China this China that. It's constantly in the news, more every day. And the Chinese language as well, being studied by more and more people around the world. What's the big deal, and why all the fuss?

As China's economic might has grown over the past decade, the rest of the world has rushed in; after all, how can we ignore a market with over 1.3 billion people? That's over four times the population of the United States (300 million). Along with the siren call to do business has come an increased interest in and necessity to learn the language. Learning Chinese isn't quite like learning Spanish, however, because while Spanish and English have the same roots, Chinese and English couldn't be more different. For starters, the written system uses characters and not an alphabet. Another important difference is the structure of the language - grammar, vocabulary - works quite differently.

Chinese is spoken as a first language by more people than any other language; in fact by more people than the second two most common languages, English and Spanish, combined. When we say Chinese, by the way, we are speaking about all of the Chinese dialects. Mandarin - standard Chinese - is what almost everyone who studies Chinese studies. There are in addition six other major dialects, regional languages that are as different from Mandarin as Spanish is from English. From a linguist's point of view, they could be considered different languages but, because China is one country, we call them dialects. There are an unknown number of "regionalects" as well, variations in the dialects from place to place. There is a saying in Chinese, 十里不同言 shí lǐ bù tóng yán meaning 'every ten miles a different language.' These language variations came about as a result of China's geography - full of rivers and mountains - making travel difficult.

Fortunately, if you speak Mandarin you will be understood throughout China, as it is the official language and is the language taught and used in schools. Indeed, as English speakers we might consider ourselves lucky that Mandarin is the official language, as the pronunciation is much more straightforward for native English speakers than the other dialects. Having said all that, do not be surprised if you are in Shanghai (Shanghainese) or Hong Kong (Cantonese) and cannot understand what people are saying, as these dialects are different enough from Mandarin to confound even native speakers of Mandarin. Even people who speak these various dialects still read and write in Mandarin, so newspapers and magazines and books are standard.

Note also that Chinese is an official language in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, and is widely spoken in some other Southeast Asian countries that have large Chinese populations.

Is Chinese harder to learn than other languages? The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) of the US State Department categorizes languages according to how long it will take an English speaker to learn (see infographic below). They rate Spanish a level I language and Chinese a level III language (there are only three levels, though level I has two different time frames depending on the language), which means to reach the same level of proficiency in Chinese as in Spanish takes an English speaker three to four times as long. However, the language - in and of itself - is no more difficult than English.

Bullet Point Summary

• China's growth has brought with it growing interest in Chinese.
• Chinese is spoken by more people than any other language.
• Chinese is very different from English in every way.
• There are a number of Chinese dialects, but Mandarin is understood by everyone.
• Chinese is an official language in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore.
• According to the State Department, it takes an English speaker four times as long to reach a given level of proficiency as Spanish.

Recommended Reading

https://afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/china_1000bce_language.htm

https://international.clas.asu.edu/about/chinese

https://multilingualbooks.com/languagedifficulty.html

Via: Voxy Blog