Regarding my French, I think you would be surprised. In speaking I have an accent, but in writing I tend to do less mistakes than my French colleagues. The same happens to me in English and Spanish, it is just because my main hobby is reading, and the fact is most people out there just dont read so much, even in their native language. So the situation is that I have read more French books than most French people my age (who rarely read). This includes things as varied as Proust, the whole series of San Antonio and memorizing all the songs of Brassens (which I used to play on the guitar). Similar situation with my English.

Admittedly, from my writing people could tell I am not native, but not because my mistakes are too many, rather because they are different form mistakes natives do. Also because there is a phenomenon of hypercorrection, and a style that tends to be too grammatical, as opposed to the natural transcription of speech. But I don’t mind too much these things, and I take heart in the knowledge that even the great Nabokov had this problem and some scholars have counted dozens of grammar faults in Lolita. There is still hope for me

Back to the main topic though: your calcium chloride/cloruro de calcio, etc is an example of what I call Code as opposed to Data. There a re simple rules to follow (ie in English it is -ide ending where in Spanish (Italian?) it is -uro ). But the words are the same. In Chinese you have to learn not only the Code rules, but also the whole set of roots for each element and most used combinations in organic chemistry PLUS you have to learn a character for each of them! So just to repeat again: I am not saying all the languages are THE SAME at a high level, I am just saying their Data element is the same. The Code element is much easier to master once you are already in the upper intermediate.

Re: ONU is the same in Spanish as in French, no NU. Regarding dystopia, it is just a writing typo, it reminds me of a common error called the Attila/Atilla conversion (search the language log if you are curious) where it is common for native writers to mistake the position of one double consonant where there are 2 possibilites. Anyway, things like ONU and dystopia dont give me away as foreign. What does give me away is using “safety” instead of “security”, for example, because both are the same in Spanish… etc.

I read your examples of “hard words the same in most languages in the world” and I am not completely convinced. I am French, I understood them, and I could translate them in French, but it is not evident and I am not convinced an English-speaker learning French would know how to use them. For example, “calcium chloride” is “chlorure de calcium”. How do you guess that if you never studied chemistry in French ? How do you guess that “political correctness” is “politiquement correct” (literally “politically correct”, used as a both a noun and an adjective, however “correct” alone is never a noun). By the way, “distopya” does not exist, it is “dystopia” ;o) Ironic much ?

When you say “I can read and write as fast and complex as any of my French colleagues with similar backgrounds”, I am not quite sure I believe you. I’m sure that reading is OK, but when you write it is probably possible to guess it was written by a foreigner. No doubt you can write very well and make few mistakes, but still, these are not the mistakes a French would do. For example we don’t say NU for UN, but always ONU.

I am not writing all this to bash your French, it is very good ;o) I just want to point out that every language is hard to speak and write perfectly (at least the ones I know : French, English and Mandarin, I have to venture a guess for the others …). In other words, I think your analysis concerning the difficulty of a language linked to common vocabulary is mostly relevant for passive knowledge. I never studied Italian and yes a read a technical text of Italian much more easily than the same text in Chinese. I could probably understand “calcium chloride” in Italian. However, I you ask me how to say “calcium chloride” in Italian, I don’t know. And when I write English, there are often “frenchism”, words which are not exactly English, or words which evolved differently and are now pedantic in English while perfectly normal in French.

I am with you for the proper names however, not to put the real name is stupid (the opposite is true too, imagine I find a interesting article about a minor Chinese personality in a western newspaper, how am I supposed to find more information with only a pinyin without tones ?).

And of course, I also believe that Chinese is the hardest language in the world, if only to justify the hard work and years of fun I am having learning it …

This is embarrassing actually, but until today I didn’t know the meaning of 猫王 … Literally it is the Cat King, for those who don’t speak Chinese.

The shuffle was playing Heartbreak Hotel on my laptop, and Xiaoyi said: “hey, that is the Cat King!”

And I go: “no silly, that is Elvis!”

… and now I know the meaning of 猫王 – try learning that in your 8 to 9 evening classes twice a week

Idioms sometimes confuse me, but thinking about the entomology of each word for a second make it easy enough to figure it out within 30 seconds, where as English idioms that I have never formally learned or heard still confuse me.

In short, I found Chinese to be very easy, but I have given up on ever having to learn a second European language; verbs that change, male/female verbs etc etc now these are hard. Asian languages are easy in comparison.

1- Their problem is mitigated because Western languages use latin alphabet not characters, this makes things easier.

2- In spite of #1, they do have a lot of trouble with high level vocabulary in Western languages. Even for Chinese who speak very good English and spent some time in the West, it happens very often that relatively unusual words like say “onomatopeia” or “magnanimous” are unknown to them. The ones that like reading usually get over this thanks to #1, but the ones who don’t are always stuck in very simple vocabulary.

However, I guess Joe above has found a magic secret that allows him to get around all this, or at least the entirely human urge to vent about it!

My one question, therefore, is how about Chinese immigrants to the west? There are an awful lot of Chinese people working in technical fields which require specialist vocabulary, many of them seem to be able to master English/French/German/etc. technical language, and whilst having a phonetic script with clearly separated words may make this easier, it can’t be that hard – or can it?

One example: yixi is ethylene. How bout that?? LOL