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Korean Job Discussion Forums
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huffdaddy
Joined: 25 Nov 2005
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 Posted: Tue Feb 20, 2007 1:47 am Post subject: |
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| tzechuk wrote: |
| For someone with blonde hair, blue eyes; or brown hair, green eyes... whatever... the Chinglinks WILL, without fail, talk to you in English, whether they are good at it or not. |
Based upon my admittedly very limited experience in China, I disagree. I went with a teacher I knew in Bejing to a few markets, and she conducted her business in Chinese. I didn't hear anyone trying to speak English to her. |
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yingwenlaoshi
Joined: 12 Feb 2007
Location: ... location, location!
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| Posted: Tue Feb 20, 2007 1:51 am Post subject: |
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I'll say this though: mastering Chinese is harder than mastering Korean. With Korean, you have to come over the grammar and some other nuances, and then you can just go to town with it. Writing is child's play.
Chinese writing takes a lot more dedication. If you can't write it then you come to a point where you can't make any headway unless you studied everything in pinyin. Don't know if that's feasible.
I should be studying Chinese characters. My exposure to Mandarin is at a point where I can self-study. Pronunciation? Not a problem. Vocabulary? Limited. Guess I'd study both characters and pinyin.
I can see where you're coming from though. What you study and how conversations take place can greatly differ.
If you take, let's say, Chinese, Korean, and French, which do you think is the hardest one to master given that you can write, read and speak all of them? I think French. You can sound like you're Chinese and Korean more easily than you can sound like you're French. |
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yingwenlaoshi
Joined: 12 Feb 2007
Location: ... location, location!
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| Posted: Tue Feb 20, 2007 1:56 am Post subject: |
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| huffdaddy wrote: |
| tzechuk wrote: |
| For someone with blonde hair, blue eyes; or brown hair, green eyes... whatever... the Chinglinks WILL, without fail, talk to you in English, whether they are good at it or not. |
Based upon my admittedly very limited experience in China, I disagree. I went with a teacher I knew in Bejing to a few markets, and she conducted her business in Chinese. I didn't hear anyone trying to speak English to her. |
Exactly. If you can speak Chinese, they'll speak to you in Chinese. Also, a company in your home country's going to want to snap you up and pay you some bucks. I really disagree with what you say. Let's say they want to speak some English. Fine. Some will have excellent English. Not all though. Hardly. If you can speak Chinese, then you can mix it up and assure that there's a 100% understanding. |
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Son Deureo!
Joined: 30 Apr 2003
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| Posted: Tue Feb 20, 2007 5:51 am Post subject: |
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| yingwenlaoshi wrote: |
| If you take, let's say, Chinese, Korean, and French, which do you think is the hardest one to master given that you can write, read and speak all of them? I think French. You can sound like you're Chinese and Korean more easily than you can sound like you're French. |
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "master", and I have never tried to learn Chinese, but I can tell you from personal experience that Korean is a hell of a lot harder to learn than French. In fact, even though there may be a lot of verb endings and the pronunciation may be a little tricky French is probably one of the easiest languages there is for an English speaker since about 60% of English words share common roots with French. |
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yingwenlaoshi
Joined: 12 Feb 2007
Location: ... location, location!
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| Posted: Tue Feb 20, 2007 6:21 am Post subject: |
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| Son Deureo! wrote: |
| yingwenlaoshi wrote: |
| If you take, let's say, Chinese, Korean, and French, which do you think is the hardest one to master given that you can write, read and speak all of them? I think French. You can sound like you're Chinese and Korean more easily than you can sound like you're French. |
I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "master", and I have never tried to learn Chinese, but I can tell you from personal experience that Korean is a hell of a lot harder to learn than French. In fact, even though there may be a lot of verb endings and the pronunciation may be a little tricky French is probably one of the easiest languages there is for an English speaker since about 60% of English words share common roots with French. |
I'm talking about sounding like you're French, Chinese, or Korean. It's much harder to pronounce French correctly than it is the other two languages. |
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Son Deureo!
Joined: 30 Apr 2003
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| Posted: Tue Feb 20, 2007 6:41 pm Post subject: |
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| yingwenlaoshi wrote: |
| I'm talking about sounding like you're French, Chinese, or Korean. It's much harder to pronounce French correctly than it is the other two languages. |
That seems like an odd definition of "mastering" a language to me. I've always thought that trying to speak with a perfect native accent is an overrated goal, but there are plenty who disagree. Understandable pronounciation is important, but refining an accent to the point that it's indistinguishable from that of a native has always seemed low on the list of priorities when trying to learn a language. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jackie Chan, Kofi Annan, and Antonio Banderas all strike me as good examples of how much it is possible to achieve in one's second language without a native speaker accent.
If you can actually do it in any language, however, my hat's off to you. |
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