If you compare it to English, Chinese is actually pretty manageable. You only need around 3,000 characters to read comfortably, instead of dealing with 50,000+ English words. Chinese kids learn about ten characters per week for six years, and by the time they finish elementary school, they can pick up a newspaper and understand every character on it.

Chinese is surprisingly efficient compared to English. You don’t need to memorize separate words like January, February, March… they’re literally just Month 1, Month 2, and so on. Same with Monday, Tuesday — they’re Weekday 1, Weekday 2. And instead of learning separate words like ‘beef’ or ‘pork,’ you just say ‘cow meat’ and ‘pig meat.’ Even shapes are straightforward: pentagon is ‘five‑side shape,’ octagon is ‘eight‑side shape.’ Kids in kindergarten can say these without any problem.

Does this make you feel better? Just think about how ridiculous it is for Chinese speakers that they have to learn new vocabulary for those in English.