Why Chinese (Mandarin) Is One of the Easiest Languages to Learn - Reason 4

In my earlier articles I discussed how easy Mandarin Chinese is to learn because of its amazingly simple verb conjugations and also how easy it is to express all of their verbs in the past tense and future tense

Now I want to demonstrate how easy Mandarin Chinese is when it comes to learning new vocabulary.

How many stores have you been to where they have the sign "Buy 2 get 1 free"? We all love to get a bargain and discounts. Well, when it comes to learning Mandarin Chinese I kind of think us language learners are getting a HUGE bargain when it comes to "brainspace" and challenges to our memory.

Let me illustrate. Imagine someone learning English. Here are 3 words that a foreigner would have to learn:

Fire

Mountain

Volcano

Those 3 words are entirely different and have no relation to one another. Someone learning English would have to learn all 3 words by memorization. But in Mandarin Chinese you only need to learn 2 and you get the 3rd one free! This is because Mandarin Chinese is kind of like a building block language. You just need to learn the basic words of the language and then you combine those words you already know in order to make new words. So in the above example you only need to learn:

Fire

Mountain

And your "free" word "volcano" is simply expressed by saying "fire mountain"

This phenomenon is something you see very regularly in Mandarin Chinese. Here are some more examples:

Good

Eat

Good eat = delicious

Years

Light (as in weight, ie not heavy)

Years light = young

Hand

Machine

Hand machine = mobile phone

Electric

Word (Spoken)

Look at

Image

Stairs

Brain

Electric word (spoken) = telephone

Electric look at = television

Electric image = movie/film

Electric stairs = elevator

Electric Brain = Computer

With the example above involving "electric" it's actually a learn 6 and get 5 free! Therefore, in my opinion, this is an easy language to learn ALSO because you don't need to learn every single individual word in the language. You can just learn the basic words and get more complex words for free by just remembering how to combine the basic words to form new complex logical meanings. The combinations of these words are not strange at all as you can see above, they are very logical and therefore very easy to remember. I think this is just yet another reason why Mandarin Chinese is one of the easiest languages to learn to speak (I'm not at all referring to reading or writing in these series of articles).

In my next article I will continue to demonstrate more ways in which this language has a very logical structure making it easy to learn.

The Author started learning Mandarin Chinese over 5 years ago, and was amazed at how easy this language was despite what he had heard. He now lives in China in order to perfect his language ability in hopes of becoming a professional freelance translator/interpreter one day. He has created a Learn Chinese Online blog to help others with this language. He also enjoys tinkering with other website's like Wu-long Tea