Is English your first language?

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  • Smartasscookie
    12 years ago | pl

    It could be possible, I have a friend who learnt English when he was 8, by the time he got to 17 he couldn't remember how to write the majority of the chinese chrachters. Okay maybe that was an extreme example, mandarin is an impossible language to master >.<

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    • dappled
      12 years ago | pl

      I'd love to try but I got put off by a colleague at work. He was born in Hong Kong and only speaks Cantonese but has been trying to learn Mandarin because that seems to be becoming more prevalent outside of China. He's having all kinds of problems and when he tried to explain the six tone sounds going down to four tone sounds, it fried my brain. I just don't think I could ever determine the difference in quick speech.

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      • Smartasscookie
        12 years ago | pl

        I speak mandarin, don't understand a word of Cantonese, might as well be two different languages :/
        Learning to speak it is not too bad, we don't have different verb endings, we just use the infinitive, plus to speak in different tenses you just add a time frame and/or one word. Writing is a nightmate though, bleugh

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