qihqi

there is some misunderstandings of Chinese... we all seems to agree that Chinese is a difficult language, but it is not because of characters. Even it is true that writing characters is relatively harder the write ABC, it is still not that hard for normal person to handle. In fact, it is true that chinese kid learn 6 years of writing chinese during the elementary school, but the concentration of characters we learn is so loose, is like in average we just learn 2 characters per day(because stuffs like literature, poems, pinyin, structure are all covered at language art class). In the elementary years, we also get a solid mathematical base, in which, if we don't do anything but just learning characters, it is expected to be masterized within 2 years for native speaker.
In my expericience, the top difficulties for westerns learning chinese are:
1. cultural and sentence-structural difference between chinese and latin-greek systemed language
2. speaking the 4 toned phonetic.
3. know the words.
writing is difinitely less difficult than those above.
.

first, as I argued above, the 7 to 8 years estimated is too far to be precise
second: characters=/=words.
characters formed words, just like letter form words for english. the difference is characters have meaning but letters ussually not.
how the guy difined "comparable level" is still a myth, but you realised that with 3000 characters how many words can we form?? how can respective country archieve the "comparable level" if there isn't such unit of "characters"
and we don't need to know 3000 characters in order to have a good reading, I mearly know as much as 600 to 700 characters, and I feel that I have a pretty solid reading ability in chinese. normally, knowing 2000 words is enough for foreigh learners and that only require a small amount of characters.

pd: English is not pure phonetic based neither.

BedHead

Qihqi: I respect everything you've said. I think the debate has played out. I'll let you have the last word.

I thought about my recommendation for Spanish for this speaker, and I think I might have gone the other way if 1) the OP said he/she was really good at languages and 2) he/she demonstrated a burning interest in Chinese society and culture.

So here's a question for you: I have an 11 month old daughter who will be bilingual anyway since we don't speak English at home. I want her to learn Chinese too, and will put her in a day care situation and possibly elementary school to get her this experience.

So here's something I had never really thought about before but maybe will now: Cantonese or Mandarin for my daughter?

One advantage is that I could follow her studies if it's in Mandarin. But learning Cantonese as a kid would enable her to learn a language that's even tougher than Mandarin and she'll be able to read in any case.

What would you suggest?

Coño

Mandarin has many more speakers and is much more widely spoken, isn't it? If yes, I think the question answers itself.

BedHead, what do you speak at home? I've read before that instead of completely outing English, it's best if one parent speaks a language and the other speaks another language (however, it's recommended that one speak their native language at the risk of passing on a less than decent accent in a foreign language).

BedHead

Portuguese. My daughter lives in an environment of almost all Portuguese. But I speak only English to her and spend considerable time saying and repeating things. She'll get English from her environment eventually. And Spanish will be easy for her.

I avoid speaking Portuguese with her because a) I make grammatical mistakes and I don't want her to be confused -- and experts say this is the biggest problem and b) it prolongs confusion to have shifting going on between languages. I may be prolonging the confusion because I don't speak English with my wife; this should stop.

For me, ultimately, the most important thing will be to choose environments that are happy for her whatever the language. But, man, if she could speak Chinese with a native's accent, it'd be the most surprising thing coming from the mouth of a toe-headed, blue-eyed girl.

ruca

I'm biased towards Spanish because I'm minoring in it and I think it's the most beautiful, practical language that I know anything about... but really, unless you're up for the *huge* challenge of learning a language so drastically different from English (which I presume is your native tongue) go with Spanish. Learning Chinese is a huge process.

qihqi

I am scared... haha.... just joking...

my friend, I could suggest you to learn both. first mandarin then cantonese. the effort of learning two vs. learning only differs a little. Is like to learn Portuguese is easy if one already knows Spanish...In fact, learning cantonese after knowing mandarin is even easier: both shares same writing, word pool and grammatical structure, only difference is that the same words are pronounced differently, thus making those two sound different. In theory, learning one of those dialects can be done by linking the pronounciation rules of both, if one already knows one of them. If you feels better let your daughter learn first cantonese then madarin the result will be same, just a little more harder, as there is not an official pronounciation for cantonese nor for any province dialect. PM me if you have further questions :-)

To everyone: we are really agreed in most parts. the only point that I don't agree and thus the reason I am debating against you guys is the idea of "pinyin (or other phonetic and/or letter based system) will substitute charecters in long run" argument. And in fact this details are far from being relevant for the original question.

BedHead

I agree entirely with you Qihqi that pinyin or another phonetic system will not substitute for characters.

Thanks for the feedback. I guess I'll start her on Mandarin, only because I'll know what her lessons are about. With Cantonese, I'd be lost.