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Old 22-Apr-2005, 15:16
shane shane is offline
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Default Re: the use of "the" by ESL student

Hi Dany,
Chinese is difficult in some respects, and relatively straightforward in others. The writing is pretty tough to learn, as it's basically a series of drawings, and each 'stroke' has a set order. To complicate things, some characters are almost identical save for one stroke.

Oral Chinese can be a bit tough, as there are four tones (in Mandarin, anyway), so each word can have four meanings, depending on how it is pronounced.

So how is it easier? Well, generally speaking, Chinese doesn't use tense, so there's no need to learn different forms of verbs! But, there's no the.
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