In a school, you may hear a student saying in Chinese,“我对汉语很感兴趣。“but you're not in China. You're in a foreign country. Like the student, many foreigners are learning Chinese. But it's not easy. The Chinese use a different character(汉字) for each word. People have to memorize about 600 characters before they can do even basic reading and writing. For foreigners, it's hard to memorize them. And the following chart shows the top 3 difficulties for foreigners while learning Chinese.
● Writing Chinese characters ● Understanding the same word in different sentences ● Reading Chinese poems |
April 20 Chinese Language Day As one of the six official working languages of the United Nations(UN)(联合国), Chinese Language Day has been celebrated since 2011. The UN holds colorful activities on this day. This helps spread Chinese and Chinese culture. |
However, Chinese is more popular around the world today. The long history and colorful culture of China attract many foreigners to learn Chinese. With the rapid development, China is staying ahead in many fields and is playing its role in the world.
Chinese is becoming a global (全球的) language and its popularity has risen around the world. Many countries set up Chinese courses in their schools.
For example, in the UK, students used to choose between Spanish, Latin, French and other foreign languages. But now schools encourage their students to study Chinese. The increase in popularity of Chinese has been surprising. 1031 people took Chinese language exams in 2001, and the number was 2062 last year, while 2561 people chose Spanish. It's predicted that studying Chinese in the UK could overtake (超过) Spanish in less than five years.
Just like the foreigners do, we also learn foreign languages. Different languages carry different cultures. So exchanges are necessary. By learning a foreign language, we not only have a useful tool of communicating, but experience a new culture, what's more important, learning a foreign language well will help us tell our own stories to the world.
