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- "学习汉语难吗?"
"学习汉语难吗?"
Translation:Is it difficult to learn Chinese?
39 Comments
585
Some lookalikes that we saw:
请 (qǐng) = please
谁 (shéi) = who
准 (zhǔn) = to allow
难 (nán) = difficult (to)/problem/difficult
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.
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.
310
Difficult and hard can be used interchangeably here but "How hard?" means asking for a degree of difficulty. They are asking "is it hard?" (yes/no).