I can speak five languages pretty well (English, Urdu, Persian, Turkish, Arabic) and also have bits and pieces of other languages (French, Russian). The problem is when I focus on one the other suffer and I am experiencing this lately, with the exception of English which is my default operating system language.

I’d love to learn Mandarin and I feel this will be useful in the world to come but it seems like a greedy idea beyond the capacity of one person as well as a huge time commitment.

Writer, podcaster, and commentator on foreign affairs and politics. Runs /dropglobalnews

Clanker Broadcasting Service /cbs

I found learning to read Chinese very difficult because of the need to rote learn so many hanzi and I’m not a very visual person.

But as a spoken language it’s very logical and not that hard. Grammar is far simpler than European  languages,  intuitive compound words like computer 电脑  (electric brain) hippopotamus  河马 (river horse) abound. Even the tones are pretty easy to infer from context.

You should give it a go using pinyin!

Horticulturalist. Environmental hand wringer. Open source enthusiast.