Learn to Speak Chinese

The Chinese language is actually an entire language group and is used as an umbrella term under which many different Chinese dialects and/or languages fall under. However, with the Beijing based dialect of Mandarin serving as the standard Chinese language used by the People's Republic of China, Mandarin is the form of Chinese the largest number of both native and non-native Chinese speakers have in common. Chinese is spoken by about one-fifth of the entire world's population (more than one billion people). As China becomes a growing economic power in the global economy, Chinese is also becoming a major language of business and commerce, making it a highly valuable language to learn. With more and more U.S. companies doing business in and with Chinese companies, learning Chinese can not only be a way to communicate with a fifth of the world's population, but also a highly profitable skill set.

Chinese forms one of two branches of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages, but within Chinese there are between six and twelve regional groupings of the language. Unlike English or Romance languages, all of these spoken varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic. While spoken variations of Chinese evolved at different rates, written Chinese has changed very little over thousands of years, making written Chinese more cohesive than spoken Chinese. However, the major problem most Westerns encounter when trying to learn this complex and tonal language is that Chinese is written in character rather than using a Latin alphabet like in English. Along with the huge number of sometimes very complex symbols in written Chinese, the tonal aspect of the language is what trips up more English speakers when learning the language. That is to say the lexical or grammatical meaning of a word is distinguished by the use of pitch used to inflect words. While all language use pitch to express emotional information or convey emphasis on a word, the tone of a word in Chinese can completely change the meaning of a word, with many words being differentiated by tone alone.

There are of course many different ways to learn Chinese. Because Chinese is becoming an increasingly important language to know in the U.S., there is no lack of courses at local community colleges or private institutions that can help you get started on learning Chinese. You can also opt to hire a private tutor and/or join local Chinese conversational group. With so many Chinese speakers around the world, there is certainly no lack of people to practice your new language skills with. In fact, in some places in the U.S. you only have to go as far down the street to find native speakers who may be willing to help you practice your newly learned language skills with. The best way, however, to learn any new language is to immerse yourself in it completely. Travel to China and communicate in Chinese. Eat, sleep and dream in Chinese. A few weeks of language immersion is usually worth more than a year in the classroom, so if you ever have the opportunity to surround yourself with Chinese, it is probably the easiest and best way to learn. However, purchasing programs like Rosetta Stone can also get you on the road to fluency by teaching you basic pronunciation and vocabulary skills.