Why is Chinese so hard to learn? Breaking down its mind-boggling difficulty

Why is Chinese language so difficult? What puts it on the list of the world's hardest languages to learn? In this video I break down the most painful aspects of Chinese language learning and why it takes so long to be fluent.

02:21 Chinese writing system. Characters and the guessing game of how to read them
04:55 Even international words change to become unrecognizable in Chinese, so you can't simply guess what they will sound like
08:23 Pronunciation is notoriously difficult for learners, with all its similar sounds and tones. Dialects with their own pronunciation rules only make matters worse!
09:05 A very limited toolbox of available syllables makes Chinese is a language of homophones and near-homophones
10:46 No matter how well you master the characters and pronunciation, you need to learn the cultural context - the history, literature and modern culture of which Westerners know so little

Disclaimer! The video is by no means meant to discourage you from learning Chinese, which is an amazing, beautiful and very interesting language to study. But it's important to understand that the progress will be taking much slower compared to other languages. And as learners, we should support each other and find ways to be ok with that.

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