It's interesting that everyone seems to have the impression that their language is one of the hardest to learn. Growing up for some reason I definitely thought it about English. When I lived in Germany they thought it about German.

What are the difficulties in the Dutch language? I can read a fair bit of Dutch knowing German and English and it seems reasonably straightforward to me, but I am definitely not super familiar with it (which is why I ask).

When I was learning German I found it ridiculously hard - but it only took me about 5 months to become reasonably fluent. In the end I realized it was just that things were _different_, not especially more difficult - and that certain things were actually much easier (e.g. verb conjugations, spelling, pronunciation, more consistent grammar rules).

>>> It's interesting that everyone seems to have the impression that their language is one of the hardest to learn.

True that. I believe it's because you study your native language at much greater detail / more advanced less common issues. While for foreign languages, you usually just study common issues, the every day kind of things. That gives an impression that it's extremely hard because of all the edge cases and etc.

I've been learning some Mandarin on my own (via ChinesePod podcasts, mostly), and tried it out on two trips to Beijing. A friend recommended that I try spoken Mandarin, and that I ignore reading and writing almost completely, since that's quite hard.

Truth be told, I've found learning Chinese to be incredibly fun and exciting. My plan is to take some one-on-one Internet-based tutorials starting in the coming months; the fact that I'll be in China on business three times in the coming eight months just boosts my interest. I've been there twice before, and knowing some Mandarin was VERY useful.

I've been amazed by how simple the basic grammar is; on that part, Chinese seems easier than the other languages I've learned. (I'm a native English speaker, and have fluent Hebrew and took Spanish for a number of years in school.)

The tones do seem to be a problem; I understand the ideas behind them, but the sounds do see fairly subtle to me. I'll keep pushing ahead, though, and hope to improve the sounds I make and those I can understand.

For me, this article seemed spot-on in only one area, namely the lack of cognates. In both Hebrew and Spanish, there are enough words that overlap, particularly for modern terms, that you can sorta kinda figure some things out. I've been amazed by how completely, bafflingly, absurdly different everything is in Chinese. Then again, that's part of the fun for me; every word or phrase I learn, I feel I'm cracking a secret code.

I'm also going to agree with those who say that English is not particularly easy, at least when it comes the grammar and pronunciation. Yes, having an alphabet certainly helps, but my children took quite a while to learn all of the complex rules for English reading, and I'm convinced that in some cases, the only solution is to read the whole word, rather than sound it out.

I'd definitely recommend learning Mandarin, both for the fun and the utility. And people in China are completely amazed and impressed that you're trying to learn their language, which is good for scoring some political points, as well!

My experience was similar, that at least the basics of the language are easy. The hard part is if you want to learn to read and write-- it's a ton of memorization. It doesn't get any easier, either. Some characters have a radical which is a pronunciation hint, a meaning hint, both, neither, etc.

The other, other part is speaking idiomatically. There are a ton of idioms.

Don't forget about measure words, either. :)

I think you can make yourself understood easily enough, as I could chat a bit with Chinese coworkers or waitresses. But I suspect to truly master it, it's a lot harder than a language (e.g.) with an alphabet.

Not to nit-pick, but Chinese has as much grammar as any other language. The idea that Chinese "lacks grammar" needs to die. It seems to stem from the very eurocentric view that grammar consists of rules for inflecting words according to case, number, gender, etc. While Chinese lacks these, it does have rules and patterns which dictate how sentences are formed (e.g. the use of'le', topic marking, measure words) - it just doesn't use patterns familiar to speakers of indo-european languages.

I'm not saying it doesn't have any grammar at all. But you try to speak Dutch for a month and come back and tell me how you feel about Chinese grammar.

> Dutch is known for being one of the hardest languages to learn

My understanding is that Dutch is actually one of the easiest languages for native English speakers to learn.

What's hard about Dutch? I haven't studied Dutch at all, but because I speak English, German and Swedish, I understand 75% of written Dutch anyway. I'd have thought it was one of the easiest languages to learn if you already speak a European language or two.

this is the trap with Chinese, starting is easy but once you've reached a beginner level, progression is extremely hard and slow