"The characters are like drawing to me!" I heard it many times from my foreign friends. Every time when I heard of it, I laughed. Actually, it is a very interesting comment. When I learn other languages I may also have the feeling that the some parts of a language is so difficult. For example, I am in deep struggling of the conjugations of the verbs in Spanish. So one question brought about: in which part Mandarin is almost effortless to pick up?
First and foremost, the easiest part is the verbs in Mandarin. There are no tenses differences of verbs in Mandarin. Can you believe that so long you learn the “infinitive form " , you can express yourself well in the past, present and future. Of course, there is a function word used with the verb to help to indicate it's a past or future tense. But the functional verb is fixed. For example, in English we say “I went to the beach last week ","I go to the beach every summer" and "I am going to the beach tomorrow". “Went”, “go” and “am going to” are respectively used for three tenses. While in Mandarin we use " zuotian so qu le shatan." " Meige xiatian wo qu shatan." " mingtian wo qu shatan". So the verb 去 Qu which means go is non-changeable in these tenses. Besides, the verbs no need to be changed in the other forms such as present/past perfect tense, imperfect tenses. When you read this, do you feel release a lot?
Apart from the stable tenses, another benefit of Mandarin is that there is no conjugation in verbs neither. We know in Spanish there are conjugations of each verb for different person pronouns and tenses. Every time before I make a sentence in Spanish, I need to work in my mind all the forms of the conjugation in a quick way. However you don't need to worry to remember all those complicated conjugations in Mandarin. For example , just use the same verb 去 Qu4 for all the person pronouns. Wo qu (I go), ni qu( you go), ta qu(he/she go), wo men qu(we go), ni men qu (you go plural), ta men qu (they go). In Spanish it will have six conjugations, voy, vas, va, vamos, vais, van. So the same verb can be used for all the person pronouns. You can save the process to conjugate all in your mind before speaking.
There are other parts that are easier in Mandarin. Of course, some parts are not easy as well. The characters as most people may consider are the difficult part, especially for those who haven't understand the logic and hidden meanings. But once you starts learn, you will find there is logic and interesting stories behind some characters , which may help you to get closer to those "abstract drawing".
This is just a personal view. If you have interest in Mandarin or would like to share your opinion, you are more than welcome to leave a cooment or contact me at : )
