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Topic: Learn Chinese Month

November is Learn Chinese Month. The difficulties experienced by English speakers trying to learn this language spoken by millions are legion: there is no alphabet, and characters are comprised of strokes and components, so learners have no natural building blocks. Native English speakers (as well as native Chinese speakers) can't turn easily to dictionaries for help. How do you look up a word if it isn't categorized in alphabetical order?

Chinese also includes a huge number of characters to learn, and since Chinese is not an especially phonetic system, learners (and native speakers) struggling to remember how to write a particular word cannot prod their memories or turn to rules of pronunciation or spelling for assistance. In addition, many words pronounced identically are represented by very different characters.

And then, of course, there are those tones. Chinese is a tonal language, and every word has a tone (one of four) of its own. Forget the rise and fall (and stressed sounds) that English speakers use for emphasis; the only emphasis Chinese speakers use is the one specific to the word. While that instruction sounds simple, imagine speaking without adding emphasis to your words.

Questions or comments? Write us at wftw@aol.com Production and research support for Word for the Wise comes from Merriam-Webster, publisher of language reference books and Web sites including Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition.

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