You Can Learn Chinese in Asia - Opportunities Are Waiting

Thousands of people dream of traveling to Asia to learn Chinese. However, most of these people are not aware that it is very easy to obtain a scholarship at a university in China or Taiwan to learn the Chinese language. In fact, you can learn Chinese in Asia for a fraction of the cost of language lessons at home.

Of course, the first step is to arrive in Asia and that means buying a plane ticket and taking a plane. This is a significant expense. However, the cost of living in both Taiwan and China is very low. It is possible to live for quite a long time on very little money, even in major cities such as Hong Kong or Taipei. Also, the tuition for language courses at prominent universities is cheap to begin with, and is often made cheaper by scholarships. If you have a little money saved, you probably already have enough to achieve your dream of learning Chinese in Asia.

If you don't have much money, the opportunities for English teachers in both China and Taiwan are tremendous. If you speak English, and are generally friendly and patient person you'd probably have what it takes to be an English teacher. You don't need a TEFL certificate in order to get a teaching job in China or Taiwan, but you do need a university degree. An English teachers average monthly salary is about $2000, and probably enough for a comfortable standard of living and to cover the cost of tuition for a Chinese language learning program at a well-known university.

It is a frightening experience, to leave your home and travel to a foreign land to learn a foreign language, and the people who do will certainly tell you that it is not all wine and roses. However, I can almost guarantee that Westerners who learn Chinese in Asia do not regret their experiences. They are developing skills that will put them at the forefront of an expanding job market. And, most of them are having the time of their lives. It can be intimidating, but don't let your fear hold you back. It is possible to achieve your dream of learning Chinese in Asia.

Justin White lives in Jhubei Taiwan, and frantically works at learning Chinese.

Want to Learn Chinese Fast? Don't make the common mistakes that keep people struggling. Learn to avoid the pitfalls, and go to http://www.learn-chinese-fast.net for tips, tricks and strategies to improve the speed with which you learn Chinese, and decrease the amount of time it takes you to reach fluency.

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Should You Learn Traditional Chinese Characters Or the Simplified Ones? Pros and Cons

If you've been studying Chinese for a while and are considering moving on to learning to write Chinese characters, you've probably already realized that there is not one but two ways to write Chinese.

When China became a communist country, the new leadership faced a number of problems within the country. They had to modernize, to build international relationships, and to combat a tremendously high rate of illiteracy. Chinese peasants across the country lacked the ability to read and write. The Chinese government decided to simplify a number of characters in order to make learning to read and write in Chinese easier. The result is "simplified Chinese". Most of the characters are exactly the same, but a number of commonly used characters have been reduced and made simpler to facilitate literacy education in China.

The counterpoint to this is traditional Chinese, still widely used in Taiwan and in some other countries with Chinese populations. Traditional Chinese should not be confused with "classical Chinese", which a much older and more complex form that only scholars take the time to learn. Traditional Chinese is very similar to the simplified form, except that obviously some commonly used words are more difficult to write than in the simplified form.

If you've decided that you want to read and write in Chinese, you have to make a choice. You can either learn traditional Chinese, or the modern simplified form. There are a couple of things to consider before you make your final decision.

If you're traveling, your destination might make the decision for you. Travelers to Taiwan would be well advised to learn traditional Chinese because it is widely used there. If you plan to visit China, you can learn simplified Chinese and read it everywhere there.

If you have a serious scholarly interest in reading Chinese, it might be a better idea to make the extra effort to learn traditional Chinese. If you want to read any Chinese that was written before the People's Republic of China was formed, you'll need to learn traditional Chinese. If, for a masochistic or heroic reason you want to tackle classical Chinese, knowing the traditional characters will help you as well.

Finally, if you're still not sure which form you'd like to learn, consider this. If you learn traditional Chinese, it's fairly easy to switch over to the simplified form. The characters you're learning will always be easier to write than in the traditional form. If you learn simplified Chinese, it will take a significant amount of time and effort to learn traditional Chinese. You lay a better foundation when you learn traditional chinese first, but you do put slightly more time into it.

