Quote:
Originally Posted by komitsuki
In a linguistic typology view, Mandarin is grammatically similar to English.
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HOLY MOLY, THIS.
There's a reason my university could take a class full of white people and turn out skilled Mandarin speakers in two years but couldn't replicate that with Japanese until year three or so.
I learned more in my first semester of Mandarin than I did in Japanese. The only problem is the writing.
The nice thing is that, after having spoken Japanese for approaching a decade, learning Mandarin is a
lot easier now because I know a lot of the kanji already (with modifications to make up for the difference between the two sets of kanji).
English:
I love you.
Chinese:
我愛你
I love you
Japanese:
好きだ。
[As for me,] [you] are pleasing.
Also, tones are a joke. I don't understand why native English speakers can't learn them. Three of the four show up in our daily speech! Every child makes the fourth while playing.
1 is like singing a note, laaaaaaaa
2 is like asking a question: "Right?"
3 is like growling "grr"
4 is like saying a one-word command like "Go!"
(5) is toneless.