you’re committed!

Chinese tones aren’t as hard as they seem and if you’ve been struggling to comprehend them, it’s likely due to the way they were taught to you.

Being able to read and write Hanzi is an amazingly impressive skill to have, but one that is not essential for fluency in the Chinese language. If you don’t enjoy writing Hanzi, then don’t. You can always come back to these Chinese characters at a later stage once your other skills have improved.

Lastly, while it may seem like the Chinese language is devoid of grammar, it isn’t. Don’t let this fact stress you out, just keep it in the back of your mind that at some point, studying the grammar is going to become essential.

What is still stopping you from starting to learn Mandarin today? If you still have doubts in your mind, read our post on How to Overcome the 8 Painful Mistakes in Learning Mandarin.

Now Go Play!