Consider your options, but don't worry to much about the writing system you start learning. Some commonly used characters are different, but many many characters are exactly the same in both forms. It's not like you need to start over from scratch should you need to switch later on.

Justin White lives in Jhubei Taiwan, and frantically works at learning Chinese.

Want to learn Chinese (or another language) quickly? Don't make the common mistakes that keep people struggling. Learn to avoid the pitfalls, and go to Learn Chinese Fast for tips, tricks and strategies to improve the speed with which you learn Chinese, and decrease the amount of time it takes you to reach fluency.

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The Push to Learn Chinese in Our Schools

Recently, a trend has developed in high schools and communities around the United States. Many people want to or are now learning the Chinese language. This could be a good turn of events, but it can also be problematic. This is particularly so for those who know nothing about Chinese culture, history and the state of affairs in China today.

In mainland China they no longer use the traditional Chinese characters that go hand in hand with Chinese history. For some reason, the Chinese Communist Party decided to alter the Chinese language and thereby change the vehicle for written communication.

Traditional Chinese characters evolved naturally over a period of time from pictographs or small drawings. By contrast the simplified Chinese created by the Chinese Communist Party has watered many of the traditional characters down to the point that they no longer are rooted in more ancient traditions.

Here is an example. The traditional Chinese character for the word 'love' contains a picture of a heart in it. This makes sense because love is closely associated to the heart. Not so in simplified Chinese. There is no heart in the word 'love' in simplified Chinese. One may ponder how you can love without a heart.

Just as this example shows, in many ways the Chinese Communist Party has removed the heart of the entire language, distorting and altering it into a water downed version of its former self. In Taiwan, however, they still use traditional characters.

So if your community or children's school is planning to teach Chinese, you may wish to ensure that you are getting the traditional variety. It more fully encompasses the rich history of China and the Chinese people. By contrast, those who teach our children simplified Chinese are from mainland China and unfortunately, they will also be passing on the values and ideas of the Chinese Communist Party. Whether they do so on purpose or automatically as a result of growing up in that environment, the end result is the same. Only you can decide if you want the influence of the Chinese Communist Party imparted to your children.

Be sure to insist that our children are taught traditional Chinese and not the simplified version. This way the richness of traditional Chinese culture can be more fully enjoyed and appreciated. There will be a more solid foundation to understand the more ancient Chinese traditions.

David Snape is the author of What You Should Know about Gum Disease - an important book considering that the majority of adults suffer from some form of gum disease. David also answers questions on any health, fitness or wellness topic at his blog: http://tobeinformed.com . David believes in oral irrigation to help fight against gum disease and that the premiere oral irrigation device on the market is the Hydro Floss Oral Irrigator

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Learn Conversational Chinese Faster Than Ever in the Year of the Tiger 2010

Happy new year! We have now entered into the Chinese year of the Tiger. In keeping with the tradition of making New Year's resolutions, there has never been a better time to make up your mind to learn conversational Chinese. It does take a real commitment on your part to master a language, but it can happen faster and be more fun than you ever would have imagined.

Why is the year of the Tiger a good time to learn conversational Chinese? China has never had as significant a place on the world stage as it does now. The demand has never been greater for people who speak both English and Chinese fluently. The opportunities have never been greater for those who wish to travel to countries with Chinese speaking populations. There has never been a greater availability of cheap, effective, and fun Chinese learning software.

If you have ever dreamed of learning conversational Chinese, visiting China or Taiwan, or understanding more about Chinese culture now is the time to do it! Of course, the best reason to learn conversational Chinese in the year of the Tiger is that despite all of the benefits and opportunities that speaking Chinese brings, hardly anyone is willing to take the plunge and learn conversational Chinese.

Maybe they are afraid, maybe they have fallen for the age old myth that Chinese is a difficult or impossible language to learn, or maybe they simply lack the confidence to embark on a language learning journey they are afraid they will not be able to finish. They're missing out. Chinese is essentially an easy language to learn and can be learned faster than you would believe.

