What is easier to learn Italian or Chinese?

The simplest argument for why Italian is much easier to learn than Chinese is that Italian is actually related to English while Chinese is of no relation at all.

Both Italian and English are what's called Indo-European languages, meaning that they descended from a common ancestor that linguists call the Proto-Indo-European language. English and Italian belong to different branches of the family, but they're still relatives. Chinese, on the other hand, is a Sino-Tibetan language. Sino-Tibetan languages include Cantonese, Hakka and Tibetan as well as the national language of Bhutan, Dzongkha. Chinese is not even remotely related to English in anyway.

Just considering that should show you that, while some similarities exist between English and Italian, there are no similarities between English and Chinese. I can assure, as a linguistics student and someone who's taken Italian classes, that Italian is by far easier to learn than Chinese.

And, if that's not enough for you, the US Department of State's Foreign Institute categorizes foreign languages based on how hard they are to learn for English speakers. Languages are divided into three categories based on how hard they are, I being the easiest and III being the hardest. Italian is a Category I language while Chinese is Category III.

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For romance and germanic language speakers, it's easier to learn Italian.. However, the Chinese grammar is pretty simple, it's the pronounciation and the literary characters that make it hard for most Westerners.

I am Chinese, grew up in China and France, and I found out that French speakers have an advantage when it comes to speaking Chinese, so if you speak French, Chinese might be a good language to learn. Hope this helps :)

Believe it or not, Mandarin Chinese is actually one of the easiest languages out there, and for many reasons, but mostly because of the skeletal structure and hardly any conjugation. Try mastering conjugation in Italian... It's gonna take a while! Correct pronunciation and tonal usage is a different story in Chinese. That can be a challenge, but also probably wouldn't take that much longer to get a hang of than Italian. Whatever you decide, be weary of the learning method that you choose to use. Linguists, and people with vast experience in learning languages will almost always agree on the fact that most language learning methods out there are 50-70 percent fluff! It's pretty easy to get away with telling you that you'll be able to speak a language when for example, someone says "hello", they're speaking English, and it doesn't mean they can actually communicate. Being semi-fluent means you have a functional comprehension of at least 65% in the conventional range of that language, while fluent would be anything greater than 80%. If you don't have the time to learn a language properly, and you're after something quick and easy, then you're probably headed towards disappointment. The best method to getting as far as you can get in the shortest period of time is called the “3 step”. The first step is to complete a FULL Pimsleur (MUST BE PIMSLEUR) course. Listen to each lesson at least 2 times, taking notes the first time with new vocabulary and studying before listening the second time. The 2nd step is to form a list of the 3,000 most commonly used words/vocabulary in English, to also include the eight parts of speech (verbs, nouns, pronouns, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections), which you can search the web for. Once you've formed the list, you need to find accurate generic-translations, which you can apply to most common case scenarios of that language(definatley the most challenging part of all this).Once that's done, make flash cards or whichever method works best for you in memorizing vocabulary, but try to include each word in a sentence, in addition to just the new word and it's meaning. After you've memorized all that, the 3rd step is to locate 4 movies that are preferably some kind of Disney movie, or anything of a slower pace. Childrens movies seem to work best for this. Watch the movie in the language you're trying to learn with good, quality English subtitles. Watch ONLY these same 4 movies continuously as much as possible, to the point where you know what's going to be said next. Try to plan completing each step in this order, exactly as described within a time-frame of about 8-10 months. When you're done, you should be somewhere in the range of “semi-fluency”, at the point where learning after the “3 step” is quick and easy, and being close to fluent after 2 years of using it everyday, and learning at least an additional 100 new vocabulary words a month during that time. You'll thank me when you're done!

Italian by a longshot.

Even if the grammar in Chinese is easy compared to Italian, its overall difficulty overshadows everything else, imo. There are tens of thousands of characters in Chinese which all have to be learned, and with each character, you must learn the pronunciation(s) - because it is non-phonetic - the tones, its strokes, and its possible meanings. The large number of homonyms is also incredibly confusing. Plus it is not at all related to English the way Italian is.

So if you`re a native English speaker, or speak another Romance language fluently, Italian would be the ideal choice.

What I know is that Arabic language is very hard to learn. - The grammar rules are complicated. 28 letters, and some of are difficult to pronounce (you can with practice). - There are: 1) spoken Arabic (in which you have many many dialect, for example: egyptian, tunisian, lebanese, etc.). 2) Literary language (the one that is common for everyone, and the one you need to read a newspaper or a book). You don't have to learn both. It depends on your specific need: communication or educational. - The writing: each letter is written differently according to its position in the word. Despite all this, it is a great language, and mastering it will provide great satisfaction. I would agree about Italian being the easiest, because of the similarities with English. Also, my friend has told me this after studying in Italy.

I'm just like you, i hate studying grammar, that's my weak point, too. That's why I chose Italian, because I don't have to learn again how to write in different scripture.

Hey there,

If you wanna learn chinese quickly, you should apply to this course http://www.goobypls.com/r/rd.asp?gid=314

I guess it's the sotware you need.

Cheers.

italian! its similar to spanish and spanish is kinda easy, chinese is a whole new kind of language so I would avoid that

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