Why You Should Learn Chinese

*NOTE: though Cantonese is sometimes referred to as “Chinese”, I am using its more common usage to mean Mandarin.

After a year of stammering my way through ordering coffees in Chinese (and asking where the toilet was), I finally enrolled in Mandarin classes. Fortunately, I was somewhat familiar with the basics: I could (almost) count to ten, I could tell a girl she was pretty, and I was aware that every word must be pronounced with one of four distinct “tones” —though I could not tell them apart, yet.

I was a step ahead some of my other classmates, nine of us in total, though Mandarin certainly lived up to its reputation of being difficult. It was one of the most demanding (yet rewarding!) learning-curves of my life. Still, I continue to see how useful and interesting Chinese is to learn. Here is a list of what I wish I knew earlier:

1. Chinese is EVERYWHERE

Like many things you learn, when you learn Chinese it appears everywhere, even in the least suspecting places: video games, movies, restaurants, advertisements, sporting events, encounters with random people, conversations on public trains, airports, and tourist attractions in any large city. Chinese is far beyond China. In terms of backpacking, I never imagined that Mandarin often outcompetes English in countries like Japan, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia and, of course, places where it is a major language. Those include Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Macau, and Hong Kong.

I quickly learned that knowing how to read and write Mandarin is helpful in Cantonese neighbourhoods (like every China Town in the world!), where they use the same written characters. I also heard that reading and writing Mandarin helps in learning to read Japanese, too. Internationally, Mandarin is more reliable than the acceptance of the US dollar. Bank on that!

2. A BILLION people might like you more

That’s a lot of people who speak Mandarin! It’s almost ONE IN FIVE humans alive right now. Also, unlike some other languages of other cultures (I won’t name), even the most pitiful attempt at conversing in their language is often received with appreciation. In my experience, Chinese speakers tend to give newbies the benefit of the doubt, too. I discovered that they often assume beginners are better than they actually are. That said, Chinese culture places heavy value on respect. Therefore, showing that you are learning about their culture goes a long way, in both a business context and making friends.

3. You will access SIX THOUSAND YEARS of tradition

Although today’s Mandarin is only recognizable from its Old Mandarin roots dated at approximately 959 AD, inscriptions from the Shang dynasty show that Mandarin’s earliest writings can be traced to 1766 BCE. That is only Mandarin’s written origins. English only began in the 5th century AD, and the first dictionary was not published until 1604.

To put that in context, when Socrates was drinking hemlock in Ancient Greece, Chinese civilization was already 1200 years old —and continues today. Put another way, from the time of Socrates to the time when Kim Kardashian published her first book of butt selfies, Chinese civilization was five times older than that. For those who believe in reincarnation, the odds that you have been a Chinese speaker in some previous life is basically guaranteed.

4. Speaking Chinese feels like singing

Every language has its own fun features, such as the rolling R’s of Spanish, the guttural throat-sounds of Arabic or, my personal favorite, the “clicks” of Xhosa (Nelson Mandela’s native language). With Mandarin, it is its four “tones” that is the most fun. Make no mistake: tones often determine the actual meaning of a word, so they cannot be ignored. A word’s tone may be considered its phonetic “spelling”.

Take the first tone, the “flat” one. You must pronounce a word without wavering in pitch —like holding the sound of a piano key. In contrast, when you do the second “rising” tone you must speak as if asking a question. My favorite tone is the third one which takes a word “down and up”, and often requires a newbie’s physical finger to guide one’s voice. This tone takes practice. The final fourth “declining” tone is achieved by pretending you are scolding a child (you should feel like you are being slightly spiteful).

Imagine a sentence with all four tones!

At least there are only four tones (and not six like the Vietnamese language –or nine like Cantonese!). Personally, when first learning these tones, I had to overcome the feeling I was somehow being racist —like I was inappropriately impersonating a Chinese speaker.Thankfully I grew out of that feeling because now there is nothing quite as fun as trying to hit all the tones of a Mandarin sentence. It is like playing the microphone on Guitar Hero, or playing Dance Revolution —but with your voice.

5. Writing Chinese characters is as fun as drawing

Many people who are learning Chinese decide to snub reading and writing to instead, focus on listening and speaking. In my opinion, they are missing out. Many people believe that examining the Chinese characters are the keys to understanding Chinese culture (and therefore, the language itself). However, learning to recognize the vast amount of symbols and then reproducing them from memory takes training (in my case, 70%-80% of my homework time), but this is also quite a fun activity!

It took me back to my high school years and the hours I used to spend doodling in my notebook while my teachers lectured. Many times, the characters often remind me of Hiphop graffiti letters, too.

