4 reasons why learning Chinese is a good idea
Learning a second language is no longer a luxury nowadays. English has long been the most popular second language around the globe, followed by French, Russian, Spanish, and so on. Have you noticed a little change in the language learning trend in recent years? There is an increasing popularity in learning Chinese around the world; in fact, Mandarin Chinese is even Australia’s second language.
Hence, let’s talk about why learning Chinese is a good idea, and it is not as scary as you might think.
- The most spoken language in the world
Despite English as the global language, Mandarin Chinese is claimed to be the most spoken language with more than 1 billion speakers all over the world. If you speak English, you are already speaking one of the three most spoken languages in the world; some of you might even speak Spanish too! In that case, learning Chinese will only mean speaking all the three most spoken languages in the world. You may think this won’t get you anywhere, but it really will! You would at least be the coolest kid in the room as you would be able to communicate with the majority of the world’s population.
2. The second largest economy in the world — OPPORTUNITIES!
The Chinese economy remains the second largest in the world and China is the largest trading partner for many countries. According to Quartz, China is the largest iPhone market in the world. As we all might have noticed, there is also an obvious growth in the Chinese outbound tourism market; the largest as reported by Cruise Industry News. In addition to that, Mandarin Chinese is also widely used in some countries in South East Asia. What does this tell us? This means a lot of business opportunities, as well as a way to boost your career prospects!
3. China — one of the world’s oldest living civilizations and cultures
With more than 5000 years of history and over 3500 years of written history dated back to the Shang Dynasty (1600–1046 bc), China is one of the longest continuous civilizations and the Chinese culture is considered one of the oldest in the world. Chinese writing system, too, is one of the oldest continuously used writing system with approximately 3500 years of history. Learning Chinese not only gives you an advantage of speaking another language, but also allows you to gain a broader understanding of one of the world’s oldest living civilizations.
4. It’s not as difficult as you think.
Chinese language is often presumed to be difficult to learn, owing to its logographic writing system — 汉字/ 漢字 (hànzì), and it might have defeated hundreds of Chinese language learners. However, it’s not as unachievable as it’s usually perceived. Chinese characters, 汉字/ 漢字 (hànzì), are undoubtedly not the simplest, and pronouncing the 5 tones (4 tones and a neutral) in Mandarin Chinese seems like a tall order for many learners. However, in spite of that, Chinese grammar is by far easier (compared to some other languages) with no conjugations, no tenses, no plurals; in short, it’s straightforward. All you need to do is to put words together to form a sentence. Speaking of which, the sentence structure of Chinese is also similar to English and many other languages, that is, the SVO (subject+verb+object) structure.
In my opinion, Chinese language is beautiful. With Mandarin as the standard/ official language, Chinese language also comprises several groups of spoken regional languages or dialects; for example, Yue (Cantonese), Min (Hokkien and Taiwanese), Gan, Hakka, and so forth. Many learners often find themselves wanting to learn some of the dialects too, usually Cantonese, once they get the hang of the writing system (hànzì) and Mandarin.
It’s time to abandon the misconception that mastering Chinese is an unattainable goal (because it’s NOT!). Join the community of the world’s most spoken language and Chat with Lanny to learn Mandarin Chinese now!
