Finnish Vs. Chinese
I have studied Finnish since Dec 10 and Chinese since Sept 11 and I have drawn the following conclusions thus far:
Finnish Pros: Up front Finnish proves to be an easier language with much of its alphabet relating closely to English. In fact, many English-origin words have carried over into Finnish so they are nearly identical. With the small curve of learning new vowels and holding double letters, pronunciation is relatively easy for native English speakers.
Finnish Cons: The biggest problems with Finnish is the grammar, which is extensive. Finnish words morph constantly, so if you are not aware of the change, a word (or phrase) can be hard to decipher or produce. Basic sentence building can be frustrating. Combine this with the lack of native speakers outside of Finland, and a serious lack of good educational resources (even online without taking a day off of work to find it), it can feel impossible at times.
Chinese Pros: Chinese may seem very imposing at first, being a language comprised of symbols that mean words, but it really isn't as hard one may think. First of all, Chinese grammar and English grammar are more closely related than Finnish and English. Chinese requires less "finesse words" than English, so sentences seem to contain less words (or symbol characters). Chinese is also becoming more and more available in the U.S. in universities and high schools, so native speakers are becoming more common.
Chinese Cons: Chinese has two different written languages: Symbol Characters, which most people think of, and pinyin, which is the phonetic spelling/pronunciation of the words. Words in Chinese can be quite hard to memorize. Some people can memorize pinyin, while others are excellent at symbols. I tend to be the latter. Pronunciation can be tough as well, as Chinese has 4 tones. The word "bu" can mean different things depending on how it is said (i.e. bu with tone going down and bu with tone going up are different).
It is no doubt that every language has its ups and downs, but what I have drawn from my time learning both languages is where my strengths are. I hope you consider these things when picking either language to learn!
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Corrections · 6
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Sometimes I think, if all the nouns can become the word SHEEP with no SHEEPS, wouldn't it be easier to express?
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汉语讲究“言简意赅”（简=简练，赅=准确）。学习英语，有时遇到时态（past/present/future tenses），单复数（a,an, -s）真的很头疼。也很奇怪，为什么要有这么多语法限制呢
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Yes, English is like the Borg! It assimilates foreign words easily. Even common words like "beef" comes from the French, "rickshaw" from Japanese which in turns come from Chinese, "tea" from Southern China, and of course, "dim sum" from Cantonese, "gungho" from Mandarin, "thug" from India, "assassin" from Arabic etc. and not to mention the massive ones from Latin & Greek!
Because of this flexibility, English can be used express almost everything. I said almost because there still certain concepts that are not assimilated. For instance, the German, weltschmerz or shadenfraude.
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A few more notes to the Finnish language: No articles like a, an, the. They are implied by the grammar. If it doesn't specify more than one, it is always one. There are also no feminine/masculine words like you see in Spanish or French. In fact, the word for he/she are identical in both written and spoken. Finnish has 16 noun cases, which is about 4 times more than any other European language. Luckily, 3 of those cases cover about 76% of everyday Finnish.
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Indeed. I was rather relieved (and somewhat dumbfounded) when I heard about the lack of past/present/future tenses, among other things. I thought, "Why couldn't English be simple like this?", but it can't always be easy I suppose. :) There are also some sounds that resemble the S sound in English that are distinctly different in Chinese. An example is xingqi, which I have a hard time making it not sound like "Sing-see". Luckily, our tutors don't grade hard on pronunciation. :D It's my understanding that the basics of English are very easy to pick up for non-native speakers, but the vocabulary is massive when compared to others, not including all the slang and terminologies that seems to change from one decade to the next, whether it is due to pop-culture or technology., etc.
The way I look at it: I may not have picked up a language as a kid, so it will most likely take me much longer to learn a new language; however, I figure I probably have a good 50 years ahead of me on this rock, and I should have it figured about by then.
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