There is no secret to learning conversational Chinese. It's actually very simple. If you're willing to dive into speaking a foreign language you will be able to acquire it very easily. Think about the way that children learn languages. They do not learn by memorization, by reading books about grammar, or by buying expensive dictionaries. They learn by speaking. Children learn languages quickly because they are not afraid to put what they learn into practice.

This is good news for language learners in the year of the Tiger. It has never been easier to arrange to speak to a native speaker of Mandarin Chinese. Simply search "Chinese language exchange" in Google, and you will find a variety of language exchange programs. You can teach a short lesson in English, and in exchange get a free lesson in Chinese. This is how you will learn conversational Chinese fast.

So don't wait any longer to learn conversational Chinese. Seize the day and learn conversational Chinese in the year of the Tiger. A year from now, it is entirely possible that you will have the language skills to welcome in the Chinese new year in an entirely different way.

Justin White lives in Jhubei Taiwan, and frantically works at learning Chinese.

Want to Learn Chinese Fast? Don't make the common mistakes that keep people struggling. Learn to avoid the pitfalls, and go to http://www.learn-chinese-fast.net for tips, tricks and strategies to improve the speed with which you learn Chinese, and decrease the amount of time it takes you to reach fluency.

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Learn Chinese in Asia - Easy Ways to Get Overseas and Get Fluent

It goes without saying that traveling to Asia is one of the surest ways to improve your fluency in Chinese. It is possible to get experience talking in Chinese to native speakers over the internet, or in your city, but nothing approaches "total immersion" like a trip to China or Taiwan. In Asia language learners are constantly provided with opportunities to exercise their language skills. Not only that, but they are constantly immersed in an atmosphere of spoken Chinese.

Traveling to Asia is also a great way to get in touch with the real reasons that you're learning Chinese. There are amazing opportunities for foreigners in Asia, and when you've arrived and are willing to learn Chinese you can make connections and friendships that can be of great benefit later on. The best way to learn Chinese is to dive headfirst into speaking, and the best way to use Chinese is to dive headfirst into the culture and geography of the Chinese speaking world.

Most people believe that a trip to Asia for the purpose of learning Chinese is financially unfeasible, but it can be cheaper than you'd ever imagine. There are programs and opportunities that can enable you to achieve your dreams, and maybe even come out with more money than you had initially.

The first option is to travel to China or Taiwan in order to become a full time student, studying Chinese at a prominent university. This is a great opportunity not only to be taught by a native speaker with solid experience, but to form friendships within a community of people who are as serious as you are about attaining fluency in Mandarin Chinese. Tuition for foreigners at universities in Asia can be much cheaper than in the western world, and many universities offer lucrative scholarships for foreigners that can offset the initial cost. You can apply for a student visa which will allow you live in the country for an extended period of time.

If you don't have the money for university, you can teach English. English teaching allows you to make almost twice what the average Chinese person earns in a month, so you can live comfortably on your salary and even pay for tuition at a university or a private Chinese class. Historically, salaries have been higher in Taiwan than in China, but this may be changing as China hires more and more English teachers.

Most people make some sort of compromise between learning Chinese and teaching English. There is no reason that you can't do both. In both countries it is illegal to work without a specific work visa, but many people teach English "under the table" while going to University. Private lessons can sometimes be even more profitable for English teachers than a contract position with a language school.

If you're considering a vacation or long term trip to Asia to learn Chinese, you can find a tremendous wealth of information on the internet to help you work out the specifics. Rest assured that traveling to Asia and pursuing your language learning goals is more feasible than most people think. So why isn't everyone doing it? Most people just haven't thought of it, and many of those who have are afraid or tied to commitments at home. Just go for it, and take a trip to Asia to make money and increase your fluency in Chinese.

Justin White lives in Jhubei Taiwan, and frantically works at learning Chinese.

