Studying Chinese is becoming very popular throughout the Western world. But how is Chinese different from other languages? What are the characteristics that make it unique?
About one-fifth of the population in the world, or over one billion people, speak some variety of Chinese as their native language. Chinese is distinguished by its high level of internal diversity, although all varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic. There are between seven and thirteen main regional groups of Chinese (depending on classification scheme), of which the most spoken, by far, is Mandarin.
Watch: Studying Chinese is getting popular among elementary and high school students in America:
The Spoken Chinese language (whether Mandarin or Cantonese) is tonal. A few dialects of north China may have as few as three tones, while some dialects in south China have up to six or ten tones, depending on how one counts. A very common example used to illustrate the use of tones in Chinese is the four main tones of Mandarin applied to the syllable ma. The tones correspond to these five characters:
- 妈／媽 (mā) “mother”— high level
- 麻 (má) “linen” or “numb”— high rising
- 马／馬 (mǎ) “horse”— low falling-rising
- 骂／罵 (mà) “scold”— high falling
- 吗／嗎 (ma) “question particle”— neutral
In the English language, changes in tones indicate the difference between a spoken statement and a question or the state of mind of the speaker, yet the meaning of the words does not change. Furthermore, each linguistically distinct sound, or phoneme, maps to a single letter. For example, the three phonemes in the word “bat” map on to three letters. If one letter is changed, a new word is created. In Mandarin, however, there are approximately 1,800 distinguishable syllables; Each syllable can have several meanings and each meaning is typically represented by a distinct character. The characters differ in the way they are written and in the way they are read, so even if two characters are read the same, they will not look the same.
What makes the Mandarin Chinese language unique?
An interesting research conducted by UC Irvine researcher Fan-Gang Zeng and by his Chinese colleagues examined the brain scans of subjects as they listened to spoken Mandarin Chinese. The researchers found that the brain processes the tones (or the pitch) of the words in Mandarin in the right hemisphere of the brain, before the left side of the brain processes the semantics, or the meaning, of the information. This process does not occur when one is listening to other, non-tonal languages, such as English. The researches, therefore, concluded that the brain actually processes Mandarin as music and not as words; The research helps understand how the brain of the average Chinese person works when speaking and listening to Mandarin and why tones are a crucial element in learning the Chinese language.
Brain functioning differs not only when distinguishing between spoken Chinese and spoken English but also when distinguishing between written Chinese and written English (or other indo-European languages). Fascinating research by US and Chinese scientists challenges our interpretation of how it is possible to be dyslexic in one language but not in another; It shows that readers of Chinese use a different part of their brains to readers of English. English speakers with reading disability typically have functional abnormalities in posterior parts of the brain associated with reading and possibly also have less gray matter in these areas. In Chinese dyslexics, on the other hand, the functional and structural brain abnormalities related to reading correspond with the left middle frontal region of the brain.
Li-Hai Tan, the researcher and a professor of linguistics and neuroscience at the University of Hong Kong, said after the research that: “At the functional level, it’s easy to understand why Chinese and English speakers use different parts of the brain to read language. The different brain networks accommodate the different features of English and Chinese. The two systems are dramatically different. Chinese is pictographic and English is more phonological, or sound-based.”
This research would suggest that the genetic makeup of Chinese speaking dyslexics is different from that of English speakers with the same disorder since they have reductions of gray matter in different sites of the brain. This conclusion helps understand how some people may be dyslexic in English yet can read Chinese fluently.
Should I be Studying Chinese?
Because speakers of Mandarin Chinese are required to pronounce each word accurately while maintaining strict sentence structures and because writers/readers must memorize and remember thousands of characters (3,500 characters are needed to read the equivalent of the daily mail and approximately 6,000 characters are needed to read books), studying Chinese is a difficult and time consuming mission.
Despite those difficulties, Chinese language studies have become increasingly popular among the young in the Western world. In 1991, for example, 2,000 foreign learners had taken the official Chinese Proficiency Test (comparable to the English Cambridge Certificate), while in 2005, the number of candidates rose sharply to 117,660.
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Lior Paritzky is the Editor in Chief and Manager of Laowaiblog, an internet platform that provides opinion and views about social phenomena in modern China. Look for Lior on Twitter: Liorpari 
After studying Chinese for two years, I realized there is absolutely no way for me to learn this language unless I go to China and stay there for a few years. Unlike Latin languages Chinese forces you to change your entire thinking process. That is what makes it one of the most difficult languages in the world.
Same for Chinese who are learning English: English forces you to change your entire thinking process and puts you into a life long ordeal of memorizing the seemingly infinite number of words.
As a Chinese, I can’t really express my opinion on how difficult the language really is. But after studying English for such a long time in China, I can say that the difference in the way of thinking between the languages is what makes English so difficult. Many Chinese people can read/write English without too much trouble, but speaking is a whole new thing, because the sounds, sentence structure and no tones are just too difficult for many of them.
I think this is a fascinating post. Many don’t give enough credit to the Chinese people for learning English; I think it is just as hard for them to learn English, with all of its rules and regulations, just as it is hard for foreigners to learn Chinese.
I find the dyslexia part most interesting. Maybe it’s a good idea to start promoting the Chinese language among dyslexic people.
I wonder how the Chinese language was created this way – what caused the language to be tonal in the first place? I wish the author would have provided more information about that…
The video was a bit too long, and the first part was not that relevant. Other than that, a very informative post. I had no idea Chinese can have such an effect on the brain. Chia is such a fascinating part of the world…
Although studying Mandarin Chinese is hard, it is very rewarding when you succeed and when people understand you. I felt great the first time I managed to say a few sentences, and that gave me huge motivation to proceed. Don’t give up!
The dyslexia part of the article is amazing in my opinion. I always thought that the brain processes each language in the same way, but I guess Chinese is different. I agree with Michael, I would also love to learn more about the language and its sources: how did it start and develop to what it is. Any Chinese person can reply?
Maya
Most languages, hypothecally, started as pictographic language gradually migrating to ideographic syllabic and phonetic. In this sense, Chinese is not that different from other language, but it adopted a different path when it migrated or evolved from the early pictographic and ideographic stage.
As for the orgin of tones, here is some explanation from wiki. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_(linguistics)#Origin
Very interesting. I wonder if the author can provide some statistics about the difficulty as the Chinese language as compared with other languages around the world? Is it really as difficult as people claim it is?
Teddy: In a nutshell “Yes”! And the deceptive thing is that you know when you start that it’s supposed to be really difficult, so when you make fairly quick progress from the get-go, which you do if you’ve got any kind of musical ear at all, you think to yourself “this isn’t so hard”. Then you hit the low intermediate level and basically run into a wall. The intermediate level is where most foreigners get stuck, get depressed and give up. It seems to go on and on and on (you get the point). If you stick it out and slog on every day, you will eventually reach the so-called “Advanced Level” (which in any other language would be Intermediate). You still can’t reliably form accurate sentences, but you can talk or ask around topics and you can probably read most of what’s thrown at you on a daily basis (excruciatingly slowly, granted, but you can do it). After that, well, there’s Proficiency Level and after that, the ever receeding Mastery Level! I liken learning putonghua to ploughing a furrow across a huge plain using a teaspoon. I’ve also heard it described as bailing the ocean with a teaspoon. But if you don’t give up it is incredibly rewarding and well worth the effort.
chinese language to me is very intresting language to study, but i want to know the prospect of studying it?