How easy is it to learn Chinese for Indians?

Chinese is considered to be a difficult language to learn as per the Foreign Service Institute. This is based on English as a native language. Now, the difficulty level would vary from one individual to another. Also, there are many factors that determine the level of difficulty of a language for anyone. If we talk about how easy it is to learn Chinese for Indians particularly, well, it depends.

To begin with, most Indian students are accustomed to learning more than one language both personally and academically. Most people learn to speak their native language at home, English and a third language as part of their curriculum. The three-language policy of the Indian education system also plays a prominent role in encouraging students to learn languages. Thus, Indian students from a very early age become bilingual or multilingual. Thus, their experience with multiple languages can make it easy to learn and get accustomed to another new language which is Chinese.

Chinese is based on sounds. Learning these sounds could become easy for Indians as there are some similarities in these sounds with Hindi. India is a land of many languages. Depending on the native language a person speaks, an Indian can try to relate these sounds or different similarities or understand the differences from their native language and can learn Chinese.

The difficulty level may be high when it comes to the script and the tonal part because these are the major areas that a Chinese language learner needs to focus on which are also the major differences from other languages.

Learning grammar is an essential element of any language. Learning Chinese grammar may be difficult in the initial stages because at this stage you are completely unaware about how the grammar rules work.

As you progress to the intermediate levels you can observe that the absence of verb conjugations, tenses, singular and plural and not giving gender to objects can actually make learning the language easy for Indians.  This does not mean that there is no difficult element in grammar, but it is just different and needs better observation and comparison.

Whether an Indian or anyone else, learning a foreign language always takes a lot of time and hard work. Learners should weigh all pros and cons and be committed to put in all the efforts to become proficient in the language.  You can take the help of free resources available if you are a self-learner. You can also choose to join an online class where you learn with a teacher who guides you in a step-by-step manner.

Learning a language similar to your native language can definitely be easier when compared to a completely different language which is considered to be difficult globally. But never let that tag of being a difficult language weigh you down and stop you from learning Chinese. If you have learned languages other than your native language and are fluent in more than one language, you can definitely learn Chinese because you already know what works for you and how to learn a new language.