Admittedly, this is for native non-English speakers, but I just wanted to talk about peculiarities of the Chinese language, especially Cantonese.
I don't know much about other languages, but I'm fairly sure that it's unique insofar that in common parlance, almost half of what you say cannot be written down (in characters, that is). Hell, if you speak Cantonese as you're supposed to write it, people will look at you like you're a complete madman. Anyone who's been to Guangdong or Hong Kong for any amount of time or is from there will know what I'm talking about when I say 'mung-cha-cha' (which translates to 'confused'). It is an expression that is often used (to describe government, amongst other uses) but there are no characters that it can be written down with. The same goes with a lot of sentence endings, you'll hear Singaporeans and Malaysian Chinese say 'la' (while Cantonese will say 'a-maa'), even though: one, it can't be written down; and two, as one would imagine, it doesn't mean a damned thing.
And then there is the tonality of Cantonese that makes it one of the most difficult languages for people to learn. With four tones, one would've thought that Mandarin was bad enough, but Cantonese has eight. To go with 'ma', the example above would be 'ma3', 'ma4' would translate to 'horse', while 'a-ma2' is 'mother'. Another one would be 'yu', which, depending on tone, can translate to 'fish (3)', 'to meet (5 or 6 not sure which)' or 'rain (2)'. This is why, whenever English speakers try speaking Chinese without appreciating the tones, seriously, we don't know what the hell you're trying to say!
Your turn: what's weird about the language you speak? Or if you speak English only, what would you like to learn, and why?
I don't know much about other languages, but I'm fairly sure that it's unique insofar that in common parlance, almost half of what you say cannot be written down (in characters, that is). Hell, if you speak Cantonese as you're supposed to write it, people will look at you like you're a complete madman. Anyone who's been to Guangdong or Hong Kong for any amount of time or is from there will know what I'm talking about when I say 'mung-cha-cha' (which translates to 'confused'). It is an expression that is often used (to describe government, amongst other uses) but there are no characters that it can be written down with. The same goes with a lot of sentence endings, you'll hear Singaporeans and Malaysian Chinese say 'la' (while Cantonese will say 'a-maa'), even though: one, it can't be written down; and two, as one would imagine, it doesn't mean a damned thing.
And then there is the tonality of Cantonese that makes it one of the most difficult languages for people to learn. With four tones, one would've thought that Mandarin was bad enough, but Cantonese has eight. To go with 'ma', the example above would be 'ma3', 'ma4' would translate to 'horse', while 'a-ma2' is 'mother'. Another one would be 'yu', which, depending on tone, can translate to 'fish (3)', 'to meet (5 or 6 not sure which)' or 'rain (2)'. This is why, whenever English speakers try speaking Chinese without appreciating the tones, seriously, we don't know what the hell you're trying to say!
Your turn: what's weird about the language you speak? Or if you speak English only, what would you like to learn, and why?