Intensive Mandarin Chinese Courses

The Global Reach of the Chinese Language

There are so many Chinese speakers. And not just in China [but in] Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and [elsewhere] around the world too. There are 1 billion users of the language in China, and 900 million of those are native speakers who use it as their first language.

So, there is no way that you could ever complain about having no one to talk to. With first and second speakers combined, that makes it the most widely spoken language in the world with English coming second. I feel like that's it, we can end this video now. Zàijiàn(Goodbye). I’m still here.

Chinese Communities Worldwide

As we touched upon briefly in reason number one, Chinese speakers are everywhere, not just in mainland China. It's an official language in Taiwan and Singapore, and it's widely spoken in communities around the world. And even if there's no one that you can necessarily practice with where you are, there's always going to be something on that face-to-face basis that's not too far away.

The Simplicity of Chinese Verb Conjugation

Okay, so big secret time: There's no verb conjugation in Chinese. What? Seriously, if you're coming from something like French or Spanish or Italian and you're thinking, okay, so let's do Chinese, here we go, I'm ready for this, and then you figure out there are no verb conjugations, you feel slightly cheated on every language you've ever studied previously. That's exactly how I felt.

For example, the word Shì means to be in Chinese. It also means am, are, is, was, were, had been, has been, will be, would be, would have been, will have been.....there’s plenty more, I'm sure.

Phwoar, English! Gosh! And it doesn't even change for different people. I 'Shì', you 'Shì', we 'Shì', they 'Shì', it 'Shì', everything 'Shì', everybody 'Shì'! So hang on a minute! How do you know then when stuff happens if the verbs don't have any conjugations?

Well, time expressions. There are also a few other words, such as 'le', which add this tense element to sentences, but that's a little bit more complex, and we don't need to talk about that today because we're here to convince you to learn Chinese, not put you off.

And honestly, don't worry. I'm not trying to brush over that, and besides, it's a lot simpler than memorising a full-on verb conjugation table.

The Storytelling Power of Chinese Characters

Each Chinese character tells a story. Okay, so we talked about the easy bit first in the last reason with no verb conjugations. Let's talk about one of the more commonly expected tricky things in Chinese: the writing.

The writing system of Mandarin Chinese is pretty unique. It's not an alphabet like Latin; it's not an Abugida like Thai; it's not an Abjad like Arabic or Hebrew.

Instead, it’s the Semento Phonetic Writing system. This means that the written language is made up of pictograms, logograms, and ideograms.

What you see nowadays, for example, is that the character of Sun has evolved from what was once a more pictorial representation of that thing. Over time, these have evolved into the Chinese characters we know and love today.

Ideograms, on the other hand, represent more abstract ideas, so things like numbers work on this basis. For example, one, two and three look like this: 一 二 三

The nature of this type of writing system means there's a lot to learn, and you must also learn the correct stroke order. That means the order of each stroke of the character.

Now, this may sound like a lot of work, but what's really fun about learning Chinese, especially the writing and reading, is that each character tells a story, and you can really trace things back, see where things have come from, and detect patterns.

And if you love deciphering codes and all that stuff, you'll love this!

The Ancient Roots of Chinese Language

Chinese is one of the oldest languages in the world. The first examples of written old Chinese date back to around 1200 BC, a long time ago. This means that the language has plenty of history to delve into as you learn more about it.

Cultural Richness Through History

History equals culture! Because the language and the country date back so far, and because the country is so big, there's plenty of culture to dig your teeth into and really get involved with.

Finding something that you love about a language, place, or culture is a really important part of staying motivated when it comes to learning a language. With Chinese, you'll have no problem with this.

Whether it's the various cuisines, from Sichuan to dim sum, the music, from traditional instruments to C-pop, the film, the literature, or countless other things that you could fall in love with, Chinese has something for everyone.

Natural & Man-Made Wonders of China

In reason number six, we mentioned that because China is so big, there's so much culture, but we didn't touch upon the fact that because it's so big, there's so much good stuff to see.

Nature lovers, you're set! You've got natural sites such as Tiger Leaping Gorge, The Reed Flute Cave and the Yuanyang Rice Terraces.

If you prefer man-made sites, you've got the Great Wall of China, the Terracotta Warriors and the Forbidden City. China is packed with places to go and things to see. Oh, and pandas, cute, fluffy, adorable pandas.

Mastering the Musicality of Tones in Mandarin

Okay then, back to the language, let's talk ‘tones’. Now there are languages found across the world with tones but the most famous examples come from Asia; Mandarin Chinese being one of them.

If you've never studied an Asian language before, this may be tricky to understand at first, and it may feel like a completely new, huge, and scary concept. But don't worry—Mandarin Chinese is a good introduction to this.

Basically, tones are the way you say a word, sometimes giving it a potentially different meaning. Whether you go up or down or up and down and up—that's the hardest one to do with lots of words—or you stay at the same pitch—that's what tones are all about.

Remember that word ‘to be’ we looked at earlier: Shì? Well, change that tone on the ‘i’, and the word's meaning will change.

Mandarin Chinese has four tones, commonly called first, second, third, and fourth. Various resources use other names for the tones, but for now, you can understand it as a one, two, three, and four kind of thing.

There's also the neutral tone that shouldn't be forgotten about. Basically, from a complete non-expert in Mandarin Chinese, things sound a little bit like this: mā, má, mǎ, mà. [I’m] pretty impressed with my little tone demonstration there.

Of course, this can be a little bit frustrating at the beginning, but if you let it go, it can become a lot of fun.

The poem "The Lion Eating Poet in the Stone Den" is a great example of how fun this can be. It is written in classical Chinese with 92 characters and consists of the word ‘Shì’—but with different tones. And it makes sense! And it's insane!

Unlocking New Language Opportunities

I always thought ‘Jiǔ’ sounded like a northern English person saying 'Joe’. If you’ve spent most of your language learning time learning European-based languages so far, then Mandarin Chinese is a great option to introduce you to a whole new world.

Not only does it open doors to languages such as Japanese and Korean, with some Chinese characters being used in Japanese Kanji and Korean Hanji, but it’s also helpful if you want to learn languages with tones. Thai, Lao, Burmese, and Vietnamese are all examples of tonal languages.

And then there's the idea of learning a language with a different writing system. Chinese is a perfect introduction to this. It's often considered one of the most difficult writing systems, so if you can get to grips with Chinese, that will make things a lot easier if you want to learn languages like Arabic, Russian or Greek.

Learning how you handle these concepts best when you're learning Mandarin Chinese will open doors for you to learn plenty of languages. And chances are, you'll become much more inquisitive and excited about what's next.

So there we go, nine reasons to learn Mandarin Chinese. This is always a language I feel like I need to study more and get back into, but what about you? Do you already study Mandarin Chinese? Maybe you're learning it right now? Let me know your reasons in the comments below, and as always, remember to subscribe to regular language learning videos. I will see you very soon. Xièxiè (thank you) Zàijiàn (Goodbye).