Teaching Chinese

Mandarin's Great Leap Forward

Interest soars in learning China’s official language

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Readers' comments


Wim Roffel

In the past I studied Japanese for over a year. My experience is that the language itself is not very problematic. It is only a pity that you waste so much time on learning the scripture.

After you stop learning the effects of the scripture are also very negative. You forget the scripture much faster than the speaking. And unless you are proficient in reading you can't keep up your speaking by occasionally reading a bit.

So - except for those who are going to live in China for some time - I don't expect studying Chinese will stay popular.

Will O the Wind

It is always a pleasure to see Westerners learning Mandarin and I have helped some of them. We should all appreciate what they are doing because it will not only help their career, but also one of the most important things in 21s century: the communication between China and the West.

But for those who emphasize on the difficulty, the necessity to romanize the language, how they don't believe in change, I would like to invite them to see what's happening now. In many companies, people who speak Mandarin and English/French/German etc find always good jobs.
When the Chinese young people are working hard to learn everything if it's useful, many in the West are just complaining that their government is not doing enough to put pressure on China, as "They are taking our jobs".

To learn a language is not easy at all. But we are doing it. If for English speakers it's really hard to learn an Asian language, it wouldn't be easy for us to learn English either. Anyway, some see the opportunity and they do what they need to, that's why we see also some Westerners working in the foreign companies in Beijing, Shanghai but not only Chinese.

After all, when a teacher who teaches French Culture told me that she didn't know the World War II had happened in China, I was thinking: hmmm, the censorship by the Chinese government hasn't done a great job compared to the ignorance of the West. (p.s. I work in France and speak French in daily life, so pardon me if my English is not perfect.)


"The comments about the latin alphabet's dominance are just longing for the past when it dominated most of the world - get used to it - more and more Chinese will be used everywhere - next stop - central Asia and rest of SE asia"

Haha - really? I love your childish tone.


What Cyrillic languages are you exactly reffering to??? I would say the interest in Cyrillic alphabet has only increased and with the entry of Bulgaria in the EU, now one of the official alphabets of Europe is Cyrillic!


Chinese is really difficult to learn as you need to be able to read Characters, use the right tones, be able to recognize spoken words and obviously to be able to speak (translate form English). Finally (if you want) you may study how to write!
One clever way is to use some flashcard system to do that - and repeat it from time to time. There are some around like Anki, or ZDT but I prefer to use one at www.trainchinese.com as it allows me to work using my cellphone - which is always with me.
Additionally for those interested into oral Chinese there are a lot of pod casts around. Some are really fun to use!

Victoria Beck

Globish will penetrate the world because most advances in all fields have been generated in the west, so the vocabulary going along with life today is increasingly English-based. My experience is it's so easy to learn (speaking/reading/writing) at a simple communication level, yet immensely rich and complex at the literary and academic end.

Living temporarily among international travellers all year I see it as the international language of modernity. It's a bit like not knowing much maths and science, as in my case: large areas of knowledge just aren't accessible.

I'm surprised at some of the European tourists, uni-educated fluent-in-English, who are paying for short-term grammar English courses, here and in Oz, to fine-tune. Usually, they have more grasp of it than the average here, myself included.

country road

Hi Hibro, i know you have read a lot of articles about China, you are very interesting in China. I am sure that you don't understand what have happened in China,even if you have done a lots. You will get a fancy image of China,it isn't real China,it is your China.

May be, what i say have made you feel some depressed.But I hope to you,continuing,don't give up! you have arrived at the foot of the mountain,Everest.(generated3990319 wrote).


Chinese regions fight back against surge of Mandarin

"From the remote mountains of Tibet to the soaring skyscrapers of Shanghai and Guangzhou, an unlikely issue has emerged to both anger and unite China's disparate peoples -- their language.

The country's 1.3 billion people may be almost all exclusively educated in one tongue, the official medium of Mandarin, but decades of its promotion has failed to stifle popular attachment to regional vernaculars and dialects.

