Chinese really isn’t hard

One thing I don’t understand is why people think one language is so hard before being exposed to it for a period of time. For example, many of the people that I tell one or two things about Chinese would consider it hard because of the characters.

The Chinese language isn’t really that hard. Personally, I think it’s even easier than English to learn in a few aspects. The grammar is extraordinarily simple. There are no conjugations or forms of words. In order to get to a present/future tense, one justs adds in a word (I don’t think there are imperfect, conditional, etc. forms):

我看电视。 I watch TV.

wo 3 kan 4 dian 4 shi 4

我看了电视。 I watched TV.

wo 3 kan 4 le dian 4 shi 4

Just add in a 了 and you got the past tense. Or, if you’ve done something before, add in a 过.

我看过电视。 I(’ve) watched TV before.

wo 3 kan 4 guo 4 dian 4 shi 4

Also, I think Chinese is the least respectful of the three popular Asian languages: Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. By this, I mean that the only respectful term that there is (or I know of) is 您 (nin 2), which replaces 你 (ni 3). The two words both mean “you,” however, 您 is more polite than 你. I never use 您, though. For example:

你看了吗？ Did you see/watch this?

ni 3 kan 4 le ma 1

您看了吗？ Did you see/watch this? (polite)

nin 2 kan 4 le ma 1

Also, I think 咱们 is slightly politer than 我们, which both means “us” or “we.”

The only thing I would find would be hard in learning Chinese are the idioms. I hardly know any, myself. The idioms are usually composed of four words with a story behind them. For example, self-contradictory type things are usually termed as 自相矛盾. Literally, the words mean “to oneself spear shield.” However, the reason why it means “contradictory” is because there’s a story in which there was this seller who said that his spears could pierce through anything and his shield could block anything. So this person goes up to him and said, “How can you have a spear which could pierce through anything when you have a shield which can block anything? Which one is true?”

However, other than idioms and just being able to understand the language, Chinese is pretty easy. It has troublesome areas, like all other languages, but because of its extremely simplified grammar, it’s easier to learn. Plus, even though Chinese doesn’t have an alphabet, people can guess at what a Chinese character sounds/means just by how it looks like and how it is composed.