Learn Foreign Languages

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, you can easily be drawn out of bed in the early morning and put more time to it before you realize it. It doesn’t stop there yet.

The number of native Chinese-speaking people in the world is larger than that of any other native language speakers. It’s hard to find a community on earth where there’s no one who speaks Chinese as mother tongue. You can practice Chinese at any corner of the world from the Chinese clothes washing services in Costa Rica to the Chinese-style restaurants in Israel.

Mandarin is regarded as the national Chinese language by both the mainland Chinese Communists and the Nationalists in Taiwan. Mandarin is originated from the dialect in the north of China. Don’t accept any other substitute. If you decide to learn any dialect of China other than Mandarin, you must make sure what you are doing. 50 years ago, you could not possibly find a Chinese that spoke Mandarin in the US. Cantonese with a sub-dialect was what they spoke mostly because they were children of the laborers that came to America to build the transcontinental railway in the 19th century. Today it’s quite another thing. Mandarin is spoken in any Chinese-style restaurants in the United States.

Mandarin is spoken in Taiwan, Singapore outside the Chinese mainland. Even people in Hong Kong and Macao are now learning Mandarin after the reunification.

Maybe your Chinese friend happens to be a Cantonese speaker, or one of your subordinates is from Hong Kong where Cantonese is the native tongue. But don’t be drawn to learn it as your first try in Chinese learning.