Here is a great You Tube video presentation that goes into detail about the importance of learning Chinese in 2014 and beyond. There are many videos and articles on the subject but this video gives a nice summary of the basics. The video was produced and published in July 2012 by an educational software start-up company (www.ABCsOfChinese.com) focused on teaching Chinese characters in a simple and game-like fashion.
Watch and listen to the video below or, if you prefer, just read the transcript from the video below.
In this segment we want to speak directly to the people we expect will be watching these videos, commend you for being interested in Chinese and offer some encouragement to stick with it.
Interesting Facts About Learning Chinese
First of all, the fact that you're watching these videos means you're considering learning or improving your Chinese.
Very good move!
There are over one billion people in the world who speak Chinese as a first language. That's 1/5th of the planet's population, making it the most popular first language.
Chinese is the 2nd most common language on the Internet. Similar to how English is a required course around the world for many non-native speakers in school, China is pushing for the same to become true of Chinese.
In 2005, over 30 million people all around the world were learning Chinese as a foreign language or second language according to the Ministry of Education'sNational Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (generally known as "Han4ban4").
That number was forecast to have increased to over 100 million people in 2010. Of all foreign languages, Chinese shows the highest increase in enrolment in colleges and universities. So it's great that you are also aware of this trend and are interested in preparing yourself along with the rest of the world.
What Are The Benefits of Learning Chinese
If you're just starting out or still contemplating whether or not to learn Chinese, have you considered what the benefits would be? To state it briefly, "business is booming!" China is the second largest economy in the world. It has a growth rate averaging 10% per year, making it the fastest growing economy in the world.
It's the biggest global market in the 21st century. If you can speak, read, and write Chinese, an entirely new level of work opportunities will open up to you in various fields such as government, international relations, investment, manufacturing, business, tourism, translation, and education.
Also you're going to gain an advantage in an increasingly competitive business world if you area Chinese-speaking foreigner instead of a foreigner dependent upon a translator.
If you can speak, read, and write Chinese, your value as an employee will double! Or perhaps you're simply interested in Chinese culture and would like the opportunity to travel and perhaps live overseas.
Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Taipei, and Singapore are all exciting cities. And there's one last thing you should take into consideration when deciding if studying Chinese is worth it:
Related Post: Learn Cantonese or Mandarin Chinese in Hong Kong if You Plan to Travel or Work Abroad
Related Post: Learn Cantonese or Mandarin Chinese in Hong Kong if You Plan to Travel or Work Abroad
Is Learning Chinese Difficult
Chinese is surprisingly easier to learn than a lot of other languages.
1. There are no tenses or verbs to conjugate
2. There's no subject/verb agreement
3. There are no masculine/ feminine conjugations
4. And there are no plurals.
So if this is true, why do people always say Chinese is one of the hardest languages to learn?
Chinese grammar is easy; the difficult aspects of Chinese are its writing system and spoken tones. These are the two biggest stumbling blocks and greatest causes of frustration for Chinese learners, but removing that frustration is our speciality at the ABCs of Chinese.
Chinese grammar is easy; the difficult aspects of Chinese are its writing system and spoken tones. These are the two biggest stumbling blocks and greatest causes of frustration for Chinese learners, but removing that frustration is our speciality at the ABCs of Chinese.
The Importance of Mastering Chinese Tones & Learning Chinese Characters
Are you already living overseas in Asia for work or travel? You can probably speak a fair bit of Chinese, but you've been putting off learning how to read and write Chinese because it's 'too hard', right? In addition, you might think it's too much of an undertaking since you're not planning to be in Asia for that long.
Does this situation sound familiar: You can't order your own food in restaurants because you can't read
the menu. You rely on already knowing how to say what you want to order, pointing to the item, or having others order it for you.
Or how about this one: You're looking down a packed city street trying to find a shoe store, but you can't read any of the big shop signs. The only way you can find it isto physically be standing right in front of the store so you can see the shoes in the window. You are "functionally illiterate" . . . and it's frustrating, but you've gotten used to this and simply have to factor it into your life.
