Why study Chinese?

• China is the most populous country in the world with over 1.4 billion people.  Mandarin is spoken by almost one billion people.  One out of five people in the world is Chinese.
• Mandarin is spoken in the People's Republic of China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, the Philippines, and Mongolia.
• China is one of the world's oldest civilizations, over 5000 years old.
• China has the second largest economy in the world.  Knowing Chinese will allow students to compete effectively in the global economy of the future.
• China is one of America's largest trading partners and is playing a major role in world affairs.
• By studying Chinese, students will develop an appreciation for Chinese culture and history.

Why is studying Chinese easy?

• There are no verb conjugations.
• There is no gender.
• There is no noun-adjective agreement.
• There are no articles (the, a, an).
• There is no number agreement (three books).
• Numbers are easy:  20 = 2-10s, èr shì; 30 = 3-10s, san shì
• Days of the week and months are easy.  Monday = day one of the week; Tuesday = day two of the week; Wednesday = day three of the week…;  January = one month, February = two month, March = three month…
• There are no capital and small letters.
• If you know 1000 commonly used characters, you will recognize 90% of the characters in Chinese newspapers.

Why is studying Chinese hard?

• There are four different tones. It is essential to use the right tone to be understood and to differentiate between those four tones to understand others.
• Character writing can be difficult with all of the strokes. There is a Romanized system called pinyin; some letter-sounds combinations are different from English combinations.
• Some structures can be difficult, such as measure words.  The word modifying the number changes depending on whether it is general, paper/book, cup/bottle, etc.