Learner-friendly language in some ways: 00 (An introduction)

(This is my simplistic summary, not a serious pedagogic thesis.)

The Chinese language has a fearsome reputation in general, with so many seemingly insurmountable hurdles in the way of the learner who is brave enough to venture into its realm.

    The script is unique (the overlaps with Korean [pre-1970s] and Japanese [post 4th/5th centuries AD] are borrowings by those languages).  A lot of European languages share the same alphabet, which generally makes it easier for people from one European country to learn the language of another European country.

    The sounds:  Chinese is a tonal language, which most non-Chinese people have trouble managing.  (I'm only thinking of Mandarin which has four main basic tones [vs, say, Cantonese which has six], and standard readings [not tone changes when uttered in combination].)

    The grammar is not unique (in some ways, it's similar to German and Japanese, e.g., with the main verb coming at the end of the sentence -- my simplistic summary from my own limited knowledge), but it does vary quite a bit from English, the language that has been the global language.

    Now for the good news before you decide to give up on the language altogether:  there are elements to the language that make life much easier for the learner of Chinese (than for the learner of English).

Language acquisition and language loss (Estonia, Sweden, Germany, UK)

Friend Lars’s aunt was born in Estonia, brought up in Sweden, then moved to Germany before finally settling in England.  

So, her language acquisition was in the order of: (1) Estonian; (2) Swedish; (3) German; (4) English.  

In her later years, as Alzheimer’s started to get a grip on her, she began to lose her English, so my friend had to converse with her in German.  

The next language to go was her German, which made my friend resort to using Swedish.  

In the end, my friend had to go and learn Estonian when her Swedish started to disappear as well.  

So the “last in, first out” principle applies not just to employment and redundancy, but to language loss as well.


Update 251111:  The penny's just dropped.  People say Alzheimer sufferers can remember things that happened way back but not what they did a few minutes ago.  This language loss case is the same pattern.


Update 041211:  I spoke my S.E.Chinese dialect of Teochew/Chaozhou/潮州 until the age of six when I then went to school and started acquiring higher level language usage (e.g., abstract concept vocabulary and expressions of ideas and thoughts) in English and Mandarin, so my level of dialect is something like that of a ten-year-old.  Should Alzheimer's hit me, will I end up with just my dialect (as that was the first language I acquired), and therefore communicating like a ten-year-old??  Eek.