The difficulties of learning Chinese
This photo has been doing the rounds on Facebook and it really made me chuckle. Learning Chinese is notoriously difficult due to the fact that not only do you have to learn vocabulary, but learning to read and write can be daunting as written Chinese is completely different to Western languages, with no alphabet as such. But that's not the only issue. You also have to learn HOW to say the word. Depending on whether you go up or down as you say a word can totally change the meaning. For example:
This picture demonstrates this perfectly. Each word is written differently, sounds the same, but the tone is different (i.e. some go up as you say them shown by the / above the English pronunciation of the words below, some down and up shown by the v above the word, some down shown by the \ and some with a high pitch shown by the - above the word).
I wonder if I read this story to hubby he'd understand each word? I suspect it would still be confusing to a Chinese person, even if read accurately! haha!
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