The Benefits of Studying Chinese
Many students do not realize the benefits of studying Chinese and what
makes it easy. There are many benefits to studying Chinese. Here is a
list of reasons to study Chinese and why it can easier to study than
other languages.
Why study Chinese?
- China is the most
populous country in the world with over 1.4 billion people. Mandarin is
spoken by almost one billion people. It is
the #1 spoken language in
the world. One out of five people in the world is Chinese.
- Mandarin is spoken in
the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia,
Brunei, Singapore, The Philippines,
and Mongolia.
- China is one of the
world's oldest civilizations, over 5000 years old.
- China has the second
largest economy in the world. Knowing Chinese will allow students to
compete effectively in the global
economy of the future.
- China is one of
America's largest trading partners.
- Many American companies
do business in China, including Motorola, Coca Cola, and Ford.
- Knowing Chinese may be
an edge when competing for a job. The demand for business people who
know Chinese is
skyrocketing.
- China is playing a
major role in world affairs and will continue to do so.
- A May 2006 Newsweek article stated that "In U.S. homes, Chinese has eclipsed French, German
and Italian and become the third
most commonly spoken language after
English and Spanish."
- By studying
Chinese, students will develop an appreciation for Chinese culture and
history.
- Leaning a second
language develops critical and creative thinking skills.
Why Chinese is easy?
- There are no verb
conjugations.
- There is no gender.
- There is no
noun-adjective agreement.
- There are no articles
(the, a, an).
- There is no number
agreement (three books).
- Numbers are easy: 20 =
2-10s, èr shì; 30 = 3-10s, san shì
- Days of the week and
months are easy. Monday = day one of the week; Tuesday =
day two of the week; Wednesday = day three of the week…;
January = one month, February = two month, March = three month…
- There are no capital
and small letters.
- If you know 1000
commonly used characters, you will recognize 90% of the characters in
Chinese newspapers.
What makes Chinese hard?
- There are four
different tones.
- Character writing can be difficult with all of the strokes. There is a
Romanized system called pinyin; some letter-sounds
combinations are different from English combinations.
- Some
structures can be difficult, such as measure words. The word modifying
the number changes depending on whether it is
general, paper/book,
cup/bottle, etc
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