Want to learn Chinese (or another language) quickly? Don't make the common mistakes that keep people struggling. Learn to avoid the pitfalls, and go to Learn Chinese Fast for tips, tricks and strategies to improve the speed with which you learn Chinese, and decrease the amount of time it takes you to reach fluency.

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Why Learn Chinese?

So, why do you have to learn Chinese? There are just too many reasons to explain it. First, Chinese is the language of Nearly 1/4 of the World's Population. Speakers of Chinese not only live in China, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia, but also spread throughout Southeast Asia, North America, and Europe, where large Chinese communities congregate. Basically you can find China town in majority city. Chinese people today have been playing increasingly important roles worldwide,4 out of 10 top corporates in the world are owned by Chinese.

Second, learning Chinese is an extraordinary and agreeable experience through which you can immerse yourself in a different culture. Unlike most languages, Chinese has a unique ideographic writing system, which provides visual comprehensibility. The grammatical structure of Chinese is not only logical, but also pragmatic, related to the particular way of Chinese thinking. Knowledge of the written language opens up the culture of one of the world's oldest civilizations. Chinese cultural can be trace back to 5000 years ago.

Third, traditional Chinese culture, from Confucianism and Chan Buddhism to martial arts and Chinese cuisine, has an enormous influence on East and Southeast Asian nations. Chinese culture has also greatly inspired the western world through Marco Polo, G. W. Leibniz, Max Weber, Franz Kafka, Andre Malraux, Bertolt Brecht, Ezra Pound, and Luis Borges, among others

Last, but not least, the People's Republic of China currently boasts the fastest growing economy in the world and is widely regarded as the potentially biggest global market in the twenty-first century. Proficient speakers of Mandarin Chinese will find jobs in various fields such as business, government, international relations, information technology, tourism, education, translation and much, much more. Of all foreign languages at American universities and colleges, Chinese shows the highest proportional increase in enrollment.

Many of our site visitors learn Chinese language for the purpose of working in China in the future, as now there are many opportunities to do so. Some people from our site followed our best recommended way to learn Chinese and they've successfully achieve certain level in Chinese. A few of our visitors learn Chinese just for challenge, as they believed (but later proven to be wrong) that it is one of the most difficult languages to learn, because with the right method, Mandarin Chinese is not as difficult as they thought.

Good luck in learning Chinese!

This article is from my website : http://www.LearnChineseForFree.com

Best wishes, Jayden Yap.

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Why is it Good to Learn How to Speak the Chinese Language?

Nearly 1/4 of the World's Population speaks the Chinese language. The language is spoken not only in China, Taiwan, and Singapore, but it is also spoken throughout Southeast Asia, North America, and Europe. Traditional Chinese culture, from martial arts, Confucianism and Chinese cuisine has an enormous influence on East and Southeast Asian nations. Currently, Chinese language classes have the highest enrollment in American universities and colleges. Today China has one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Those who can speak Mandarin Chinese proficiently will find jobs in various fields such as business, government, international relations, information technology, tourism, education, translation and much, much more.

Previously a state-controlled economy, the Chinese government introduced market-oriented economic reforms in the early 1980s. Now only a third of its economy is directly controlled by the state. China is strong in manufacturing and agriculture, but its service sector is slowly catching up, accounting for 32.5% of the economy. China's cheap labour costs have turned the country into 'the world's factory', manufacturing most of the world's clothing, electronics and household items. In 2005, China's global trade surplus was at US$102 billion. China is also one of the largest importers in the world, buying cars, high tech products, raw minerals, machineries and equipment, chemical and petroleum. However, China's shrinking agricultural still employs over 40% of its workforce and keeps China as the largest agricultural country in the world.

China GDP per capita is US$6800, making China the second largest economy after the U.S. China's recent gain in trades has upset many trade protectionists, particularly in U.S and Europe, who have been pressing China to revalue the yuan to soften China's competitive pricing edge on its exports. In 2005, they achieved a moderate success when China unpegged the yuan to the dollar, driving it up around 2% against the greenback.

