Four reasons why Mandarin is not hard to learn

I am very excited to have you as one of my students!

[kirkarnold]

If you think Chinese is hard. Try Taglog / Filipino.
It is the most Unpredictable language I have ever TRIED.
They can't even explain it.
Chinese is simple after you get use to it the different sounds.
There are only about 250 sounds or words that you need to learn to pronounce.
This lady speaks pretty slow too and that helps
Thank you Vivian.
Kirk

[madisonroberts]

I want to learn mandarin so badly. Everyone says it is very hard but this video has inspired me

[Jamfullife]

as someone who is taking mandarin courses in college, it isn't any harder than most other languages. In my mind, Chinese is just as hard as German or French. Writing can be hard, and pronunciation can be hard, but so are many other languages. Honestly if you put in the work and study, you'll be able to learn it like any other language. On top of that, I find it so satisfying to listen to and read, there's so much meaning in every character, and every time I learn a new one I feel so accomplished and I never want to forget it. It makes learning the words so much more fulfilling to me. Just my perspective on it.

[tur]

"the more you learn, the easier it will be" hahah :)

[Stuffinround]

I started learning mandarin for the sole reason that people constantly said it was difficult to learn. I took that as a challenge.

[TahirNefjodov]

''Four reasons why Mandarin is not hard to learn''

After 6 minutes, in my recommended videos:
''This is why you will never learn Chinese''.



Ohke...

[ElliotScottDating]

I am wanting to learn Mandarin but don't know where to start. I am a complete beginner as in I don't knwo the tones, alphabet, or anything. I have no idea where to start or what texbooks/guides I should get. Any advice?

[Anisvit]

Beginners level might be easy, however by the time you reach intermediate level Chinese got much more difficult such as in conversation 5 times people said sha and you know 10 sha meaning still you wont understand what he meant by the way you are never going to reach in advanced level

[Lambda_Ovine]

Being a Spanish speaker, when I learned English, I thought that English had a severe lack of verb conjugation. In Spanish every verb has a different form for the five pronouns AND every form changes depending on the tenses and their respective moods (for a total of 59 different forms for each verb or 80 if you count the conjugations with the "haber" verb).

[misakinishimya]

I love how you actually encourage people this way. I have always thought that Chinese is so difficult and it would be the last language I would ever be able to learn. However, after watching a drama called The Untamed, I somehow fell in love with the language and the way chinese sounds so unique. Although I have been learning Japanese for 3 years now, I haven't completely mastered it, but I am considering that I should start learning chinese too, since the kanjis are not too different in the two languages.

[kimjavier]

I’ve been wanting to learn Mandarin since the start of quarantine. Might even make a video about it. WISH ME LUCK HAHA

[Raketemensch-flsv]

I'd agree that mandarin isn't as difficult as it's often imagined to be, specifically people seem to pick on the tones and writing system as the major obstacles to learning it, and those two issues are overstated. I'm shit with music/notes, but the tones are not really that hard. Takes some getting used to, but even just the weird consonants are more difficult than the tones (e.g. if you got a word like 'jinzhang' or 'chongqing', switching between the j/q/x and zh/ch/sh quickly isn't easy on the laowai tongue). And yeah, the writing system *IS* difficult. I'm not gonna sit here and say that it's easy to learn characters. But it's still just not *that* bad... not as difficult as most people probably imagine. There's a logic to it, and you can get to the point where you can recognize a character you've learned spoken but never seen written before, or sometimes even guess how a character will be written.

What *really* bothers me though is people claiming that "chinese grammar is super easy" (or, really infuriatingly for someone who majored in linguistics, "chinese *has no* grammar."). Sure, if we're talking 101 sentences like "I eat fish" "I no drink beer", then yeah, the grammar *is* super easy. But if you want to sound more fluent than speaking in simple phrases like 'me tarzan you jane', then the grammar gets pretty hairy at times. Like, "她把洗衣机弄坏了，但是什么机器我都修的好“。 That's not even necessarily *difficult*, but it's so weird that it takes a serious adjustment in how one approaches a thought. You can't just translate ideas word-for-word if they have any degree of complexity. Spanish or other indo-european languages do conjugation, yeah, but at least as far as i remember from spanish/german/russian (ooh and that has declension, which.... fuck russian grammar) there wasn't all that much that was so, like, cognitively alien.

There's plenty of weird and hard stuff going on in chinese grammar. Of course if you just come here for a visit and memorize like a hundred words, you can do pretty well at a survival level throwing those together, but then you could also *get by* okay in a spanish-speaking place just using the infinitive of all verbs and ignoring noun genders.

I'm all for having people get over fears of mandarin difficulty and encouraging them to study it, but... please can people STOP SAYING that chinese grammar is so easy, and then accompanying that statement with the simplest sentences imaginable?

[sednalkram]

Present tense:  I eat   Past tense:  Yesterday I eat   Future tense:  tomorrow I eat  plus use of "le" as noted already...also "ba"

[CaptnClutchP]

Damn. I stumbled upon this while trying to figure out how to start out learning Chinese. Hope you decide to make more videos to teach your energy to actually teach come across very well. Was sad to see there wasn’t another video. Hope all is well!

[douglasnewman]

Thank you so much! Very new Mandarin Chinese learner here. Thanks for the encouragement!

[-_-]

I lived in China for 4 years, but didn't dedicate myself to learn mandarin and I really regret it now. I only know the basics and I am obsessed with chines dramas which kinda helps me not to forget it, but it isn't the same as listening to it daily, so yeah, dedicate yourself to it, it is not hard to learn, and it is very worth it :)

[CatchGravity]

Wow even if this video is 7 years old Im actually learning more about Chinese Mandarin than I ever have anywhere else.

[badtypoerror]

Nice video :). Thank you Vivian for making learning Chinese fun and meaningful.

[daklina]

Conjugating verbs isway easier than english or languages like germanor spanish cuz theyhave so many irregular verbs but i thinkthat the 5.000 symbols you need to master drives me crazy even though you can use phonesor computers to make they draw it for you, very good video.

[wirito]

3:51 when the professor stops at a slide and asks the students “what is the right answer here?”







But he posts the slides before the lecture.