The banishing or planned banishment from the airwaves and classrooms of languages such as Cantonese, Shanghainese and Tibetan has sparked rare public protests, as people push back against a government with little time for cultural diversity.

At a rally in the booming southern city of Guangzhou in late July, protesters thronged against police and shouted obscenities, demanding the protection of their mother tongue, Cantonese.

In October, ethnic Tibetan students took to the streets in the western province of Qinghai to protest against what they view as the marginalization of Tibetan in the education system in favor of Mandarin.

In Shanghai, the demise of the sing-song vernacular has led to calls for a rethink of China's monolithic language policies.

The noticeable drop in Shanghainese speakers has stoked anger and concern that the language may fade within a generation or two, unless measures are taken to reverse the decline."

Devils Advocate_1

[Hibro wrote:

Nov 22nd 2010 10:06 GMT
New Technology Deals Blow to Writing Mandarin Characters

"Yu, a 23-year-old college graduate from Dandong city in northern Liaoning province, uses his computer and mobile phone everyday to communicate with his friends. But technology is having an unwanted side effect: Yu, like a growing number of young Chinese, is starting to forget how to write his native language.]

THAT happened to almost all HK students who went to colleges in the West LONG before the computer age. Using simplified Chinese characters could lessen the problem though-- It's easier to remember how to write them.



New Technology Deals Blow to Writing Mandarin Characters


When writing using computers and mobile phones, most Chinese type out the beginning of a word in ‘pinyin’ – the Romanised version of Mandarin – and are then presented with a range of characters to click on from the screen. "I type in pinyin, of course. It’s much easier," Yu told IPS. "Chinese characters are very important – it’s the culture of China. But writing characters in proper stroke order is much more troublesome and complicated."

It has been at least half a year since Yu last wrote anything by hand, and he is having difficulty even remembering how to do so. At a job fair in 2009, he was asked to write a personal resume on the spot. When he realised he could not remember how to write some of the characters or ‘hanzi’, he suggested he submit the resume online.

A poll commissioned by ‘China Youth Daily’ newspaper in April found that 83 percent of the 2,072 respondents admitted having problems writing characters. Another survey by Dayang Net, a popular Guangzhou-based news portal, found that 80 percent of respondents acknowledged they have forgotten how to write some characters."

Devils Advocate_1

[generated3990319 wrote:

Nov 21st 2010 9:13 GMT
There are some different ,The meaning of many Japanese (kanji) is closer to the meaning of originally ancient -Chinese characters ，some meanings have disappeared in modern-Chinese characters.]

So, what happens to the assertion, which we always hear, that, "Japan is/should be always unique, undiluted,..." myth?



"Liu's earlier Chinese-language writings had a tone which denigrated almost every single social group in China and criticize Chinese civilization as a whole. "

If this is the Case THE MAN definitely needs a Nobel!.


Being a dialect imported from Manchuria， Mandarin unfortunately is not the best dialect to study Chinese culture (except perhaps the past 60 years of communist rule).

The problems of Mandarin as a purveyor of Chinese culture is well illustrated in a poem from Tang Dynasty titled 〈嘲妻族語音不正〉, which somehow applies to the now official tongue, but wouldn't have caused any issues with more 'orthodox' dialects, mostly in southern China, where more of the original flavour of the language has been preserved from waves of 'barbarian' invasions down history:

(source: http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/phorum/read.php?1,104356,page=1)

Of course, that brings on the debate of traditional script (the original Chinese characters still used in Taiwan and Hong Kong) vs simplified script (brought about in Maoist China in an attempt to break from the 'feudal past').