A slightly more expensive yuan doesn't mean bad news for visitors, China's continuing economic reforms are bringing in more competition in virtually every sector, resulting in lowered prices and better services. The increase of living standards in China also means better infrastructure, improved transportation systems, better healthcare and environmental protection, all of which are good news if you're living in China. So if you want to be part of a fastest growing economy, you have to be in China, and in order for you to be successful in China, you have to master the Chinese Language.

If you are serious about mastering the Chinese language and learning to speak Chinese fast, please click the link below and check out this highly rated online Chinese course. This Chinese language course is currently the best on the internet and you will be guaranteed good results fast.

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Hope you will speak Chinese fluently in the Future. Good luck!!

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How to Learn Mandarin Chinese - Four Things the Beginner Needs to Know

So you've decided to learn Chinese, but not quite sure what you've gotten yourself into? No problem! We have identified four things that all beginner Mandarin learners need to know to start learning Chinese!

1 - Chinese Pinyins

You probably know that Chinese characters are the standard for written Chinese, but they're not very helpful when it comes to pronunciation for beginners. As a newbie, your best friend is pinyin. Pinyin is a system for writing out the sounds of the Chinese language using the Roman alphabet. It's not a "pronunciation key," it's a way of representing the sounds of the Chinese language in a phonetic way. This means reading pinyin correctly will still require you to learn some new sounds.

2 - Chinese Tones

Mandarin Chinese is a tonal language, which means that every syllable has a tone, and the meaning of each syllable can change, depending on the tone. This means that if you want to express yourself in Chinese and get the correct meaning across, you have to pay attention to those tones! There are four main tones in Mandarin Chinese, plus one "neutral" tone. The tones are simply referred to as "first tone," "second tone," "third tone," and "fourth tone." We could describe them here, but the best thing to do is to listen to them, and keep listening until they become familiar.

3 - Chinese Characters

While the casual learner of Mandarin Chinese may opt not to spend too much time on learning Chinese characters, the serious student will want to dive right in. There are just a few main points you should know about characters to make the most out of your studies:

a - There are two sets of Chinese characters: simplified and traditional. Simplified characters are used in mainland China, whereas Hong Kong and Taiwan still use traditional characters. Most students of Chinese will want to study simplified characters (unless they are focused on Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Chinese history).

b - All Chinese characters are composed of strokes. The order of the strokes that is used when writing a character is called that character's "stroke order." Each Chinese character is not a unique "drawing," however. As you learn more and more characters, you will notice that certain parts of a character appear again in other characters. These recurring component parts have the same stroke order every time, and their use helps us to make sense of Chinese characters. These component parts, when used to classify characters, are called "radicals."

c - Every Chinese character has a one-syllable reading. This means that a one-character word is one syllable, a two-character word is two syllables, etc. Most Chinese characters have one reading, but the number of Chinese characters far outnumbers the total number of syllables in Mandarin Chinese. As a result, for most syllables in Chinese, there is more than one corresponding character.

d - When writing in Chinese characters, there are no spaces between words. This can make it difficult to tell where one word ends and the next begins. Practice is the key. Modern Chinese in mainland China runs left to right, top to bottom (just like English text), but you will occasionally see old texts or signs printed vertically.

4 - Standard Mandarin

You often hear about various "Chinese dialects," such as Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, and Hokkien, and you may imagine that they are as similar to each other as American English, Australian English, and British English. In actuality, they are as different as the Romance languages Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian. Mandarin is by far the most common of the Chinese "dialects" mentioned above,and is the official language in both mainland China and Taiwan. (Cantonese is the language of Hong Kong and Guangdong.) Mandarin is what is usually meant by "Chinese" in casual usage.

You will sometimes hear mentions of "standard Mandarin" in discussions about learning Chinese. China was once fractured by innumerable dialects, and a unifying dialect helped bring the nation together. Standard Mandarin, or putonghua in Chinese, was originally based on the Beijing dialect in northern China, but has long since spread throughout the country. Just as a traveler in the USA will hear the difference in the local accents of Texas, New York, California, and Boston, a visitor to China will notice differences in the Mandarin of the residents of Beijing, Shanghai, Taipei, and Sichuan. These differences add to the richness and variety of the language.

