Learning Mandarin Chinese can be a enjoyable and can be a very useful skill. With an economy growing by leaps and bounds, the importance of China on the world stage is increasingly felt. Chinese is the most frequently spoken language in the world with approximately 900 million speakers and is hence one of the key languages in the world culturally and in business.
Chinese can open doors to employment in a variety of occupations such as in virtually any business related to manufacturing as well as in teaching, translation, interpreting, and the growing travel industry. In the United States or other Western countries with large Chinese communities it can also lead to an increase rapport with Chinese employees that may be learning English or with contacts in companies abroad. With Asian economies growing significantly, learning Chinese greatly improves your chances of success in job markets dealing with these economies. Studying Chinese can be a fun task, as well as an important one.
Even if your just a casual traveler, learning it can also be beneficial since most of the sign boards and instructions in China are naturally written in Chinese, though the appearance of English signs is increasing. Studying Chinese to order food or communicate with locals, as well as talking with taxi drivers will enhance the experience of your travels significantly, if travel is your primary goal.
Studying Chinese is one step to joining the ranks of the businesses elite oriented toward the growing China market. Chinese is one of the great languages of the world. Learning Chinese is, as it is all over the western world, part of a world-class education. Mandarin is spoken in China and in Singapore, as well as in communities of Chinese immigrants.
Mandarin is not an easy language to learn and there is no single method can insure that the proficiency will be achieved without investment of time. So its important to vary your resources to insure that you maximize your language learning experience. Learning Chinese is one of the most complicated languages to learn for most English speakers given the pictorial script used.
Choosing the right methodology is of course critical and that can make learning the language a relative cake walk or much more difficult. Much importance should be given to the accent and pronunciations while learning Chinese.
Learning Chinese doesn't require expensive personal tutors. So you want to be careful not to end up paying more money than is necessary. It is an ongoing and involved process. While you can't learn the language overnight, you can find resources that may give you an edge time wise and simply the amount of effort you exert.
A critical challenge to remember is that of vocabulary. Having used various books and courses to learn to read Chinese I found several including the Pimsleur Method to be of benefit. The most valuable ones were those who made sure to present new vocabulary first. In the case of Mandarin, the most time will likely be spent on the script. Then a story using this new vocabulary in conjunction with previously learned vocabulary was presented. In terms of audio only programs, a variety of excellent courses are available.
--------
Jacob Lumbroso is an enthusiast for foreign languages, history, and foreign cultures. He writes articles on history and languages for and recommends
Pimsleur Mandarin courses to learn various languages.
