Chinese and French,which one is more difficult?

Question

Many people say Chinese is difficult to write.How about speaking and listening of Chinese. Are they as difficult as writing of Chinese?
If Chinese compare to French,which one is more difficult?Why?

Answer 1

Best Answer - Chosen by Voters

Well, it depends what your native language is.
(But generally, the answer is going to be Chinese)

However, if your native language is Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, etc. for instance, Chinese might be a lot easier than French.

If you speak English, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, etc. of course, French is going to be easier.

French verb conjugations are very wide and have many exceptions and subrules. It's a very "complete" language in terms of verb conjugations and you'll know what I mean by that once you become familiar with the language.

Chinese (any dialect, but assuming you're learning Mandarin which is the official language of mainland China and Taiwan), you've got the characters to master and tones/pronunciation that need to be accurate. However, it's grammar is very simple and straight-forward. You'll be surprised.

Whichever language you learn, I wish you the best!

Answer 2

Chinese, you have to memorize 10000 characters

Answer 3

Chinese is much more difficult!

Just count all the characters in their alphabet

Answer 4

Chinese is vastly more difficult in that it is a tonal language. This means the same word has can have totally different meanings depending on how the tone is used - up/down/V/or Mountain.
French is a semi-Latinized language w/ a lovely accent, but not tonal pronunciation.

Answer 5

Chinese of cause A whole different alphabet (characters to learn and more than 26 and each has a different sound) hundreds if I'm not mistaken.

Answer 6

It's obviously Chinese. Writing, it must be Chinese, because the characters are not based on pronounciation. However, French is based on pronounciation. In speaking and listening, it is also Chinese, because again, it's not based on pronounciation. For French, it is. Therefore, Chinese is way harder than French.

Source(s):

French and Chinese student...trust me...

Answer 7

Chinese is really hard, and I'm chinese! I've been taking lessons at chinese school, and it's really hard for me. Writing is complicated, but if you can speak it and understand it, then it should be okay. I've tried learning french too, the pronounciation is difficult because there are lots of rules and silent letters. However writing french is much more easier than chinese.
Chinese compared to French, I'd say Chinese because its just complicated. Each word has its own stroke when writing it, unlike French where you combine alphabets to make a word.

Answer 8

Chinese is more difficult to learn. There are hundreds of dialects in the Chinese language. So, if you choose Chinese, you also have to choose which dialect. For example, I hear that Mandarin is one of the more popular dialects. Learn the one that is going to help you in your career or your personal life. Do you plan on traveling to China at some point? Maybe doing business there? Maybe neither of those two choices are good for you. Before you invest in learning a second language. Determine your reasons first.

Answer 9

Chinese. To understand and talk is hard, to read and write is harder.

Answer 10

If you speak English (or any other Latin based language) then French would be easier since both language derive from the same Latin or roman alphabet. Therefore you would not have to learn an entirely different set of characters. And constructions in sentences and expressions may have differences are very similar. Chinese has it's on characters and ways to express them. Composing expressions in Chinese is vastly different and could be potentially frustrating. I suppose the easiest way to say it would be the difference would be comparable to remodeling a house (Reforming characters per expressions) or building a house (Starting from scratch verbally)

Answer 11

This question concerns me directly for being French and living in China.

Without a doubt Mandarin (and not Chinese) is more difficult because :
- the way to write is completely different from our western alphabet. Caracters are really hard to memorize and you need a lot of pratice to remember them and remember the order of the stroke to write them.
- listening and speaking are difficult to because of the 4 tons. It means that one caracter or word if you prefer can be said in 2 or 3 differents way. 吗, 妈, 马, 麻 for instance are read ma but with a different ton so if you don't use the right one it will lead you to a misunderstanding. This language just like French have a lot of homonyms
- after if you live in Hong Kong for example you will use the old caracters to write. They have more stroke.

French is not easy either. It's grammar is maybe the most difficult in the world. There are rules but in fact most of the rules have their exceptions.

But these 2 languages have something in common : a lot of jokes can be made with play on words.

Answer 12

let;s be serious here, anyone can speak chinese. do you know how to scribble? if you do, you know how to write chinese

Answer 13

I learned both and this is my honest opinion.
In French if you want to say: "I speak Chinese" you say:
Je parle Chinoise.
In Chinese you would say: "Wo shuo Putonghua."
In French you say "You speak Chinese." is "Vous parlez Chinoise." (a change of the verb from "parle" to "parlez")
In Chinese: Ni shuo Putonghua." (No change in the verb: "shuo".
In French if you say: We speak Chinese, it must be: Nous parlonz Chinoise. But in Chinese you just change the subject, to "women" for "we" and the rest is still the same: Women shuo Putonghua."

If you haven't learn Mandarin at all and see the words. "Ni hao ma?" , meaning " How are you?", you might make just a little mistake in pronouncing it.
But if you have haven't learned to speak a single word in French, and read the equivalent sentence meaning "How are you?" Which is "Coment allez vous?" you or anybody who hasn't learned that language at all will naturally say: "Kom ment al lez vous!" which will be totally wrong, because it should be pronounced: "Kor mah tar la voo?"

In Chinese the same sentence will be : Ni hao mah? Nine out of ten, you will say it correctly if I say that the vowerls in Chinese are generally read the same every time, so "i" as in "sing" , "o" as in "song", "e" as in "pen" "a" as in "ah" and "u" as in "ooh", so just remember: "Sing song pen ah ooh for "i-o-e-a-u", while in English it is illogically pronounced: "ai-ou-i-ae-yu".

Oops. sorry if you are more confused!
But I think you can see the point.

Answer 14

Chinese (especially if you are not a chinese speaker) because:
1) it's more difficult to pronounce correctly. Little different tone could lead to a very different meaning. For example, "ma" may mean "mother" or "horse", depending the tone.
2) it have complex writing system with thousands of characters, while Latin have more compact and simple writing system with only 26 characters.

Source(s):

I have learn this for quite a long time, and still cannot speak it correctly.

Answer 15

there is something called as a LANGUAGE FAMILY..
if you currently speak english or spanish or german etc you ll be more comfortable learning French (including writing it) as they belong to the same INDO EUROPEAN family of languages which have common origins/ grammer /structure etc .

on the other hand if you speak languages like japanese , korean , tibetan etc, u ll probably find chinese easier coz all these languages fall under the same language family..

Answer 16

chinese

Answer 17

Chinese definitely because of the writing characters and pronounciation

Answer 18

Chinese is sooooooooooo much more difficult than French. In Fact Chinese is the hardest language in the world

Answer 19

Chinese !

Answer 20

Chinise is more difficult compared to french. I've never leardned chinise, but french is way more easier. It's all about prounouncing the words correctly, and using a good sentence structure. I speak French so it's easy for me, but I would have to say between chinise and french. French is easier.