Chinese-A Fashionable Trend

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Learning Chinese: A fashionable trend

Learning mandarin has caught the attention of millions of people, emerging as a new must have language in many Asian countries, Europe and the USA, having many desperately trying to master one of the world’s hardest languages. Mandarin is seen as a key skill for people hitching their futures to China’s economic rise, bringing huge benefits and advantages. Since English is spoken so universally, it no longer offers companies and employees the edge it once did.

As China is rising, the world is embracing Mandarin, where it is spoken by one out of every six people on earth. In South Korea, there was an increase of 66% over the past five years of students learning the Chinese language. Japanese secondary schools have also been offering mandarin courses, the most taught foreign language after English. Moreover, Thailand’s Ministry of Education has decided to include Mandarin education in all high schools starting 2008, and later on planning to expand it to junior high and elementary.

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Chinese is daunting to learn for many, because of the tones used in speech, and the thousands of characters that must be memorized to be considered literate. Nevertheless, this has created a flourish in language centers, educational programs and improvement of electronic dictionaries teaching mandarin, as several countries such as the U.S just don’t have enough trained mandarin teachers.

“The level of interest is high, but the level of expertise is low,” says Scott Mc Ginnis, an academic adviser at the Defense language Institute in Washington.

The Chinese language was once discriminated against during the Cold ...

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