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By: Peekay-Writes

The Chinese are known for their puzzles, and their languages are equally puzzling to most Europeans. China is becoming a much more prominent world power now, and trade with China is extremely important to most Western nations. For those reasons, Chinese is becoming an increasingly popular language to learn but apart from an increase in trade and global events, what’s the point of learning Chinese? Chinese culture has given us some wonderful inventions in the past, with the most important four being paper, the compass, gunpowder and printing. There is a rich history of literature and culture in China and knowledge of the language opens up a wealth of opportunities for cultural exchange as well as economic benefits.

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The Chinese are known for their puzzles, and their languages are equally puzzling to most Europeans. China is becoming a much more prominent world power now, and trade with China is extremely important to most Western nations. For those reasons, Chinese is becoming an increasingly popular language to learn but apart from an increase in trade and global events, what’s the point of learning Chinese? Chinese culture has given us some wonderful inventions in the past, with the most important four being paper, the compass, gunpowder and printing. There is a rich history of literature and culture in China and knowledge of the language opens up a wealth of opportunities for cultural exchange as well as economic benefits.

What you may not know is that there are many different Chinese languages, and a speaker of one won’t necessarily understand another. The most widely spoken is Mandarin Chinese (approx 850 million speakers), followed by Wu (90 million), Cantonese, and Min (both 70 million). Mandarin is the most commonly learned by non-native speakers and it is one of the six official languages of the United Nations.

Learning Chinese doesn’t need to be difficult. Some people find it very hard but it is easier if you throw out all previous knowledge you have of how a language works. In some ways, Chinese is easy. There are no tenses, and words do not change according to their use like they do in most Indo-European languages. If you remember learning verb patterns in French and the thought of doing that fills you with horror, then you needn’t worry because in Chinese there aren’t any verb patterns to learn. Chinese grammar isn’t all simple though. There are major differences between Chinese and European languages such as Spanish in word order, especially in complex sentences.

If you like learning things aurally then Chinese is ideal for you if you just want to learn the spoken language. You do need to have a good ear though because Chinese is a tonal language and if you say a word with the wrong tone you can drastically change its meaning!

Learning to write Chinese is much more difficult, especially as there are several different writing systems used. The one that most Chinese speakers use is the simplified character system (which is still very complicated!). It isn’t impossible though, and with practice it can be mastered.

Chinese classes are getting much more common in the UK with most major cities offering opportunities to learn it. The Open University also run a Chinese language course, and the BBC languages service enables you to learn online. For the best exposure to the language though you can’t beat learning on location in China. It is sometimes possible to combine this with teaching English (whether or not you have prior experience), and this will give you great experience of living abroad and seeing other parts of the world in an affordable way. There is lots of information online about learning Chinese, including www.learningchinese.net which has tons of information about learning online and in China.

By: Peekay-Writes

Paula is a qualified EFL teacher who has taught in the UK and abroad. She has also taught adult literacy and numeracy in prisons and is now combining a small amount of private teaching with writing.