Characters and tones the biggest challenges

CHINESE IS REPUTEDLY one of the world's most difficult languages to learn. It is really not all that hard. All you have to do is arrange to be born into a Chinese-speaking family. After that, it all comes quite naturally.

But what about those of us who lacked the foresight? In many ways, Chinese seems simpler than most languages. Words and phrases are put together like building blocks. There are no verbs to conjugate. You do not have to worry about gender, subject-noun agreement, or - shudder - the subjunctive mood. It all sounds like a piece of cake. But the fact remains that most 'non-heritage learners' find mastery of the language a daunting task.

A United States study estimated that it takes English speakers more than twice as long to achieve a basic conversational ability in spoken Chinese than it does in French, German, or Spanish - and this is assuming they focus exclusively on speaking and listening. If characters are studied, the gap becomes even wider.

'If students are in a hurry, they can learn spoken Chinese in one-third the time if they put off studying characters,' said Winnie Lui, the Mandarin consultant at Essential Chinese Language Centre. 'If they want to learn to read Chinese but don't bother learning to write it, they can do it in two thirds to three quarters of the time.'

April Zhang, operations co-ordinator at MSL (Mandarin as a Second Language) Learning Centre, believes a clear distinction should be made between the teaching of speaking and listening and the teaching of reading and writing. Character acquisition can be tedious and time-consuming once the initial novelty wears off, but it does not seem to pose the biggest hurdle to learning Chinese. Ms Zhang believes - and overseas research supports her view - that the first 400 are the most difficult and should be studied systematically. After students have acquired 800 characters, they can continue their studies on their own with the use of a dictionary.

'With 400 to 500 characters you can read 60 per cent of a publication,' she said. 'An additional 400 will increase that to 80 to 90 per cent.'