ChineseClass101.com Blog

In today’s All About Chinese we take years of Chinese learning experience and China life experience and boil it down to bring you the top 5 reasons to learn Chinese.

There are numerous different reasons to learn Chinese, below some of the more important reasons are listed.

• Chinese is the language of nearly one-quarter of the world’s population. Speakers of Chinese are spread throughout the globe.

• Unlike most languages, Chinese has a unique writing system, which provides visual comprehensibility and is considered by some to be an art form.

• Chinese grammar is easy!

• When you learn Chinese you also learn how the Chinese think. The structure of Chinese is not only logical, but also pragmatic, and very related to the particular way of Chinese thinking. Learning Chinese opens up the culture of one of the world’s oldest civilizations. You are learning much more than just a language.

• China currently boasts the fastest growing economy in the world and is widely regarded as the potentially biggest global market in the twenty-first century. Proficient speakers of Mandarin Chinese will have more job opportunities in various fields such as business, government, international relations, information technology, tourism, education, translation and much, much more.

Below are some cultural insights into different aspects of Chinese linguistic Culture.

• Chinese is its own language family– About one-fifth of the world’s population, or over one billion people, speak some form of Chinese as their native language.

• China is the only country in the world whose literature has been written in one language for more than 3,000 consecutive years.

• Chinese is its own language family, and there are estimated to be 8,000 dialects of Chinese.

• Though there are tens of thousands of characters, Mandarin Chinese has only some than 400 syllables, or individual word sounds. As a result, a single sound can represent more than 100 different written characters. Tones and the use of compound syllables multiply the number of available word sounds.

Dear Chinese Students,

Today we’re pleased to announce the launch of ChineseClass101.com. This is a joint project between Popup Chinese and the folks at Innovative Language Learning.

If you’re familiar with the Innovative Language approach to teaching, you’ll know the strength of their materials has always been tight, step-by-step progressive lessons for beginners. At Popup Chinese, we’ve historically geared our materials towards more advanced students, so when we had the chance to cooperate with the Innovative team and work together to build something that could take advantage of the powerful system they’ve already built we leapt at the chance, and began work designing a focused and stepwise program for Mandarin instruction.

Although a few hints leaked out (*ahem*), for the past few months we’ve worked somewhat stealthily to build the best team possible for the task. You’ll find our progressive beginner lessons hosted by none other than the famous Frank Fradella. Other big names on our roster are Amber Scorah and of course everyone on our existing team like Echo Yao and Brendan O’Kane. This is a great team and I can say with confidence I’ve never worked with a stronger one. With more than 100 lessons on the new site, our content is off to a good start too. As Frank said once after a marathon recording session, “our first twenty lessons here teach more than I learned in a whole year studying elsewhere.”

We think this is a great step forward and look forward to hearing your feedback and thoughts as well. It is definitely a major step forward for Chinese language education online. There’s never been a better time to learn Chinese, or a better way to learn it online. Regardless of whether you’re an advanced independent learner or a total newbie, we hope you’ll enjoy the work we’ll be doing both here and at ChineseClass101. Thanks for your support, and 加油 everyone!

Best from Beijing,

David Lancashire

Best from New York,

Amber Scorah