Initially, the more I repeated the “stroke patterns” of each character, the more I could guess, with increasing accuracy, how to write unfamiliar characters. I had discovered the intuitive logic underlying the characters, resulting from its 6000-year tradition. Replicating each character over and over also has a very satisfying meditating effect. At the height of my practice, the characters even began to enter my dreams.

6. It strengthens your visual memory

At first, the task of remembering all the intricacies of Mandarin characters seemed impossible. I found that one minor mistake would literally spell disaster. In class, a single misplaced stroke of the pen would provoke my teacher to mercilessly mark an entire sentence wrong.

For that reason, Mao Zedong instituted “Simplified Chinese”, as distinct from “Traditional Chinese”, which is currently used in most of China, today. What Simplified characters lack, however, is the historical context of each word, and the visual stories that they seemingly tell (which can assist memory). Unfortunately, unlike languages with an alphabet, nearly every word has an entirely different visual form that must be remembered.

Typically, an educated Mandarin speaker will know 8,000 characters! To simply read a Chinese newspaper, however, you will need to identify 3,000 characters. To that end, our teacher would often reveal a list of 30 unfamiliar characters to us at the end of class, and nonchalantly declare “The test is tomorrow morning.” Though we groaned, I now understand. After some practice (and tailoring your own study techniques), you will astound yourself at your brain’s ability to acquire the characters. Somehow.

7. Chinese grammar is easy

I will preface this part by confessing that I am not, by any means, a proficient Mandarin speaker —unless I am being compared to a slow-witted four-year-old Chinese child. Nevertheless, there is a relieving simplicity to Chinese grammar. After learning a new vocabulary term, I often find myself constructing new sentences immediately. It is like playing Lego with words. To explain, there are no masculine or feminine associations with objects in Chinese, unlike Spanish or French (in fact, “he” and “she” is the same word!). Speakers may not even indicate whether an object is singular or plural! Also, whereas English verbs indicate time, such as the verb “walk” being changed to “walked”, there is no such confusion in Chinese: time tenses are often denoted by adding “le” at the end of sentences, or simply specifying “yesterday” or “tomorrow”. It’s beautiful.

Beginners can also rely on a variety of grammar short-cuts, which are commonly spoken by Mandarin speakers. My favorite one, which is immediately useful, is the grammar combination that can be translated as asking “Delicious-or-not-delicious?” “Thirsty-or-not-thirsty?” “Pretty-or-not-pretty?” “Have-or-not-have?” “Yes-or-not-yes?”

Is that “easy-OR-NOT-EASY?!”

8. It keeps you humble (and rewards commitment)

Like anything in life, you get what you put in. However, with an investment in language, the pay-off is enormous: a new friend, access to a whole new culture (with its movies, TV shows, books, etc), fewer travel inconveniences, a career asset, admiration from peers, but most interestingly, a new way of thinking.

Take, for example, the word “bored”. In Chinese, this would be translated as “悶”. To write this, you combine the characters of “heart” (心) and “door” (門). In other words, when you are bored, in Chinese, you are literally keeping the door to your heart closed.

Is that profound-or-not-profound?!

Another example could be the word “home” (in Chinese, 家 jia). To write this, you literally combine “pig” (豬) and the (radical) picture of “roof”. In English, home is where the heart is, whereas, in Chinese, home is where the bacon is! Sorry vegetarian readers. Again, learning Mandarin will re-shape the way you perceive things —like any language. It is beyond the capabilities of Google Translate.

Furthermore, unlike the millions of international Chinese speakers who are eagerly studying English, the expectation set on foreigners to learn Chinese is relatively low. In my opinion, it is barely ankle-high. That said, “mastering” Mandarin to the level of a native speaker is almost impossible. Basically, the pressure is off.

But let’s revisit that “new way of thinking”. Learning a language is like growing a language-baby in your BRAIN. Just like raising a baby, it requires patience, attention, and lots of nurturing (love!). Most of all, babies need to PLAY! When learning a language, it is important not to be too self-critical.

That, for me, was a major lesson.

After receiving an embarrassing thirty-four percent on one of my weekly tests, I had to make a choice: Did I want to devote more time studying, or accept being an “F” student? After three-months I was exhausted. I had attended every lesson, completed all my homework, and was never late. I was not used to regularly flunking-out.

On the other hand, my interactions with Chinese-speakers outside of the classroom were dramatically improving. Clearly, I had to clarify my intentions. Was it fair to my language-baby to reduce all my efforts to a grade? With the final exam approaching, I could almost hear the door of my heart slamming shut.

In the end, I skipped the last day of school and abandoned the final exam. To this day, I believe that was the right choice. Language learning is a baby-raising process —it will be always be equally humbling and rewarding. My advice is to keep it enjoyable. Work hard and play on!