Is it possible for a foreigner to learn Chinese?

Likewise, it’s perfectly possible to become fluent in Chinese without ever leaving home. It’s not about where you live, it’s about how much you expose yourself to the language and how much you study.

What makes learning Chinese so difficult?

Reason #1: Chinese tones are hard (and unfamiliar!) English is not a tonal language. Adding tones to every word you speak is a very unfamiliar and difficult process for non-native speakers. First, you need to listen and comprehend the tone, which is difficult at the beginning (more so if you’re tone deaf!).

Is learning Chinese useful?

Learning Chinese not only gives you an advantage of speaking another language, but also allows you to gain a broader understanding of one of the world’s oldest living civilizations.

How hard is it to learn characters in Chinese?

When you have a basic conversational foundation in Chinese, learning the characters is a totally different — and easier — experience. Also, many of native Chinese teachers come from a rigid Chinese educational background and are only familiar with rote learning so they naturally teach students the same way – learning by rote.

Is it bad to learn Chinese at school?

Many of the teaching methods and ways students have learned Chinese at school are backward and sometimes just wrong. For example, it’s unwise and inefficient to learn spoken Chinese and written Chinese at the same time. A student studying Chinese should learn Pinyin and the basics of spoken Chinese first and then learn characters.

What are some of the biggest myths about learning Chinese?

Two of the biggest myths about Chinese are a) Chinese has tones where English doesn’t, and b) to learn Chinese, you have to learn all those weird Chinese characters, which to most people just look like a bunch of random lines. These two notions scare lots of people away when they are tempted to learn Chinese. Unfortunately, both of them are wrong.

What is the easiest way to learn Chinese?

Chinese is based on building blocks, so the more you learn, the easier it gets. Chinese compound words are very transparent and logical. In Chinese, once you learn the basic sentence structures and useful words, you can simply put together the old pieces to make up new ones.