Beijing Olympic Games: Learning Chinese Language and Its Benefits

Yes, learning languages are fun and learning more will be beneficial. Most before, in their high school days had picked up foreign languages like French, Spanish, Latin or German. But it was before the dawn of globalization. However the skills and knowledge will lose away quickly without practicing it. It happens to most of the students after graduation.

When it comes to the ear of globalization, one of the upcoming powers in the world from the east has been growing up furiously. Chinese language has become a hot, if not one of the top choices of language in school, institution or even taught online via internet.

It is not a surprise to see the rise of the popularity of Chinese language. There are more than 1 billion Chinese or more precisely Mandarin speakers in the world. It is not only fun to learn an Asian language, but it becomes an essential skill for most of us, be it for the purpose of business or travelling.

There is a standard Chinese language called Mandarin, spoken in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau (until recently), Malaysia and Singapore. Although accents and dialects may differ, this language is well populated in many other regions. One fifth of the world population is mastering this language, according to estimation.

The rapid growth of Western products and services into the Asian country will not be great without leveraging on this powerful tool, the Chinese language. It helps open the market to bigger extent by understanding the people and culture better.

The 2008 Olympic Games is on the play now. Beijing is now on the international stage as the world's oldest sporting event is held there. We can see China has become a giant global economy body since a decade ago, especially rapid since the recent 5 years. We have seen this event brought massive business opportunities in business and tourism industry. The savvy people foresee and have learnt the language.

Chinese language is repudiated as a difficult language to learn. Yet the adoption of simplified Chinese characters and the development of pronunciation system called the Hanyu Pinyin has facilitated for Westerners to pick up the language easier. It is easier to write Chinese characters since the complex symbol system has been replaced by the simplified system since 1954. It is like common shorthand, the characters look more simplified to read and write. The Chinese dictionary contains 40 thousand characters, but only 3000 are needed to read a newspaper. 6000 to 7000 characters are enough for an educated Chinese. Well, it sounds too much to remember? Actually, regularly an average English speaking person uses about 8000 words. In another aspect, learning the Chinese language can be easier than learning English.

References:
Track Five: Global Trends & Developments in New Communications in Business, Media & Entertainment, http://newcommforum.com/2008/?p=23