Is the Chinese language costly to learn?
The Chinese language is intriguing and one-of-a-kind. Unlike most other languages, Chinese has a written form as well as numerous spoken versions. Traces of written Chinese have been discovered dating back to the Shang period (1600 – 1066 BC). The Han dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD) is responsible for the Chinese language that is used today in China. Mandarin is the most often used spoken form in China. Knowing Mandarin will allow you to converse with nearly everyone in China and Taiwan. Chinese is the world’s oldest written language, going back over 4000 years. There is no Chinese alphabet, as there is in other languages. Instead, the Chinese language employs Chinese characters known as hàn z. Mandarin is China’s official language in other Asian nations. Mandarin is taught in public schools around the country. Mandarin is the primary language of the media, officials, and the government. When typing in Chinese, you utilise a phonetic system known as pinyin, which correlates to the Mandarin pronunciation. In addition to China, Mandarin Chinese is an official language in a number of other Asian nations. It is also one of the United Nations’ six official languages.
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The Daily Mail article termed Mandarin to be the most expensive language to learn. Mandarin itself is spoken by almost one billion people in China. Which would essentially equate to 70% of the population. With that said, for an English speaker, learning this language may cost up to $80,000. The logic behind such expense is that its intonation is difficult to grasp, which makes extensive training mandatory. In fact, according to some estimates, mastering the vocabulary, tones, and characters might take more than two thousand hours. Chinese is notoriously difficult to master for anyone. Therefore, for anyone to achieve fluency in it, they’ll require expert guidance and good resources which can be expensive and would require a lot of time and dedication as well. People specifically choose to learn Mandarin due to the many benefits that follow. These range from being able to communicate with over a billion people and gaining a significant advantage in the competitive world of business to simply travelling without any language barriers and appreciating the vibrant culture.
So, you might wonder, what makes this language so tough to master? Well, first of all, there are multiple dialects and many tones to master. English is free from any dialect or tone variation. Secondly, the Chinese language doesn’t even use the actual alphabet. As a pictorial language, it solely relies on strokes and radicals which form individual Chinese characters, which then further form actual Chinese words. Furthermore, Chinese has many homonyms and basically no grammar, so it’s pretty ambiguous and essentially requires quite a bit of raw memorization. These are not easy hurdles to cross, they require expert guidance from a professional. Trying to learn Chinese on your own without any help is like teaching yourself how to perform surgery instead of attending med school. While there is a slim chance you could master it alone, it’s always better to have a professional by your side. Considering all this and the fact that many rarely achieve proficiency in this language, making Chinese teachers rare themselves, there’s no doubt that learning this language is going to be expensive and time-consuming.
Finally,
The Chinese language is really a language family. There are several dialects of spoken Chinese. These many Chinese languages are sometimes referred to as dialects. It is estimated that there are around 200 dialects in China. These dialects are the result of China’s 56 ethnic communities. These Chinese languages share a tonal method for distinguishing homonyms. Other Chinese languages may have more tones than Mandarin Chinese. They also all write in the same language: Chinese characters. Despite their close relationship, these distinct languages are mutually incomprehensible. As a result, all Chinese nationals are taught the same official language: Mandarin. Mandarin is the first language of more than 70% of the Chinese population. The remaining 30% now frequently learns both their regional languages and Mandarin in order to connect with everyone.
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