User blog comment:Razlem/How do you prefer to learn a language?/@comment-1589986-20100721155251

@Razlem I'm not sure where you're getting your opinions on Chinese. Sure, there's differences. A Beijinger might say something like: vǒ zuì sǐ hua zhè ge yīn rè dūng siēr hé bāo zi. While a southern speaker may say: wǒ zhrèi xǐ huan zhèi ge yīn yè dōng xi tóng bāo zhi. Yes, these people would not understand each other, even though they are saying the same thing, but if you listen to Chinese radio, you can develop a neutral accent for everyone to understand you. Chinese radio anchors are chosen for their neutral accents. And don't even go into Cantonese, Hokkien, Shanghaiese, Teochew, Taishan, or Hakka. Although they sound cool, you have to have a good reason.

My problem with Chinese isn't the tones, consonants, or vowels, but it's the timing that gets to me, and it's so awkward people can't bear to listen to me.

Somehow Chinese has always seemed the hardest language to me. Hungarian is supposed to be realy hard, but not really… Just a lot of memorisation.

My trick is basically to try to absorb the language, like try to think using their word order. Therefore think Chinese very easy.