We've been in your situation, so believe us when we say you will significantly improve the quality of your life by mastering your tones and learning Chinese characters. And the good news is you don't need to dedicate 4 years of your life to taking Chinese classes.
If you take the right approach, you can have perfect tones in a month, and you can easily learn all 400 of the building blocks of Chinese characters within 70 hours. When you do that, all of the signs and posters that you've gotten used to completely ignoring will suddenly start to jump off the wall at you.
It's an incredible feeling, like a blind person suddenly being able to see. Your world will become so much bigger when you understand the sign in your elevator that says the water in your building will be turned off next Tuesday, when you can read the advertisement saying there's a big sale somewhere, and you can understand why there are extra charges on your phone bill without having to bother your native-speaking friends.
Of course your friends always help you. . . . like a mother helping a child. . . but when you can read and write Chinese, people will be shocked and you will get massive respect. With just 70 hours of working through our engaging writing curriculum, you can remove the handicap of illiteracy.
Learning 400 Basic Chinese Components is all You Need
Lastly, if you're worried about having to spend time memorising how to write,"Older sister, what should we buy mommy for her birthday?!"from a beginner's textbook, don't worry about this. You're not a child and you don't need to be taught child-aged dialogues. You're an adult and you want to learn relevant vocabulary. If you learn the 400 basic components, you can learn whatever you want.
If you're a lawyer, you can learn all your law terms. If you're a quality control manager at a factory, focus on those characters. If you love Chinese food, you can quickly learn to read and write all the characters on a menu. You can use these 400 components to learn the characters you want to know depending on your interests and occupation.
Maybe you fall into a different category: You're already studying Chinese in school. If the homework and tests are starting to make you feel frustrated, we can help. Additionally, take some comfort in realising that non-native speakers wanting to learn Chinese is really a new phenomenon and schools haven't necessarily figured out the best methodology to helping foreigners learn Chinese.
They are still using the exact same methodology they use for teaching native-speaking children who have spent their entire lives immersed in a Chinese-speaking society. They're teaching you with an immersion methodology when you're not immersed, so it's not your fault if you're struggling. Many people have tried learning Chinese this way and gotten overwhelmed in the process.
So if you're in high school or college sweating it out thinking, "I can't do this". . . ...yes, you can! The curriculum we have designed will be an extremely useful supplement to what you have to do in class. It will seamlessly apply to your studies and take you from just getting by and constantly thinking about quitting to someone who really gets it.
Or maybe you're one of the rare few who are studying Chinese and love Chinese characters. You are a true Sinologist and linguist at heart! If this is the case, you are going to love this building block approach to learning Chinese characters.
There is so much culture and history locked away in a Chinese character's composition! As you learn why each Chinese character is written the way it is - why it is a combination of those specific components - it will hugely increase your cultural awareness.
After watching these presentations we hope you can see how obviously worthwhile the endeavour to learn Chinese is. Whatever the reason for your interest in Chinese and no matter what your current study situation is, we are at your disposal to help you enjoy mastering the two most difficult skill sets of Chinese: Chinese characters and tones.
Click the "Create a free trial account" button at www.abcsofchinese.com to learn the 30 most frequently used basic components, enabling you to write 180 Chinese characters and discover over 2,500 Chinese characters that contain those 30 building blocks. Or try the interactive demo to see exactly how our writing curriculum works!
Please feel free to leave me a comment and tell me your experiences of trying to learn Chinese. Or, if you think it isn't important at all, you disagree with everything on this page and you've got better things to do with your life, tell me that too.
Just leave a comment and let me know you are alive! :)
And please like of share the love using the share buttons below.
Please feel free to leave me a comment and tell me your experiences of trying to learn Chinese. Or, if you think it isn't important at all, you disagree with everything on this page and you've got better things to do with your life, tell me that too.
Just leave a comment and let me know you are alive! :)
And please like of share the love using the share buttons below.
