Characters: While there is some logic to written Chinese there's not a whole lot. Most characters are constructed of multiple basic characters called “radicals”. If you knew the background for why person + wood = rest it would be easier to keep track of them. I assume all Chinese school children understand the back stories for most Hanzi characters. However, even if you did know said explanations the characters say nothing about the way to pronounce the word they represent thus establishing a disconnect that must be overcome. Oh, and did I mention most people consider literacy as knowing 1,500 characters?
Tones: “Ma” with the first tone and “ma” with the second tone mean completely different things. There are instances when the person you're speaking to can pick up the meaning through contextual inference. Sadly much of time this isn't the case. Again, the writing tells you nothing about the tones. It's necessary to memorize them through the pinyin (what Google calls the romanization of characters) and then connect that to the characters. The tone of a word can also change in certain circumstances given a particular tone in the word before or after it.
Similar sounds: Take “shi”. First off there's “shi”, “xi”, “chi”. All basically sound like “shi”. That's before incorporating tones. It's remarkable how the tiniest cadence can completely transform a word. After months of being here and going to the same place five days a week I still consider it lucky when I can tell a taxi driver Liaoning Shifan Daxue. Even when it does work the way it plays out is, they look a little confused before it clicks. Then say "ahhh", followed by the exact same thing that I said and then they try to correct me by saying, again, the exact same thing that I said but very slowly. Listening is a bear as well, but frankly I'm just not advanced enough to be thrown into that lions den quite yet.
Overlap: Biǎo (表）means exterior surface, a model, a table, a form, a meter, family relationship or a watch. Biǎo (裱) means to hang a paper or mount a painting. Biǎo (婊) means a prostitute. For some reason in Chinese there are vastly more instances where more than one concept is attached to the same word, and usually more distinct concepts are attached as well. Don't get me started on “shi”. With Koreans if you don't know someone's last name (though technically last names come first in Asia) and want to take a stab at it go for Park, Kim or Lee. I'm tempted to say in Chinese if you don't know a word just dub in “shi”. Once you factor in this overlap along with similar sounds and the tones, what a westerner would percieve simply as "shi" could easily mean over 100 different things. That being said, wome the difficulty in this overlap might be in part due to the next, most oft overlooked and possibly largest issue in learning Chinese.
NO CULTURAL CONTEXT: In my opinion, understanding the multiple usages of words and makeup of Hanzi characters would be a lot easier if one were raised in China. The manner in which they go about explaining concepts either through spoken or written language is just an entirely different thought process. Open a door and turn on a light for instance are the same word Kai1. That kind of makes sense. But then again I constantly run across a string of characters which I recognize but make absolutely no sense to me when combined. Ask a Chinese person or pop them into the translator and a concept which seems entirely distinct from the original three characters is the answer. A lot of things that don't make sense might if raised here. It's a matter of making connections.
For instance, one of my cars is a 1983 Mercedes. Prior to that vehicle I had owned only American cars. The way things were done on the Benz originally made little sense to me. Problems stumped me easily. After years of ownership I now have an intuition when working on it in the same way I did with my old Cadillac. There way Mercedes engineers collectively think is different from the way GM engineers collectively think. There's an overall intangible logic to the way things are done. It's the same with language. Once you get it things are much easier. Sadly language is an organic and quite fluid construct and therefore much more difficult than a car.
Tones: “Ma” with the first tone and “ma” with the second tone mean completely different things. There are instances when the person you're speaking to can pick up the meaning through contextual inference. Sadly much of time this isn't the case. Again, the writing tells you nothing about the tones. It's necessary to memorize them through the pinyin (what Google calls the romanization of characters) and then connect that to the characters. The tone of a word can also change in certain circumstances given a particular tone in the word before or after it.
Similar sounds: Take “shi”. First off there's “shi”, “xi”, “chi”. All basically sound like “shi”. That's before incorporating tones. It's remarkable how the tiniest cadence can completely transform a word. After months of being here and going to the same place five days a week I still consider it lucky when I can tell a taxi driver Liaoning Shifan Daxue. Even when it does work the way it plays out is, they look a little confused before it clicks. Then say "ahhh", followed by the exact same thing that I said and then they try to correct me by saying, again, the exact same thing that I said but very slowly. Listening is a bear as well, but frankly I'm just not advanced enough to be thrown into that lions den quite yet.
Overlap: Biǎo (表）means exterior surface, a model, a table, a form, a meter, family relationship or a watch. Biǎo (裱) means to hang a paper or mount a painting. Biǎo (婊) means a prostitute. For some reason in Chinese there are vastly more instances where more than one concept is attached to the same word, and usually more distinct concepts are attached as well. Don't get me started on “shi”. With Koreans if you don't know someone's last name (though technically last names come first in Asia) and want to take a stab at it go for Park, Kim or Lee. I'm tempted to say in Chinese if you don't know a word just dub in “shi”. Once you factor in this overlap along with similar sounds and the tones, what a westerner would percieve simply as "shi" could easily mean over 100 different things. That being said, wome the difficulty in this overlap might be in part due to the next, most oft overlooked and possibly largest issue in learning Chinese.
NO CULTURAL CONTEXT: In my opinion, understanding the multiple usages of words and makeup of Hanzi characters would be a lot easier if one were raised in China. The manner in which they go about explaining concepts either through spoken or written language is just an entirely different thought process. Open a door and turn on a light for instance are the same word Kai1. That kind of makes sense. But then again I constantly run across a string of characters which I recognize but make absolutely no sense to me when combined. Ask a Chinese person or pop them into the translator and a concept which seems entirely distinct from the original three characters is the answer. A lot of things that don't make sense might if raised here. It's a matter of making connections.
For instance, one of my cars is a 1983 Mercedes. Prior to that vehicle I had owned only American cars. The way things were done on the Benz originally made little sense to me. Problems stumped me easily. After years of ownership I now have an intuition when working on it in the same way I did with my old Cadillac. There way Mercedes engineers collectively think is different from the way GM engineers collectively think. There's an overall intangible logic to the way things are done. It's the same with language. Once you get it things are much easier. Sadly language is an organic and quite fluid construct and therefore much more difficult than a car.
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