So now you know the 4 most important aspects of learning Mandarin Chinese - so why not get started!

To start learning Chinese now, join 300,000 students from around the world on the award-winning ChinesePod.com - http://chinesepod.com

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3 Tips on How to Learn Chinese

Friends and people from other countries will often be amazed when I tell them that I can speak and write fluently in a few languages and dialects. I have to thank Malaysia for its multiracial population consisting of the Malays, Chinese, Indians and other minority races. As a Chinese school student in Malaysia, we're taught three languages from primary education - Malay, English and Chinese, hence giving us the solid foundation and knowledge about the languages. Although Malay is the official language, English and Chinese are widely used and spoken in every day's life. Thus we have the privilege of being able to communicate fluently and with ease in all of them.

Mandarin or Chinese is fast becoming the language of business. It is spoken in countries like China, Taiwan Singapore, and Malaysia. An estimated 1.3 billion people worldwide speak the language, which are equivalent to one-fifth of the world's population. As China's economic power grows and the increasingly important role that it plays in the world's economic system, learning and knowing the Chinese language can be rewarding in many ways.

Knowing it means opening up of more opportunities. Any person who wants to do business with China will certainly have more advantage if he or she is fluent in the Chinese language. It also means enhanced career growth opportunity as you will have an edge over others who don't know the language. And if you want to travel to Asia, particularly China and Taiwan, your trip will definitely be more rewarding and enjoyable if you speak and understand the local language.

If you're determined to learn the Chinese language, here are three tips that I would like to share with you:

1) Learn the Chinese pronunciation with the help of Hanyu Pinyin

Hanyu means the "Chinese language" and pinyin means "spell" and "sound". Basically it means "the spelling and sound of the Chinese language". Or to make it simpler, it is the "pronunciations of the Chinese language using Roman letters according to pinyin system". It is also known as the scheme of the Chinese phonetic alphabet. It's easier for a non-Chinese speaker to remember the pronunciation of the Chinese characters using the pinyin system. The pinyin system will also illustrate the four tones of the Chinese language as below.

a) The first tone is a (Flat or High Level Tone) with the symbol e.g. dā;

b) The second tone is a (Rising or High-Rising Tone) with the symbol e.g. dá;

c) The third tone is a (Falling-Rising or Low Tone) with the symbol e.g. dǎ;

d) The fourth tone is a (Falling or High-Falling Tone) with the symbol e.g. dà.

The examples above show words with the same pinyin but with four different tones. They have very different meanings respectively, as below.

a) Use something as a means of transport. E.g. take the bus, train, plane, taxi, boat, etc;

b) Answer;

c) Beat;

d) Big, huge or large.

That's the reason why correct pronunciation is so important in the Chinese language. A slight mispronunciation will mean a very different meaning in what we want to convey. Taking the above example, for instance we want to say "I can answer you", but a slightly lower tone would mean "I can beat you"! See that?

Once you have a good grasp of the basics of the Hanyu Pinyin, with the help of a good English Chinese dictionary with pinyin, you would be able to read any Chinese character marked with Pinyin!

2) Listen and watch

Listen to Chinese songs and radio station, watch Chinese movies with subtitles. Sing along and repeat after the lines of dialogues by the actors and actresses, and try to repeat them as exactly as possible. Practice and memorize common Chinese vocabulary and simple sentences. Review vocabulary from time to time to refresh your memory and you can use post-it notes to write down the pinyin and stick them on the objects you want to learn and remember.

3) Speak and practice

Practice, practise and practise. The more you practise, the easier it will be for you and the more fluent you will become. Of course you will learn even faster if you can practise with someone who can correct you when you make mistakes. Practice makes perfect!

