Learning languages...?

It may be difficult for you to learn Chinese, especially when you do not know any Asian languages well.

Maybe you can do language exchange with your boyfriend. Learn a few Chinese, then I am sure your relationships will progress!

My personal experience: I have never really immerse into Japanese language, but since I know Chinese characters (native), reading Japanese Hanji is easy! Like if you give me instructions or menu, I can easily figure out the meanings! So learning Chinese is helping your Japanese. Some words even sound similar or the same! You can spend less time in learning Hanji after you learn Katakana and Hiragana. There are also some Japanese cultural concepts that are similar to Chinese ones.

I do not recommend Rosetta Stone because even when I use it for Chinese (free trial ones), I have no idea how come it can teach people Chinese. I teach myself Russian using online resources like watching drama, listening to songs and searching for webs that are especially talking about Russian grammar. I am sure you can find similar things on Chinese. But you will have to ask your boyfriend about the characters since there are two writing system, Traditional and Simplified.

By the way, does your boyfriend speak Mandarin or Cantonese? Because these two are very different. Mandarin, as usual, written and spoken are the same. But Cantonese, written and spoken are not the same. If you use written form for speaking, Cantonese speakers will gawk as though you are abnormal.

Learning Chinese will be easy provided that there is someone who can help you on the language. After learning the characters, Japanese will be easier! If you have the passion, I am sure you can do it, especially when you are still young and have good memories. The younger you are, the better you learn.

Spanish is the easiest language to learn. Chinese is really hard so unless you have a good reason to learn Chinese, I would go with any of the Romance languages: Spanish, Portuguese, French or Italian. I am doing the Rosetta Stone program for French. It's intense but awesome. You have to work at a new language like every day if possible. The older you are (I am 65) the harder it is to learn a new language.

I have no idea what some people are talking about. Let's make this clear. Yes, for you it might be difficult to learn a foreign language if you have no experience but there's always a first time for everything.

Chinese is difficult firstly because it has a lot of characters and even the Chinese themselves do not know all of them. (When I say a lot I mean around 80000 characters.) On the other hand, it has four tones which can totally change the meaning of a word. Like "mā" means mother, "má" means numb etc. And we're talking about Mandarin Chinese (the simplified version!). Grammar-wise, Chinese has a very very simple grammar.

Japanese uses three writing systems - Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana. Kanji is used to write mostly words of Japanese/Chinese origin. Katakana is used to write foreign words, onomatopoeia etc. It is easier to speak Japanese because it has no tones, but the grammar is harder.

PS: For the record, I wish to point out that there is no such thing as "Chinese alphabet". Those are not letters, but rather logograms, which means an image that represents a word.

There is really no hard or easy languages, just different ones. Babies all learn their native language at the same rate, regardless of the language. In my opinion, learning a new language is one of the most natural things you can do. Of the two, I would suggest Chinese because your boyfriend is a native speaker and in my experience having someone with native or native like understanding of a language is crucial

Extremely difficult. Not only is it two different languages with different dialects, but they have symbols. Languages with symbols are usually the most complex in the world. One left out line or sound could mean the different from a greeting to insult. I hear that Rosetta Stone is good, yet it is truly pricey. As for classes, that's another story.

What the hell are you guys talking about? Learning Chinese is difficult because there are so many letters.. even native speakers don't know all the letters. Age has nothing to do with anything, kids don't have the attitude holding them back, that's all.

Japanese however is easy, the only thing about it is that the letters look completely different from English letters. But the difficulty of learning it is easy-medium, it's different looking, nothing else.

If you made the decision in learning to speak Chinese then you must now that the greatest selection is a Course for Mandarin.

Learning Chinese is hard because it's an entirely different alphabet, learning to speak it isn't hard, its learning to read and write that will really get you.

East Asian languages are very hard for native English speakers.

I have no idea about learning those languages.To me they look like a linguistic nightmare.However I am sure that if you apply yourself you can learn much of either one.The children out there seem to do o.k.