There must be many other websites and literature on both the above topics, but the conclusion may be that anyone genuinely interested in Chinese as a culture would want to study Cantonese in traditional script rather than Mandarin in simplified script - most scholars in Chinese should be agreed on this.

country road

OppositeMoonsign wrote: Nov 20th 2010 6:17 GMT
@ChinaEagle,I always feel strange to the way China functions: the government extracts huge amount of money from Chinese people in the name of "tax" and then uses the money to hire tens of thousands of people like YOU to censor and attack the taxpayers going against the government. I don't know what the Chinese people are thinking about; they use their own money to have themselves censored and blocked. What's logic here?By the way, I think the most humiliating and pathetic work in this world is just what you do: being a Internet spy for the Chinese government. I really cannot understand why you choose such an immoral career. You can write English. Why not use your English skills to find a job in a company, which is the real engine for Chinese society? Please stop enjoying the "50 cents" that the government throws at you. To be a real man instead of a dog!


I think OppositeMoonsign and ChinaEagle are chinese,but it is very diffrent,OppositeMoonsign theory anything about china is bad,very bad. ChinaEagle theory anything about china is good,very good,wonderful. young boys and girls are very self-confidence.Chinese anything will be successful,anything will be NO.1. Both are popular in china. It is good for china. China need self-confidence,but not arrogan and ignorance. Of course, you will find more level-headed brains in china.


There are some different ,The meaning of many Japanese (kanji) is closer to the meaning of originally ancient -Chinese characters ，some meanings have disappeared in modern-Chinese characters. Some ancient-Chinese characters have disappeared in modern China, but you will find it again in Japan. So many Chinese look on Japan as a museum of ancient China. A few Chinese historians will through Japan to learn more information about ancient china ,such as kimono、katana，Japan has hold a lots of ancient Chinese culture well. Lots of ancient Chinese culture has disappeared in modern China.

I agree with Leon7423 opinion that Chinese won't replace English as the global language in the near future. Japanese pingpong athleteふくはら あい(Fukuhara Ai) becomes a famous star in China, Not her pingpong’skill but she can speak standard-Chinese, better than many Chinese. Chinese language is too difficult to learn for most Non-Chinese besides Japanese、Korean、Vietnamese、Mongol、Kazak、Kirghiz、oversea-Chinese who many Chinese look on them as coming from other provinces in china than foreigners.

Non-Chinese can learn Spoken-Chinese by talking with Chinese in china, Not too bad spoken-Chinese will been look on as full marks. Some Vietnamese borderers , peddlerys ,next to China spoken-Chinese are also Not too bad .But some are illiterate.

Writing and Reading Chinese characters is another thing. for many Non-Chinese, it is equal to be asked to climb up Everest, will leads to complete breakdown for learning Chinese language. There are more effective and economical way to do that when you want, to hire professional interpreters is more feasible. Many Chinese can speak foreign languages,French、English、German etc.


@ Reluctant Polutter

I have said that “lingua franca” goes up and down with its mother-tongue nation. English is currently a “lingua franca” because American scientists make the biggest contributions to the world R&D. So the Chinese need to understand English - if they want to understand the most recent research results. However, the U.S. is going bankruptcy, it cannot sustain large investment in R&D any more. A recent turning point is that China developed the fastest computer in the world while this title had belonged to American made computers for decades.

Comparing the number of Chinese students learning English and American students learning Chinese is not convincing at all. The Chinese are born bilingual or multi-lingual. My first language is NOT Mandarin Chinese but a Chinese dialect that only understood by no more than 2% of the Chinese people. Mandarin Chinese is my second language. While I was learning Mandarin Chinese, I have already mastered the skills of studying a second language. So it is very easy for me to learn English or French. Thus, the comparison of the numbers only reveals that Chinese students are better than American students in terms of learning a second language or a third language.

I don’t think it is true that “Western aspiring Mandarin users will represent chaff”. As I know, many Chinese scholars who worked in the U.S. before are returning to work in China because now China is able to pay the best scientist a higher salary than that paid by the U.S. An example is SHI Yigong.

Americans complain that China grabs many low-paid jobs from Americans. I believe that those low-paid jobs will soon return to the U.S. after 20 years. The reasons are: (1) The federal government has no money to invest in R&D any more, so American high-tech industries will suffer miserable lose to compete with Chinese firms after 20 years. (2) China’s population is decreasing due to one-child policy. So the Chinese labor will be expensive after 20 years. (3) Chinese industries are moving upward to high-value industries in international supply chains.

