Let’s take “Ren” as an example. It means “people” in Chinese. But it functions more like “man” in English. Da Ren, literally “big man”, means adults. Gong Ren, “working man” literally, means “workers”. Shang Ren is businessman. You can see the picture here, right?
The number of students who are learning German is much less than that of those who learn French, Spanish or Italian. Why?
The word wu in Mandarin’s first tone means “room,” in tone two it means “vulgar,” in tone three it means “five,” and in tone four it means “disobedient.”
Some language learners find it very useful to find the middle language for any language they learn. Once you understand the language structure revealed by a middle language, getting to the target language is much easier. It’s interesting to look for a middle language especially when you learn Chinese.
Twenty years ago, there might be people who couldn’t speak Mandarin in some places of South China. But now Mandarin has been publicized throughout China due to the Chinese government policy. Even all minorities speak standard Mandarin other than Han Nationality which is the majority.
Among the languages that we are talking about on this blog, Chinese is definitely a language that can simply get your whole life involved. Sitting in a comfortable chair studying Chinese, you can easily forget about your dinner. It’s more so than any of other languages that you choose to pursue. When you learn Chinese, [...]
Spanish is the second largest language in the world. A large population of large quantities of countries are Spanish speakers. Its influence and presence in the business and diplomacy fields cannot be ignored.
Following English, French is the second most popular language to learn as a foreign language in the world. Although it is far from being spoken by the second largest population, you can hear French spoken everywhere in the world often by the most influential part of a particular population.
4. Degree of Difficulty
Actually, this is a tricky factor. Some people say that some languages are difficult and some are simple. When choosing a foreign language to learn, you don’t want to hear that a language is too difficult to learn, which will probably discourage and intimidate you. Although some language seems to be difficult [...]
2. Interest.
Maybe you are just like me who am one of those who just love learning foreign languages. It fulfills your desire. I call you language-lover. You will never stop seeking for satisfaction in languages.
We finally come to this question. Before we do some exploration, I need you to just think back about the reasons that we laid out in previous blog posts why people want to learn a foreign language. Part of the answers to this question can be found there and self-explanatory.