With well more than a billion speakers around the world, Chinese language, also known as Mandarin, is the most widely spoken language on earth. As China has grown in power over the past several decades, there has been a big push worldwide for foreigners to study Chinese.
Chinese classes have cropped up in colleges and secondary schools around the world and, each year, thousands of people flock to Taiwan and China to travel, teach and hone their language skills. In case you need any more motivation than that, here are 11 good reasons why you should study Chinese.
Table of Contents
1- Boost your brainpower
Chinese is a tonal language, meaning that the word definitions can change based on intonation. Much like music, Chinese language requires speakers to engage the right and sides of their brains, and studies have shown that Mandarin speakers do use both sides of their brains!
2- Travel to exotic places
Mandarin language is spoken in lots of places, from Beijing to Singapore. If you study Chinese, you can travel all over East and Southeast Asia, as well as other parts of the world and communicate with Chinese people.
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3- One of the world’s biggest languages
Around one-fifth of the entire world’s population speaks Chinese as a native language! Combine that with the number of non-native speakers that can speak or understand Chinese and you’ve got a whole lot of the world covered.
4- Try amazing food
Chinese cuisine is one of the most beloved and richest food traditions on earth, and studying Chinese will help you uncover amazing dishes. Trying new restaurants and discovering new flavors has always been my favorite thing to do in Taiwan!
5- A warm and welcoming culture
Chinese people are notoriously warm and welcoming, and whether you’re in Taiwan or Malaysia, you will encounter a wonderful culture through Chinese language.
6- Become more artistic
Chinese is written using iconographic characters rather than letters. These characters developed out of cave paintings and pictures and require an incredible amount of artistic skill to be written.
7- Easy to get started
Despite what you might’ve heard, Chinese has a shallow learning curve, meaning that it’s very easy to get started speaking basic Chinese after just a few weeks of learning!
8- Economically important
The sheer numbers of people that speak Chinese make it an economically important language, but combine that with the prowess of Chinese speaking countries, such as Singapore, Taiwan and China itself, and you can see how economically important a language it is.
9- Ancient culture
If you learn to read Chinese, you will be able to delve into one of the world’s most ancient cultures through its strong literary and cultural traditions.
10- Do business
Many companies trade with Taiwan and China nowadays, so speaking Chinese can be a distinct advantage to doing business in Asia.
11- A new outlook on life
Studies have proven that Chinese speakers think about things differently than others. The Chinese have different concepts of time, space and history that can only be understood through the intricate details of Mandarin language. The grammatical structure, word order and even the choices of phrases and questions all help inform the Chinese outlook on life!
More articles about Mandarin Chinese:
How many people speak Mandarin Chinese in the world? Where is Mandarin spoken? How is this wonderful Asian language written? How many Chinese characters are there? Get answers now! Check out my Facts About Mandarin Chinese page…
Are you looking for a Chinese language school in Taiwan? See why I recommend TLI (the Taipei Language Institute) in Taichung City, in the central part of Taiwan. You can study Chinese in a group class for as little as NT5000 (around USD180) per month at TLI. Read about learning Chinese in Taiwan at TLI!
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