Question: After some time learning Chinese, I feel Chinese language is more ambiguous than English or Spanish, in the sense that a single sentence without some context can easily have multiple distinct meanings, for example, when there are characters with different meanings such as 想 with think/want/miss or 让 with let/ask (and the situation can be even worse in an oral conversation with homophone characters).

**Question:** I would like to hear what more advanced learners or Chinese natives think about this appreciation. In particular, is it true Chinese is in general more ambiguous than English? So for the same sentence in Chinese than in English, do you usually need to provide more context in order to transmit a message?

Answer: 
TL;DR I would say so, yes.

One type of ambiguity is given by the [isolating nature](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolating_language) of the language (i.e. absence of inflection) combined with a high frequency of homophones.

Which means if you hear me saying *bei1 ju4*, am I talking about a tragedy 悲剧 or glassware 杯具？This requires context to disambiguate.

You might think: "well that's easy to disambiguate". Okay, what about you hear me saying: 我的 ji4 yi4 很差! Is it 记忆 (memory) or 技艺 (skill)?!

As you can see, this ambiguity exists in *speech only*. In writing, you readily identify what I'm talking about by just looking at the actual characters.

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Another type of ambiguity is given by the lack of verb tenses, which makes it harder to figure out if someone is talking about a past, present or future event. This usually requires time indicators (那时候，今天，明天，去年，当时), particles or auxiliaries (过，了，将，要), or a larger frame of reference, e.g. a previous sentence.  

**But** it's possible to argue, and it's a valid argument in my opinion, that this kind of ambiguity *practically* exists only when you compare Chinese to a language with different grammatical features, and not in absolute. As your proficiency level increases, you simply **get used** to how the language flows.

And at that point the comparison with English is maybe a little moot: the two languages are just 不一样。

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**Edit**:
As an additional note, English itself doesn't lack weird ambiguities, apparently known as [garden-path sentences](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence)
As a native mandarin speaker I don't quite agree with the examples by blackgreen or user21820.

In my opinion 技艺 is a rather literary word that rarely, if at all, appears in speech, while 技术 is a more casual word; *colloquial speech* itself is a very important context. Moreover, 我的...很差 is a pretty casual expression. It sounds weird for a literary word to be used together with a casual expression. One either says 我的技术很差, or 我技艺不精. 技艺不精 is a quite common expression, used both in colloquial and formal language. As for 杯具, I don't remember hearing or seeing its usage ever, except as an internet slang for 悲剧. In short, homophones really don't cause much trouble for native speakers. Context *is* important, but I would hesitate to say we need *more* context. There's always some context, unless you are doing listening practice instead of actual conversation.

As for tenses, right there's no verb tense in Chinese, but that's what those time indicators are for! Let me try to translate user21820's example. I'm using 读 for read, although 看 is equally fine and more casual.

Past tenses:

I had read the book. 我当时已经读过那本书

I read the book. 我读(完)了那本书

I had been reading the book. 我当时读了那本书有一会儿了/我当时一直在读那本书

Present tenses:

I have read the book. 我读过那本书

I have been reading the book. 我读那本书有一会儿了/我最近(一直)在读那本书 If it were "I have been reading the book for 3 days" then we could simply say 我那本书读了三天了

I am reading the book. 我正在读那本书

Future tenses:

I will have read the book. 我届时会读完那本书

I will read the book. 我会读那本书

I will be reading the book. 我会在读那本书

It's always less ambiguous if the sentence includes time signal, as is often the case in real conversation. E.g., "I will have read the book by the end of this week" translates to "我这周结束前会看完那本书". In general, adding more information makes the sentence less ambiguous, and I think that's fine, unless you insist on expressing exactly the amount of information you would like to.