It's finally time to decide what foreign language I am going to learn: French or Mandarin. Each have the strengths and weaknesses, but I will try to learn one of them.
For French, it has the perk of me wanting to visit the country where the language is spoken. I have an interest in visiting France even though my father and Richard are the only people who seem to like visiting France and French is spoken in various other places in the world I might consider visiting. It also sounds rather nice; I have discovered over the years I prefer French jazz to any other form of jazz. I also happen to be living somewhere with a ton of reading material; walking through the grocery store I have plenty of French to read.
But French is not perfect. I have never been good at saying French words. It does not have the most reasonable grammar rules. I also will not have anyone to practice speaking with once I leave Vancouver.
For Mandarin I can actually speak the tones -- don't ask me how, I just can. I also have a lot of friends with whom I can practice with. Plus Mandarin would be a lot more useful in the Bay Area than French ever would be. The language is also much simpler when it comes to rules since it practically has none.
But reading Mandarin is not easy as it is all rote memorization. I also don't feel any great desire to visit China -- I would only do it if other friends were going who were Chinese themselves.
Anyway, I am going to see if I can't make a choice in the near future and then start learning by the summer.
11 comments:
Both languages will be difficult to learn, especially if it's you first foreign language.
Something you probably don't realize is that French also a fair bit of tedious memorization to do. Lots of words don't sound the way they are written. Even as a native French speaker, I sometime have surprises ;)
The first language is the hardest to learn. Later ones are a lot easier apparently. So if you don't speak any other languages, you could start learning Norwegian :)
Why Norwegian is the easiest language for English speakers to learn
My ex-boss was fluent in 11 languages. His main strength was his motivation to learn. The difficulty of the language is secondary, you should really pick the one that motivates you most.
What's your motivation for learning a new language? Fun? Profit? Traveling? Culture?
@henry I learned Spanish in high school but did not enjoy the language.
As for the motivation, it's mostly for fun, partially for traveling. That somewhat rules out Norwegian as I have no one to talk to with it. At least with Mandarin I have friends in the San Francisco Bay Area to talk to and a couple of friends here in Vancouver for French.
B - My question is... what is your primary purpose for learning either?
My thoughts: French is easier to learn (overall) from a native English speaker's perspective. The alphabet is the same and many words in both English and French have common (Latin) origins.
TO me, part of the difficulty of French lies in learning the complex conjugation that permeates in verb usages. What a lot of native English speakers do not realize (and do not know without proper grammar education) is that verb usage in the English is rather complex with the conjugations too. Although many of us do use various verb conjugations, we've grown up with it and just speak it without too much thought. Of course, many English speakers still speak and write incorrectly, even with a 'proper' education.
What may also (initially) be difficult would be learning the concept of grammatical genders. However, b/c you've learned Spanish before, this concept should be familiar with you.
Chinese is considered one of the most difficult languages to learn (alongside Arabic and other Asian languages). You've already pointed out the need for rote memorization if you were ever to wish to read or write. The nice thing is that the Chinese language does not have conjugations nor articles in their usages... which, to me, most likely explains why native Chinese (or other east Asian) speakers have difficulty using the right verb form/tense and a's, an's, and the's in written and spoken English.
You've also pointed out tones - that's actually one of the more difficult aspects too b/c all too often, if one tone is used as opposed to another, your sentence (or phrase) could sound like gibberish or mean something else completely different! I still have difficulty dealing with the tones too in my conversations with Chinese speakers.
Fortunately, if you were to really go into it, I'm sure you'd learn quite a bit b/c Chinese has a rich history of how words were formed and how they're organized (and the fact that many characters are composed of parts of other characters and 'root characters').
Of course, you'd learn more (with a steeper learning curve) with traditional Chinese characters (used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau) as opposed to simplified Chinese characters (used in China).
In the end, to me, the key point is what would be more useful for you and for you to practice in the long-term to retain any thing. If you don't practice a foreign language with native speakers, you'll never really learn.
i don't really have an option on french vs mandarin. my dream one day is to perfect my spanish.
but seriously? who doesn't like visiting france?!?
@Vivian I actually know several people who have France spoiled for them because of the French people.
that is a pity.
and i meant opinion, not option. oops
Perhaps this can help you choose:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rillettes
Bread, rillettes and red wine... hmmm!
cheers
Antoine.
Good question... French is not the easiest language to pronounce and Mandarin is not the easiest to read.
However I'm a happy Rocket French learner and I found their course very up to date and effective. They also have a Rocket Chinese course where they learn you to speak and read Chinese. I think I will buy that in a years time or so.
Good luck with your choice...
hah!! not to be poroud of myself, i feel lucky to born chinese. i can do both mandraine and english atlhough i am not very perfect in both. now i am lerning french, wow it sure is a very tough language to learn. for months i have learnt d language (by myself), i could't even make a simple sentance.
actually spoken mandraine is quite easy to learn if compare to most european language because we dont have so much of grammar rules.
while written mandarine is quite interesting too because most of the chinese character evolve from a picture.
learning other language is greate fun, i love to learn foreign because i turly belived that it will broaden me views.
no mather your option is mandarine or french, both are similary intrersting and fun. wish you have a greate time learning foreign language!!!good luck.
Being a native English speaker, I learned Portuguese in about six months and was speaking quite fluently in that time. French though is an extremely tough language for me. Not because of the sounds or grammar, as so many people say; French has a lot of idiomatic phrases, and it's very hard to know how to say something you want to say by thinking about it in English first. I find French to be cleverly artful with its phraseology and idioms in a way that makes it really hard to pick up on an intuitive/logical basis. The best way is probably to go and spend time in a Francophone environment and let it sink into you.
I've actually been in the process of making the same decision, and it is quite difficult. As a native English speaker, I took Latin in sixth grade, Spanish in seventh grade and eighth grade, and plan to take both Spanish and either Mandarin or French in high school. But the decision has been tedious, and, despite advice from many people, I haven't quite decided.
I've been told, and agree with a lot of what has already been said, although I'd also like to add that how you plan to spend the rest of your entire life, whether you're young like me, or grown, should be taken into account. Mandarin is incredibly helpful if you like technology, and if you plan on learning other Asian languages or going into a technological field, because a lot of the headquarters are in that part of the world. French is helpful if you plan to learn Romance languages, or if you plan on ever volunteering for or going into international relations organizations such as the peace corps, because it is spoken in most African, and european-caribbean nations.
Even if you are grown, and have a job and life set out, it's still importnat to consider interests when choosing a language.
Both languages will be hard, but if you're determined to learn it, any language is within grasp, as long as you practice both orally and writing.
Best of luck!
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