I hope the above sharing are helpful and can make your learning process easier and more enjoyable. Remember, learn the pronunciation with the help of hanyu pinyin, listen to Chinese songs and watch Chinese movies, and speak and practise as much as you can!

Siew Yin is a Malaysian Chinese living in the beautiful island of Penang, a state in the north of Malaysia. She gives private Mandarin Chinese/ English lessons online on a one-to-one basis via Skype using webcam. If you would like to know more about Siew Yin or would like to have a free trial lesson, visit her profile at [http://www.greathealthandus.com/profile.pdf]

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Learn Chinese Language

The rise of China both in economic terms, and as an increasingly important nation on the world stage, has been very well reported in recent years. Additionally, as China has become more open to the world, more and more people are visiting the country for vacations, as well as for business and trade purposes. It is for these reasons that many people want to learn] the Chinese languge. They know that speaking the language will not only allow them to better understand appreciate Chinese culture, but can also offer a significant business advantage when trading with China and Chinese companies.

It should be emphasized there are significant differences between the Chinese spoken in different parts of China. How to classify these varieties of Chinese in fact remains a highly controversial issue - some people identify each variety as a "language" and Chinese as a whole as a "language family", whereas others say that Chinese is more properly classified as a single language, with each variety of the language being a "dialect".

In any case, over 1 billion people speak one or another variety of Chinese, including more than 850 million people who speak the Mandarin (literally "Northern Dialect") variety of the language. Standard Mandarin is in fact the official language of the People's Republic of China, the Republic of China (Taiwan), one of four official languages of Singapore, and of six official langauges of the United Nations.

If you would like to learn the Chinese language, there are many tools and resources available that can help. A variety of computer-based Chinese language courses are available, and many people find these very useful.

By S. Tanna. "Learn Chinese" was first published at http://www.downloadfocus.com/cat_language_chinese.php

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Learn Conversational Chinese Now - Resolutions For the Year of the Tiger

If you want to learn conversational Chinese, there has never been a better time. As we enter into the Chinese year of the Tiger there are an amazing number of options for Chinese language learners.

100 years ago, if you wanted to learn a foreign language basically the only way to do so was to travel to a country where people speak that language, or else purchase a book written in that language and make an attempt to translate word for word using a dictionary. Think about all the options that language learners have today, in the Chinese year of the Tiger. There are not only dozens of books on learning Chinese, but there are an amazing selection of Chinese learning software programs. If you want to learn conversational Chinese, you have more options now than ever before.

What's more, there are now enough resources available on the Internet that it is possible for you to learn conversational Chinese without ever spending a cent. There are Chinese podcasts, online dictionaries, and entire university curriculum available for free at your fingertips. Granted, there are some disadvantages to free Chinese programs. You do not get the support, the tools, or the overall planning that you can get from a paid Chinese language learning software program like Rocket Chinese, but it is definitely possible to learn Chinese for free.

Even 10 years ago, if you wanted to speak to a native speaker of Mandarin Chinese you either had to travel to China or Taiwan, or make a lot of very expensive long-distance calls (unless you live near a friendly Chinatown). In the Chinese year of the Tiger, we now have Internet language exchange matchmaker services, available for free. In exchange for a short lesson in English, you can learn Chinese from a native speaker using Skype. Thousands of people learn languages this way, and frankly there is no better way to learn a foreign language than by speaking and listening to a real person.

In the Chinese year of the Tiger there have never been more benefits or reasons to learn conversational Chinese. China's influence in the world is steadily growing, as is the demand for people who speak both Chinese and English fluently. The job opportunities for Mandarin speakers are huge -- both in numbers and in range of occupations. There simply aren't enough people who are fluent in both languages to serve the needs of the business world.

So if you are still waiting for a better time to learn conversational Chinese, think again. It is now the Chinese year of the Tiger and a great time to make a New Year's resolution.

Justin White lives in Jhubei Taiwan, and frantically works at learning Chinese.

