Similarities between English learning & Chinese Learning

At first glance, the English and Chinese languages are drastically different. While the English has one language, there are several different dialects in China with Mandarin being the official and overriding Chinese language.

English is based on letters in the alphabet. Chinese (most Mandarin, but generally common in all of its dialects) uses a variation of pictures – not an alphabet – that doesn’t correspond sound to meaning.

However, there are many similarities between the two languages. As a result, you may be surprised that Chinese speakers actually have an easier time learning English language than previously imagined.

Both do use vowels and consonant sounds and are related to semantics involving synonyms and antonyms. Their sentence structure is also relatively close in comparison.

Also, there is the use of inflections in both languages, but there are very few of them. While English tends to add “ed” to indicate something in the past, the Chinese language has a similar way of expressing past tense.

A lot of the Chinese language deals with the four tones which provide different meanings to the same pronunciation. English is actually somewhat similar in that there are words that can mean something different based on the context.

So learning English language may not be as difficult and different as one can imagine.