As the Chinese economy grows, learning Chinese language becomes increasingly important.About one fifth of the world’s population speaks Chinese. However,learning Chinese seems more difficult than other languages because Chinese characters cannot be spelt with alphabets but rather visualized.While the spoken and written forms of Chinese characters are not phonetic,the grammar is relatively simple with most Chinese words having just one grammatical form,making the language both logically grammatical and pragmatic.
The earliest examples of written Chinese are found on oracle bones dating to the Shang Dynasty around 1500BC.Even 3,500 years ago,Chinese was a sophisticated language with an extensive vocabulary. Nearly 2,500 characters had been used.Though the writing style differed from modern Chinese,many characters remained recognizable.
Today,a working vocabulary of 3,000 words is needed for everyday use while 7,000 characters are required for reading newspapers.The Shuo Wen Dictionary of the Han Dynasty contained 9,353 words.The Kangxi dictionary of the Qing Dynasty had 40,545 words while the Zhong Hua dictionary of 1911 had about 50,000 words.
There are seven major Chinese dialects in China. Despite the different dialects,Chinese characters are used universally in writing. Most people refer to Mandarin when learning Chinese as over 900 million people speak it. Mandarin is also the official language of China.
As trade flows between China and the West, learning Chinese will give businesses an advantage in the Chinese market. Mandarin Chinese is becoming the most useful business language after English,and some say it will become the business language of the future.
