Why Chinese is much easier to learn than French?

Arnold: ... because French vocabulary has so many words!

For example animals names. Where Chinese needs just a combinaison of few descriptive characters (male, female, small) French needs dozens of different words. Let's illustrates with two species pig and sheep.

　　　猪 (male + pig) cochon
　　公猪 (male + pig) verrat
　　母猪 (female + pig) truie
　　小猪 (small + pig) porcelet
　　野猪 (wild + pig) sanglier
　母野猪 (female + wild + pig) laie
　小野猪 (small + wild + pig) marcassin

　　　羊 (sheep) mouton
　　公羊 (male + sheep) bélier
　　母羊 (female + sheep) brebis
　　小羊 (small + sheep) agneau
　小母羊 (small + female + sheep) agnelle
　　山羊 (hill + sheep) chèvre
　公山羊 (male + hill + sheep) bouc
　小山羊 (small + hill + sheep) cabris

As you see for "pig", you have 7 different words in French : cochon, verrat, truie, porcelet, sanglier, laie, marcassin, and only 1 in Chinese : 猪, which you add descriptions (male, female...).

Another way to explain it, if you now how to say "horse" 马 in Chinese, you automatically know how to say "mare" 母马 (female + horse) and "foal" 小马 (small + horse). But if you know "cheval" (horse) in French, you have no way to guess "jument" (mare) and "poulain" (foal) which are totally different words.

AiyaKai: That's not necessarily true because in Chinese you have different words matched with different tones of your voice. A slight change in tone can change the entire meaning of the word like (i know this is an overused example but):

马 - [pinyin:ma 3] - meaning: horse
妈 - [pinyin:ma 1] - meaning: mother

Also in Chinese you have the pinyin to learn of the word as well as the actual character since Chinese unlike French is not a phonetic language.

Curval: This example is actually not a good one. In the first place, some of these nouns are almost never used outside technical contexts and are widely unknown by common French speakers. On the other hand, Chinese has an extremely varied vocabulary related, for example, to the horse: words such as 骧, 骤, 骣,骦, 骉, and so on have no exact translation in French... and by the way, are unknown to common Chinese speakers.

So French is more difficult because it has a complex grammar. And for people that speak languages with complex grammar, Chinese is definitely a hard language, because of its relative lack of structured grammar.

Vandechine: As a native speaker of chinese who is learning french and trying to teach someone chinese, I believe that the difficulty of french is its grammar and difficulties of chinese are its character system and pronunciation system, especially the former one.

The Chinese character is very hard for foreigners especially someone from western countries. Even some foreign citizens of Chinese origin who can speak chinese fluently can't read or write chinese characters. If someone just wants to learn oral chinese, I think it's much easier than to learn french. But if someone wants to learn written chinese, it's much harder.

Lanrenku8: be patient and work hard, and you will be rewarded one day. But one good thing for remember character is that, these chacacters are originated from pictures, by which you will always find fun and surprise.

Huajian: I studied English 6 month and pass easily in toefl, now i am in China for more than 9 month studying Chinese and i cannot even talk or understand what they'r talking about maybe reading is much easier.

Arnold: The same for 瓜 (guā)

　　冬瓜 (winter + melon) courge
　　木瓜 (wood + melon) papaye
　哈密瓜 (Hami + melon) melon
　　黄瓜 (yellow + melon) concombre
　　苦瓜 (bitter + melon) margose
　　南瓜 (south + melon) citrouille
　　西猪 (west + melon) pastèque

[Ed: *facepalm*]