Is Chinese really the simplest language to learn?
The Chinese language receives unnecessary tags for being difficult! Rome wasn’t built in a day, whether Chinese or any other language everything is equally intimidating until we step into it.
But the truth is, learning Mandarin Chinese in your spare time, is one of the absolute best investments you can make. Chinese Isn’t as hard as believed to be. People complain Chinese is incredibly difficult. Luckily for Chinese learners, this is completely wrong.
Chinese has acquired a false reputation of being difficult for a number of reasons- especially because of the alien nature of its script. Unlike most languages, which use phonetic writing, Chinese is composed of pictograms and semi-phonetic ideograms which need to be memorized! Yes this is probably the hardest thing about Chinese, but people assume all other elements of the language are equally difficult too.
Looks are deceptive!
Chinese looks difficult, but if compared to a language like Finnish, which doesn’t appear to be tough until you start learning it, that’s one of the most grammatically complex languages on Earth!
What makes Chinese easy is the fact that it has no tenses, no cases, no genders and simple grammar. In terms of grammatical complexity, Chinese is really one of the easiest languages there is to learn. It does not feature complicated constructs like cases and genders and treats tenses in a very simplistic way. Furthermore, unlike other East Asian languages such as Korean and Japanese, the language is free from complicated honorific grammar.
When you consider how long learners of other languages focus on verb conjugation and genders, you will begin to understand that this is an area where Chinese learners can rapidly outpace learners of other languages. Even the difficulty of characters and tones is exaggerated about Mandarin Chinese. People will often dismiss Chinese by saying things like “Won’t I have to learn 10,000 random pictures?” or “Doesn’t every word have 10 meanings?” The truth is that characters are not random pictures, but a reasonably organized system of radicals and phonetic elements that isn’t too hard to understand. In addition, a learner really only needs to know 2000-3000 characters to have a reasonable degree of fluency.
With respect to tones, while important, they are not necessarily critical to understanding. In actual fact, Chinese people tend to use context more than tone to understand what you are talking about in any given sentence.
Availability of easy tools to learn Chinese!
There Are Better Ways to Learn Chinese Than Ever
Computer-assisted learning is making learning Chinese easy and fun
Moving on from laborious learning in the past involving huge dictionaries, endless character lists and poorly recorded tapes. Luckily, there are now much better ways for you to learn Chinese.
Use digital dictionary programs like Pleco and brilliant character-learning programs such as Memrise and Anki.
Media-assisted learning techniques are also a huge help when it comes to learning Chinese. Go online ans search for real-world videos—like music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks—and turns them into personalized language learning lessons.
All of this makes attaining Chinese proficiency faster and easier than ever before.
Digital communications are making handwritten characters less important
Another way in which technology is making Chinese an easier language to learn is the way typing is supplanting character writing in China. A number of popular character input methods are used throughout China on mobile devices and computers, and they have grown to become the primary way that Chinese texts are created.
What this means is that you really only need to be able to recognize a Chinese character, in order to type it, rather than learning how to physically draw it through rote memorization.
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Chinese Will Open Up a World of Opportunity for You
Of course, you shouldn’t just learn Chinese because it’s easy and accessible, but rather for the benefits that knowing the language will bring you.
Indeed, at this point in time, Mandarin Chinese is hands-down the best language to learn in order to get a head start in life.
China’s economy is booming
The main driver of the language’s attractiveness is China’s booming economy and its status as a rising global superpower. Over the last 35 years, China has transformed itself from an impoverished third world country to become what is arguably the largest global economy.
During this same period, China has opened itself up to the world, encouraging foreign investment and economic cooperation. As such, there is a huge demand for people who can bridge the gap between this new growing China and the wider world.
Chinese skills are rare, and can make you an attractive hire
Of course, to be this sort of bridge, there is one skill you must have: fluent Mandarin Chinese. Due to the lack of people in the Western business world who can speak both Chinese and English, there’s a huge demand for these skills, and this can of course mean very lucrative wages.
Through learning Chinese, you can transform yourself from a low value employee into somebody who is critical to the success of a project in China, thereby making yourself a very attractive hire.
A Chinese element everywhere!
You Can Communicate with More Than a Billion People in Chinese
China has a huge non-English-speaking population
Aside from the obvious economic and job-seeking benefits of knowing Chinese, there are plenty of other benefits to opening yourself up to communicate with all of those who call China home. While English is widely spoken in many other countries of the world such as India, Nigeria and those of the European Union, this is not the case in China.
China has a huge diaspora found in almost every country in the world. This presents learners with a readily available pool of helpful people with whom to practice their language skills without even leaving their country.
Gain access to a whole new world of Chinese online spaces
While much of the world shares a common online space, this is not the case for China. Due to government restrictions and the ever-present language barrier, China’s internet sites are effectively inaccessible to outsiders. The Chinese internet is full of its own unique multimedia, memes and other content virtually unknown to the rest of the world. A good example of this is Chinese video-sharing sites Youku and Tudou, which effectively function as Chinese versions of YouTube. The key to accessing these spaces is Chinese fluency, yet another reward for learning the language.
Mandarin Chinese learners open up vastly improved job opportunities that enable them to function as a bridge between an emerging China and the outside world.
We must all be well aware!
The future of the world is likely to be influenced by China.
So don’t hesitate—drop everything and start learning Chinese today!