The Reason to Learn Chinese

"Why are all of your friends learning Chinese?" She had several friends going to Beijing on a trip, another going to Shanghai to see friends, and another one going to Hong Kong and then to Guizhou. All of these friends were trying to learn some Chinese so they could talk to people in China. This was impressive to think about all of these, probably older, people learning it.

China is a country on the move and very industrious. Shanghai has some of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen. I talked to a couple from Israel that has lived in Shanghai for many years and just loves it. I asked them when they would move back home and they told me that they were not sure that they would ever move back.

China is becoming increasingly important in the world and may be the dominant economic power in the not so distant future. The Chinese economy is the fastest growing economy in the world, and so in the work environment even speaking a little Chinese will give you a competitive edge, if your company invests in China or is considering doing so.

In 2008 the Olympics are being held in Beijing. In 2008 many foreign visitors will descend on China to watch the Olympics. It is an ideal opportunity, if you are lucky enough to be going, to stand out from the crowd by being one of the few who has learnt at least a few words of Mandarin.

Chinese, is one of the Sino-Tibetan languages, or more accurately it is a group of different dialects of which Mandarin (Putonghua) is one. Taken together there are more native speakers of Chinese than any other language. To put this in perspective there are approximately 915 million speakers of Mandarin (without including any of the other dialects such as Cantonese), compared to Spanish, the fourth most widely spoken language in the world with around 400 million speakers.