"学习汉语难吗？"
Translation:Is it difficult to learn Chinese?
25 Comments
I don't think it's much harder than any other language- the tones are really the only tricky part, in my experience.
Probably depends on your cultural background. I'm finding it incredibly difficult as it's so different from European languages. Even Russian had something I could pin to existing knowledge. And the writing system is very complex - after several months I can just about write the pronouns, and barely read little more. It's certainly a challenge, but fun.
225
There is a bug with the audio. It sounds like 难 is pronounced "ná" instead of the correct "nán".
This is not a bug. Syllable final "n" often becomes a simple nasalization of the preceding vowel. Therefore, "nán" becomes "nã'". To the untrained ear, it sounds like "ná". With experience, you will hear the nasalization.
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Thanks for the explanation. I suppose it sounded that way to me because the male voice on mobile pronounced "nán" so fast.
很 is often used for "cadence" or to make the sentence "flow". Note that here we have groups of 2 characters 学习, 汉语, and 难吗; so this flows nicely. Without 吗, as just a statement, 学习汉语难 doesn't flow as nicely so the speaker would more likely add 很. This is by no means a hard and fast rule and there are many exceptions; like 要不要 etc.
The male audio voice of this sentence is strange. The last two characters are pronounced as "nán ma."
To me (Taiwanese speaker) the tone of "吗" sounds like 1st tone (high tone, mā), although it is marked as neutral tone.
