Re: Some thoughts about Chinese ad Russian from an English speaker
- From: "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2006 14:48:58 GMT
sammy wrote:
>
> Let's start saying that besides English I have some knowledge of French
> and Spanish.
>
> Having said that, I'd like to know which of these languages would be
> easier to learn [from scratch], Chinese or Russian.
>
> I assume both languages must have dialects, so I'd like to know which
> are the most common ones and whether they're easily understandable from
> each other.
You're not likely to find instruction in Russian dialects anywhere.
"Chinese" covers about 8 different languages (and all of them have many
dialects). If you're going to Hong Kong, you'd want to learn Cantonese,
for instance.
If you just want to read Chinese literature (Classical or Modern), then
enroll in a "Basic Chinese" course. It'll teach you Mandarin; once you
can read Mandarin, you can perhaps move back to the classics (in a very
different sort of language, but written with the same characters).
> Nowadays, Chinese seems to become so strong it may be wiser to learn it
> rather than Russian, am I wrong? How many people are able to speak each
> of them?
There are more than 1 billion Chinese citizens; there were somewhat more
Soviet citizens than American, and I don't know whether there are still
more Russians than Americans. That's why there are almanacs to look in!
Neither language is much used outside their (former) spheres of
political influence, except in expat and emigre communities. Both are
official languages of the UN.
> Russian characters seems fair more easy to cope with that their Chinese
> counterparts, thus I'd like to read from your experiences!
Russian has a 32-letter alphabet that you will learn before your second
class session.
To read ordinary Chinese, you need to learn maybe 3000 characters, but
they're not 3000 completely different items -- almost every character is
made of two component parts, and you gradually learn the few hundred
components so that "new" characters aren't utterly strange.
> Knowing English is somewhat easier to learn French because some
> historical facts. But I assume both, Chinese and Russian, must have a
> whole different vocabulary.
Russian is as closely related to English as French is. The difference is
that there were centuries of contact between English and French, so that
English has taken over thousands of French words into its vocabulary.
Russian has lots of noun and verb inflections (like Latin), which can
make it hard for an English-speaker.
Chinese has just about no inflections (it does everything with word
order, pretty much like English), but the vocabulary is entirely
different.
> To end with, feel free to add your thoughts or suggestions to this
> message. Like grammar, worth of effort and so on.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx
.
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