It’s perhaps the most important language in the world after English. Over a billion speak it in Asia and around the world. And, its use in today’s business world cannot be understated. Mandarin is today the language everyone seems to want to learn. But after studying for a few lessons many students often quit. Why?

There are many aspects to every language that may differ quite a bit from one’s own mother tongue. Each language has certain characteristics that must be mastered to become a fluent speaker. Let’s take look at some of the aspects of Mandarin that make it so hard, especially for Westerners, to learn.  

1. Tonal Language

Across Asia many languages rely on varying high, low, falling, and rising, etc. tones to express words and delineate meanings. Thai, Vietnamese, and Lao are just some of the languages in which tones are vitally important. In Cantonese, a tonal southern Chinese dialect, for example, the word “ma” can have up to six different meanings depending on how the tone is pronounced. Mandarin as well as a language with four tones, so, like Cantonese, the same word “ma” will have different meanings depending on the tone of a word. In Romance languages, we use tones more to express feelings or ask questions such as, “You are an American, right? In this case, the word “right” would have a rising tone to convey the idea of an affirming question. It is similar to the second tone in Chinese, with the pitch going up, like raising your eyebrow. If it is spoken to confirm something - “right!,” this would be similar to the fourth tone in Mandarin which is more of a high, flat staccato. In Mandarin, however, the same word with a different tone can have a completely different meaning. This is something that can create a challenge for those studying the language.

Also, because Chinese words are generally short, containing just one or two syllables. You have less time to figure out what a person is saying, or saying the correct tone when speaking. This is unlike Japanese which has much longer words that provide more time to figure out what is being said. In languages, such as these, a word like the Japanese: subarashii (wonderful), or the English “introduction,’ if you mispronounce one syllable wrong you still have a good chance that a native speaker will understand you.

2. Pronunciation sounds

Mandarin has many initials sounds that can be quite confusing to the untrained ear, especially those sounds like sh- and dj sounds (zh, ch, sh, z, c, s, j, q, x) These are especially difficult for many foreigners to speak correctly as well as hearing the differences between these sounds. And the Chinese language has many words that start with these sounds. Another challenge is that many Chinese speaking everyday languages pronounce those sounds differently, so a “sh” in the Mandarin classroom may end up sounding like an “s.” This can be a real headache for foreigners studying Mandarin.

3. Vocab

Generally, there is less of a challenge when it comes to learning basic Mandarin vocabulary to get your point across, regardless of how sloppy it comes out. However, like English which tends to have many different words with the same or similar meaning, Mandarin too, (at least at the more advanced level) has many words with just a slightly different meaning used in different situations.

4. Grammar

Compared to Western languages, grammar in Mandarin is relatively simple and straight forward. There are no verb conjugations, and tenses like past perfect, future and others are non-existent. At first, this may seem great because it’s less to learn and remember, but it does make things more ambiguous and harder to decipher the meaning of a sentence. Without all those grammar clues we’re used to in our native languages it can often cause you to freeze up when trying to express more complex ideas.

Word order

The word order in Mandarin is completely different than in Western languages and you’ll often come across multiple verbs strung together to convey a specific meaning. Sometimes this results in understanding every word of a sentence and still having no clue what the speaker is trying to say. Understanding spoken Chinese can certainly be a difficult hurdle but once you change your thinking to that of Chinese, things start to become clearer and your ability to communicate improves drastically.

Chinese characters

And then, of course, there are those incredible Chinese pictograph characters. How is it possible to learn all those strokes to create words? Many foreigners avoid learning characters and just focus on the spoken language. A big disadvantage of not being able to read through, besides the obvious – is it prevents you from not understanding important road signs, reading newspapers, etc. Besides you can speed up your ability in Mandarin by learning how to read. Unlike in Western languages, Mandarin characters create a pictorial image in the mind which then conveys a meaningful word. In English, we decipher the individual letters of a word like “p-o-p-u-l-a-t-i-o-n” and that creates a pictorial image in our minds of many people, while 人口 (ren kou) shows a picture of people and mouths and this then conveys the meaning of the word for the population. The functions in each language are reversed.