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China is a great world power with over 5,000 years of culture and history to explore as well as over 1 billion speakers around the world. China is already a major production center with many products manufactured there and then shipped all over the world.

With one of the fastest growing economies in the world, learning Chinese will offer a number of potential job opportunities in China, as well as in the United States and other industrialized nations. The need for Chinese translators is always sort after in many businesses especially in the tourism sector and international relations areas. These are just two of numerous career areas to explore for those considering learning Chinese.

Those considering how to learn Chinese may have gotten the impression that Chinese is a difficult language to learn because it is a tonal language, with some dialects having 9 different tones being used, such as flat, rising and falling. Though it is true that Chinese may offer a higher degree of difficulty than other languages, the Chinese language is better in that it uses the same standard written language to make it less confusing for those learning Chinese.

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Language Programs:	Rocket Chinese	Rosetta Stone Chinese	Fluenz Chinese	Chinese Learning Suite	Pimsleur Chinese
Levels of Instruction	Beginner Intermediate Advanced	Beginner	Beginner	Beginner	Beginner Intermediate Advanced
Teaching Aids/Tools	Images Audio Word Recognition Culture Lessons Books	Images Audio Speech Recognition Word Recognition	Image Audio Video Speech Recognition Word Recognition Culture Lessons	Image Audio Video Speech Recognition Word Recognition Culture Lessons Games Books Online Teaching	Audio Memory Recall Tools
Word Resources and Tools	Glossary Dictionary		Glossary Dictionary	Word Translator Word/Root Search Glossary Dictionary	Vocabulary Memorization
Extras	Internet Resources mp3 Compatible	Progress Tracking Learning Paths Internet Resources	Progress Tracking Learning Paths	Progress Tracking Learning Paths Internet Resources mp3 Compatible	Real Life Learning

A Rich History

Understanding the Chinese Language

When deciding how to learn Chinese it is important to understand that Chinese is not actually one language, but instead it is a language family. Meaning the group of languages are related through some common occurrences of vocabulary and grammar but a speaker of one Chinese language family will not be able to effectively understand an individual learning Chinese in a different Chinese language.

Specifically Chinese languages comes from the Sino-Tibetan language family, a group of around 250 languages spoken in Asia and sharing common genetic traits that can be traced back to a common ancestral language. The history of the Chinese language is often separated into different periods by scholars, starting with archaic Chinese dating from the 8th to 3rd century BC. The archaic language represents many classical works of Chinese and by learning Chinese, individuals can access these ancient and important documents and better understand how the culture and lifestyle.

Unlike spoken Chinese, written Chinese has remained more stable over the centuries. Written Chinese includes over 40,000 characters though less than 10,000 are actually in common use. Most educated Chinese can recognize about seventy percent of these characters. Those learning Chinese will also find that Chinese characters show up in other languages such as Japanese, which may help increase understanding if deciding to learn a third language.

Choosing a Dialect

When considering how to learn Chinese, individuals have an option of choosing between several spoken languages. Mandarin Chinese is spoken by over 850 million people making it the language with the highest number of native speakers in the world. One of the main dialects is Mandarin Chinese and is the official language of mainland China and Taiwan. If you are looking for a Chinese dialect to speak then Mandarin Chinese would be perfect due to its popularity.

The Wu language is the next popular Chinese language spoken by over 80 million people in areas such as Shanghai and the Zhejiang province. Cantonese is spoken by 80 million individuals and the majority of Chinese speaking individuals in America speak Cantonese. For American businesses looking to connect with the minority group to increase communication, make sells and stimulate business growth in the market, learning Chinese will be invaluable both as a traveler and as a business person.