The Learning Curve: DOTA and Mandarin

After a game of DOTA today, my mind began to ponder about the similarity of DOTA: Allstars (Defense of the Ancient) and Mandarin - The primary language of the Chinese.

I've observed the popularity of this game (I'm a player of the game myself) in the past 5 years and the one thing it has in common with the chinese language is it's steep learning curve.

Think about it, in DOTA we have 100 different playable heroes, 56 different items 63 different item recipe combinations, a gigantic map (layout, hidden paths, fog of war analysis) and UNLIMITED hero combinations!! With all these factors at hand, no wonder DOTA keeps new players from entering the scene...

Memorize this and you're one step to victory, all the best  ^_^

Then we have Mandarin. This language has 400 pronunciations, 4 different sounds in each pronunciations called Han Yu Pìn Yin, 3-6 different chinese characters for each pronunciation on average and most characters having more than 2 meanings and sounds each!! Put it together: 400*4*3=4800 different sounds to practice. That's not it, we still have 10,000 OMGWTF combination of chinese characters which give different meanings for daily usage. Now I understand why it's easier for me, a Chinese to learn Japanese!

To sum it up, there seems to be a good reason why chinese just love playing DOTA. It's just like home to them who are using a language which takes a lifetime to be decent at all, let alone learning it as a secondary language.