How to Learn Chinese in 2,200 Not-So-Easy Lessons
How to Learn Chinese in 2,200 Not-So-Easy Lessons
Courtesy of Chris Correa, this article by a Washington Post staff writer on the difficulty of learning Chinese. He was lucky, I suspect, in having as his instructor the daughter of the most famous modern Chinese linguist (who, I believe, wrote the tongue-twisting poem he cites). That poem is a very unrepresentative example, it turns out.
I think he also somewaht overstresses the role of memorization in learning to read Chinese, contrasting learning 26 letters with learning a couple of thousand characters. As every American 5 year old discovers to his or her horror, after you’ve learned all those letters you still can’t read. And with Chinese characters, the more you learn the greater the chance is that a new character will have a regular structure and be made up of components you already know. A good example of a Matthew effect.