Are you or your company already heading to China? If not, maybe you should check at the numerous people coming from the western world who try to settle in China with their whole family, and especially young kids in order to make them able to understand and speak good mandarin. It is told, and it is probably full truth that this language might the language of future. Americans are moving to China, it could be Chengdu or it could even be Singapore, but Americans are realizing the importance of mandarin in a close coming time! Wall Street Journal tells us: “families are enrolling their children in Mandarin-immersion programs that are springing up from California to Maine. They are hiring tutors, Skyping with teachers in Beijing and recruiting Chinese-speaking nannies. Some are stocking their playrooms with Disney videos in Mandarin—not to mention the iPhone apps aimed at making kids into Mandarin speakers.”

But the second point of what Wall Street Journal says being last BUT not least is that:

“Mandarin is notoriously difficult to learn. The language is tonal, and fluency requires mastering thousands of characters. Mandarin competence takes 2,200 class hours, with half of that time spent in a country where it’s spoken, according to the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service Institute, whereas Spanish can be learned in 600 to 750 class hours.”

Everybody knows that Chinese is really difficult to learn for occidental people, but isn’t it said that children have facilities to learn languages when they are young? Some American kids are attending Chinese-English schools in the U.S. for several years (New-York), and the result is quite… surprising:

“Journalist: “How do you say ‘house’?”

Boy: “Uh, I forget.”

Journalist: “How about ‘car’?”

Boy: “Uh… hm…”

Journalist: “How about ‘I am American?'”

Boy: “Wo shi Zhongguo ren.”

Journalist: “Hm, I’m pretty sure that means ‘I am Chinese.’ Isn’t American Meiguo ren?”

Boy: “Oh, that’s right!”

Journalist: “How about ‘he is my friend?'”

Boy: “Oh! Ta shi wode pengyou.”

That was actually the first good answer…

This kid was more or less studying Chinese 2.5 hours per day since 5 years. And as he was 8 year old, he got his child’s still-plastic brain, so he was able to demonstrate a perfect accent, but even being a bright kid, studies are right, it is difficult for a native English-speaker to speak the language.

It is usually said that tones and characters are difficult to use properly. But what is a real problem to occidentals is to know if they would rather master the four tones to speak fluent or they prefer learning the characters to write and read better. These questions are quite crucial at the moment as more and more kids are about to learn Chinese. Should they use “pinyin” to speak better, or just do calligraphy lessons to know how to write and read good…

http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2012/06/chinese-0?scode=3d26b0b17065c2cf29c06c010184c684

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