English has so many words

[Cooliegirly]

I mean, I was told Chinese was hard to learn but I have never had to learn any new words anymore (or Chinese Characters) since junior high.

English is hard...

[Sidle Jinks]

Well, but how many hieroglyphs are there in Chinese? It seems to me that more than 2 or 3 thousands... It is probably not that easy for the Western man to write them. It seems to me that all Chinese/Japanese must have good memory...

Any language is hard for a foreigner, but nevertheless all difficulties can be overcome
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Factum non fabula

[Danial2005]

hi,Sidle Jinks
it is really very hard to learn chinese
sometimes chinese sentences are not organized very logically and there are a lot of idioms carried over from ancient chinese.
speaking of hieoglyph,i can mention some:山(hill),田(piece of land for farming).as you can see,they are similar to the objects which they are referring to.
welcom to china!

[Sidle Jinks]

Hi, danial!

But still, how many hieroglyphs are there in Chinese? And is that true that you don't have tenses at all?
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Factum non fabula

[Danial2005]

hi,Sidle Jinks
i would say we do have tenses,but we don't have different forms of verbs.
eg．我要（i want)吃( to eat )饭(food or meal).
＂吃＂is a verb,however,when i want to say"i have had
my meal already", we put it in chinese as "我吃过饭了＂.
in this sentence ,the verb＂吃＂ remains the same though the tense has changed while ＂过＂and ＂了＂serve as a symbol of "present pefect tense"
wow! excuse me, it is really a rough explaination!
though i am a chinese,i have never thought about it very
carefully.
i am not confused by the language beacause it is my mother tongue.but you may consider it a tough work to learn chinese
as far as Hieroglyphs are concerned,i would like to say there
are 1400 or more in chinese.
by the way, could you possibly tell me what is the native language in your country? is english a second language or foreign language?

best regards!
happy new year !

[Sidle Jinks]

Hi Danial!

Thank you for your explanation, it seems to me that I understood .

[Cooliegirly]

Oh well, nobody would have to LEARN their first language anyways, they just pick it up natually as they grow up...

Danial, did you really find that Chinese was hard to learn? And I'm not talking about ancient Chinese here, argh...I hate those recitation stuff we have to do in my Chinese school. I mean, it's important that we, as Chinese, can understand what those poets and scholars had to say thousands of year ago...but they probably didn't know that their very personal poems and essays would be required for so many young people to memorize today...

Anyways, English has more words, that's for sure.

[Cooliegirly]

Oh well, nobody would have to LEARN their first language anyways, they just pick it up natually as they grow up...

Danial, did you really find that Chinese was hard to learn? And I'm not talking about ancient Chinese here, argh...I hate those recitation stuff we have to do in my Chinese school. I mean, it's important that we, as Chinese, can understand what those poets and scholars had to say thousands of year ago...but they probably didn't know that their very personal poems and essays would be required for so many young people to memorize today...

Anyways, English has more words, that's for sure.