According to the FSI learning Mandaring takes about 4 times as long as learning Spanish and 3 times as long as learning German (for native English speakers).
Sometimes I think English literacy is the closest you can get in a letter based language to a character based language.
This is because learning English requires a lot of memorization. For example in English every vowel letter has more than one sound. An egregious example is how all vowel letters can make the schwa sound. In contrast, Spanish or Indonesian language have more standardized spelling. Letters generally make predictable sounds in those languages.
Yeah I took it in high school but didn't study very hard and haven't used it since, and it's depressing how little I learned and how much less I retained.
According to the FSI learning Mandaring takes about 4 times as long as learning Spanish and 3 times as long as learning German (for native English speakers).
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Sometimes I think English literacy is the closest you can get in a letter based language to a character based language.
This is because learning English requires a lot of memorization. For example in English every vowel letter has more than one sound. An egregious example is how all vowel letters can make the schwa sound. In contrast, Spanish or Indonesian language have more standardized spelling. Letters generally make predictable sounds in those languages.
Yeah I took it in high school but didn't study very hard and haven't used it since, and it's depressing how little I learned and how much less I retained.
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