Want to Learn Chinese Fast? Don't make the common mistakes that keep people struggling. Learn to avoid the pitfalls, and go to http://www.learn-chinese-fast.net for tips, tricks and strategies to improve the speed with which you learn Chinese, and decrease the amount of time it takes you to reach fluency.

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Why Learn the Chinese Language?

Chinese is spoken by about one-fifth of the world population. It is used in Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Macau, the Philippines, the United States of America, Australia, and other regions with large Chinese communities. While there is a high level of internal diversity in spoken Chinese, Mandarin (Putonghua/Guoyu/Huayu/Hanyu) is very standardised and will be understood by about 1.3 billion people worldwide. It is used as a lingua franca among Chinese people in social settings, in the media, as well for instruction in schools.

All spoken varieties of Chinese use one common writing system referred to as Zhongwen, which ensures a shared cultural and linguistic heritage across the various forms of Chinese language. Chinese characters (Hanzi) are written within imaginary rectangular blocks, traditionally arranged in vertical columns, read from top to bottom down a column, and right to left across columns.

- First of all, Chinese is spoken by more people than any other language in the world. In fact, studying Chinese will allow you to converse with more than one-fifth of our planet's population.

- China plays an increasingly major role in world affairs, not least due to its burgeoning economy. Accordingly job opportunities in various fields, such as business, government, international relations, IT, tourism, education, among many others, emerge rapidly. Organisations are looking for people who can speak Chinese and operate successfully in a Chinese cultural context.

- The study of the Chinese language opens the way to different important fields such as Chinese politics, economy, history, or archaeology. But to study Chinese ultimately means to study a culture, a people. At the heart of Chinese culture is its rich heritage of traditions accumulated over thousands of years, from Confucianism to Chan Buddhism, martial arts to cuisine.

- Chinese culture also had and still has an enormous influence on East and Southeast Asian nations. Chinese culture has also greatly inspired the Western world through the writings of Marco Polo, G. W. Leibniz, Max Weber, Franz Kafka, Andre Malraux, Bertolt Brecht, Ezra Pound, and Luis Borges, among others.

- Chinese is not as difficult of a language as people tend to think. Especially reaching the key goal of learning any new language - i.e. being able to converse with a wide range of people - can be achieved with a reasonable amount of effort.

- The grammatical structure of Chinese is not only logical, but also pragmatic and manageable. For example, different to Hindustani, German, or English, Chinese has no verb conjugation (i.e., tense inflection) and no noun declension (e.g., gender and number distinctions).

- While writing Chinese proves to be the major hurdle for most students, its unique ideographic writing system at the same time provides visual comprehensibility.

- Languages within the Chinese sphere of cultural influence also have a very large number of loanwords from Chinese. Fifty percent or more of Korean vocabulary is of Chinese origin and the influence on Japanese and Vietnamese has been very extensive, too. Chinese has also lent a great deal of many grammatical features to these and other neighbouring languages. Moreover, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese share a corpus of terms describing modern terminology, in parallel to a similar corpus of terms built from Greco-Latin terms shared among European languages.

- Chinese language is also increasingly used outside of the Sinosphere. For example, it allows one to communicate with the growing Chinese diaspora all over the world.

- Learning Chinese is an extraordinary experience through which you can immerse yourself in one of the world's oldest and at the same time most forward looking cultures. Whatever your particular objectives, studying Chinese will be an immensely rewarding experience for you.

Each year more and more students around the world succeed in learning Chinese. If they all can learn it, so can you!

Daniel Ratheiser, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Knowledge Must
Founding Knowledge Must, Daniel has helped individuals and organisations to cross cultural boundaries and to grow their global competence. He also conducted numerous research studies in the intercultural field, from historical cultural exchange to contemporary interfaith relations. His real passion, however, has always been researching and writing about the cultural relations between South Asia / India and East Asia / China, the two regions of the world he feels most indebted to. Pursuing this research for 15 years, Daniel has become a leading expert on India-China relations.

http://www.knowledge-must.com
http://blog.knowledge-must.com

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