After 20 years, if you want to get a low-paid job, just stay in the U.S. But if you want to get a high-paid high-tech job, then you should learn Mandarin Chinese. Many American parents are not stupid, they are preparing for their children’s future because they know the miserable situation of the current American economy.


Crtteng wrote:

“For that matter, most ancient Japanese and Korean literatures can be partially understood by reading its Chinese characters.”

Conversely, ancient Chinese literature can be partially understood by reading Japanese. In fact, after the Communist revolution in China, the best way to gain access to ancient Chinese literature may have been through Japanese. China was closed to Americans, while Japanese used the Chinese characters and Japanese scholars of Chinese philosophy were readily available. The study of Japanese was the route of my friend and teacher, Robert Wargo, to gain access to Chinese philosophy.

Even today, Japanese language is a viable alternative to studying Chinese literature. Chinese characters in Japanese (kanji) have a common pronunciation. Pronunciation characters for kanji (furigaga) can be included in text, to add an aural mnemonic to the visual, for the Chinese characters. Internet applications, based on Jim Breen’s KANJIDIC, greatly facilitate access to material on the Internet. Finally, there are excellent sources on the Internet of Chinese philosophy, along with Japanese and furigana (http://kanbun.info/keibu/rongo0101.html).

Reluctant Polluter


"The "smattering of Mandarin" that somebody mentioned will just do for all purposes related to business, policy, etc."

This "smattering of Mandarin" will do mainly for the purpose of entertainment... I mean, nice Chinese girls giggle so charmingly when a smattering speaking Westerner approaches them in the street asking for directions for instance.

Street signs are rarely doubled in English in China, so if one cannot read the hieroglyphs and talks unrecognizable for the native speakers gibberish... he'd better forget much more complex purposes like business, policy etc.


I have no doubt that Chinese won't replace English as the global language in the near future. But if the recent Mandarin rush is owing to the rising Chinese economical power, knowing Chinese as a skill that many western people don't have will certainly improve the odds of success in doing business with Chinese. As far as I can see, most of Chinese people are genuinely more friendly to westerners who show interest in their culture and take efforts to learn their language.

For this purpose whether the Mandarin rush proves a fad or not is irrelevant. With a fifth of global population and increasing purchasing power China is a market no global business wants to ignore. I don't deny the difficulty in learning Chinese as a second language, but hard work will pay off.


There is no way for the next couple of decades that the Mandarin will replace English as the lingua franca of the world. No offense to Mandarin-speakers, I am sure it is an ancient and a cultured language, but when it comes to global usage..

China may surpass the US as the largest economy of the world in the foreseeable future, but English enjoys several benefits that the Mandarin does not.

1. English, as a phonetic language, is far easier to learn than Chinese, which is non-alphabetic. To have a working competency in written Chinese, you need to commit at least 5,000 characters to memory. This is obviously not an easy thing to do.

2. English, as a European language, is far easier to learn than Mandarin for the majority of the global population. The world's Spanish, French, German and Russian speakers will find that English have far more in common with their native languages than the Mandarin. This includes Europeans, South Americans, and a majority of Africans.

3. Even in countries where non-European languages are spoken, Roman alphabets may be used, in which case learning English would come a tad easier than learning Mandarin. Such countries include Indonesia and Vietnam.

4. Although the number of native Mandarin speakers dwarf the number of native English speakers, Mandarin is largely confined to just two countries - China and Taiwan. English, on the other hand, is spoken not only in Anglophone countries but also in India and many African countries. India, at least, is as much of an emerging economic power as China is.

5. The dominance that English built up over the past century is astounding. In culture, in science, in professional studies, in religion, in governance - English has stamped an enormous mark on all areas of human endeavour. I cannot foresee any language catching up on this previously-built dominance for decades.


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