An authority to the study of Chinese language says that there are two elements to the Chinese language: the written language, based on individual symbols called characters, each of which represents an idea or thing; and the spoken language, which includes a number of different dialects.

As has been said and written by a reliable source, the written language originally had no alphabet, but it was easily understood by literate people with different dialects.  The Pinyin has been developed in China as early as the 1950s and is now commonly being used.  This is a system using the Latin alphabet.  It represents the spoken sounds of Putonghua (based on Beijing-area Mandarin), which is an oral representation of Chinese characters.

Because some of the numerous dialects of spoken Chinese are totally different from each other, all of them use tones to distinguish different words. Mandarin, which is spoken in the Beijing region and in northern China generally, has four common tones. Cantonese, spoken in southeastern China, has nine tones and is quite different from Mandarin. Cantonese is probably most common among Chinese-American immigrants. Today Putonghua, is the official language of government and education, and everyone is expected to learn to speak it.

It has also been said that written Chinese characters have no “pronunciation” and can be spoken in a variety of ways depending on the dialect used and that there have been a number of ways of rendering Chinese words into English. For many years the most used was the Wade-Giles system, which did not in fact represent Chinese sounds very well. In the United States this is most often the system encountered in older textbooks and even transliterated shop names.

This basic knowledge could be a guide to anyone who wishes to learn the language which is said to be the most spoken language in the world.  The historical background has to be known prior to learning the language so that there would be deeper appreciation on the part of the learner and that interest would likewise be achieved.

Presently, the “flavour of the month” goes to learning the Chinese language over any other languages because of the surging or overwhelming rise of China’s stature in the economic world.

Learning Chinese is not an easy task. The following facts, which were taken from the internet source in verbatim, can justify how difficult it is to learn the Chinese language. However, this is just an opinion. When a person is directly involved in the study of the language, he or she may find it a lot easier.

• In spoken Chinese, words are made up of one, two or more syllables. Each of the syllables is written with a separate character. Each character has its own meaning, though many are used only in combination with other characters.

• Every character is given exactly the same amount of space, no matter how complex it is. There are no spaces between characters and the characters which make up multi-syllable words are not grouped together, so when reading Chinese, you not only have to work out what the characters mean and how to pronounce them, but also which characters belong together.

• The Chinese writing system is an open-ended one, meaning that there is no upper limit to the number of characters. The largest Chinese dictionaries include about 56,000 characters, but most of them are archaic, obscure or rare variant forms. Knowledge of about 3,000 characters enables you to read about 99% of the characters used in Chinese newspapers and magazines. To read Chinese literature, technical writings or Classical Chinese though, you need to be familiar with at least 6,000 characters.

• There are approximately 1,700 possible syllables in Mandarin, which compares with over 8,000 in English. As a result, there are many homophones - syllables which sound the same but mean different things. These are distinguished in written Chinese by using different characters for each one.

Many can afford to study the Chinese language but only a few of them could see the essence of learning and applying what they have learned.

The above can be viewed as positive or negative from different points of view.  From common sense, one could just tell that a person has greater advantage when he or she knows a language or two other than his or her own language.  He is at an advantage level over someone who only knew how to speak the mother-tongue.  When a Chinese knows how to speak English and goes to the United States or any other country who speaks and understands English, there will be less problem that he would likely encounter.  However, when an English speaker goes to China or any other Chinese speaking country, he or she should not expect that people in that country would understand him/her or treat him/her with esteem or respect especially when he/she does not know Chinese.  People feel appreciated and respected when a foreigner knows how to speak their language.  In gratitude, these people would treat you nicely and with so much respect that you deserve. 

The moral lesson of this article is that we should try to learn other languages so that we will be able to earn respect from others and that we will also be able to learn other cultures thereby making us more culture-sensitive and appreciative of others.

Adventurous.  People who study the Chinese language are adventurous.  Why?  Because adventurous people are those who are not afraid to try on things that are different.  They are those who go for excitement and something new and perhaps complicated.  The Chinese language can look very complicated and hard to learn.  But adventurous people are not afraid to learn new things.  They are even determined to go further and leave their comfort zones just so that they could conquer their goals and objectives.  The Chinese characters are very different from one’s native language; they look queer but adventurous people do not mind the difficulties that they have to face just so that they get satisfied with the adventure of learning something new.  They will try and try until they learn.

Wise.  People who learn or study the Chinese language are wise.  Wise people have visions.    Visions that would actually lead them to places of fame and success at the right time.   Come to think of it, when you learn the Chinese language today, you would be enriched with the necessary skills and knowledge of the Chinese culture which you could use at present and in the near future.  When you have internalized the Chinese language it is as though you have also internalized Chinese culture.  This is so vital because China has gain quite a reputation in the world economy, being the second largest economy in the world.  With these as your armour in these days of crises and economic recession, you would rise up and come out undefeated.  Wise people are able to hurdle life’s challenges and obstacles.   

Passionate.  Passionate people are full of energy.  They are the people who walk an extra mile so that their passions in life are met.  As mentioned earlier, learning the Chinese language (and any other foreign language) is not an easy task.  The intricacies that surround this may be difficult to bear for those who are not passionate.  The passion to study Chinese may have sprung from the passion to learn the culture of Chinese.  And the passion to learn Chinese culture springs from the inner passion to improve one’s self and expand one’s horizon so as to learn cultural diversity.

One, we need to learn Chinese in order to compete effectively in the global economy of today and of the future.  This premise is acceptable knowing that China has now become the second largest economy in the world.  In fact, China is one of America’s largest trading partners.  If one surfs the net to learn facts about the global economy of today, she or he will learn that China has become a huge importer, exporter and manufacturer of various products.  American companies have been doing business in China.  Indeed, the future looks bright, if one learns Chinese now.

Two, we need to learn Chinese in order to boost tourism in one’s country.  China is the most populous country in the world with over 1.4 billion people and with this, it is most likely then that a good number or percentage of tourist could come from China.  Moreover, Chinese-speaking people, or shall I say, Mandarin-speaking people (from China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, Philippines, and Mongolia) may tour and visit a country and perhaps their prospective country or country of choice and preference would be one that has Chinese speaking people or tour guides.  This is to further say that when a country has some good number of people speaking or knowing the language of the tourist, that is, Chinese, then there is a bigger chance of increasing the frequency of visit and also of increasing the number of Chinese tourists in the future.

Three, we need to learn Chinese in order to have better career opportunities.  When we know how to speak Chinese, then, we could either apply for jobs abroad or just stay in our mother country.  Either way, job opportunities are wide and vast if we know Chinese.  Our resumes or curriculum vitae are placed on top by employers when we have knowledge of the Chinese language. We will be way way ahead of other applicants.  The two points outlined above would also be the company’s bases in choosing their roster of staff and employees.   Knowing more than two languages can be very promising.  And knowing the Chinese language which is the most spoken language of today surely brings countless benefits to employees and employers alike.