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Why study Chinese?

1. There are more native speakers of Chinese (all major dialects) than any other language. To put this in perspective there are approximately 915 million speakers of Mandarin, compared to Spanish, the fourth most widely spoken language in the world with around 400 million speakers.

2. You don’t have to learn Chinese characters to learn to speak Chinese. Chinese pinyin spells the sound in Roman Alphabet characters, and includes tone marks to help give the correct pronunciation.

3. Chinese literature. Although you do not need to learn to read Chinese characters to speak the language, by doing so you open the door to an enormously diverse and rich literature. In fact, the earliest record of writing was in Chinese characters although very different in form from modern characters (of which there are many thousand).

3. The Chinese economy is the fastest growing economy in the world, and so in the work environment even speaking a little Chinese will give you a competitive edge, if your company invests in China or is considering doing so.

4. Language and culture are linked and learning something of the Chinese language will help give an appreciation of the cultural heritage of China.

5. China is accessible to the foreign visitor in a way that it has not been in the past and travel to and within China is becoming easier, but to make the most of this opportunity for travel, language at a basic level is important.

7. China is becoming increasingly important in the world and may be the dominant economic power in the not so distant future.

8. Like any other language, it is possible to learn a few words and phrases in Mandarin, enough to be polite without spending years in further education.

Derived and subsidized from: “Ten Reasons to Start Learning Chinese.” Download a Language. 11 Apr 2007.

College of Humanities and Behavioral Sciences

Tel.: (540) 831.5120 & Fax.: (540) 831.5170

Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures

P.O. Box 6937 Radford, VA 24142

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