Learn Chinese

Why learn Chinese?

Chinese is spoken by nearly a quarter of the world's population, more than 1.3 billion people. With China gradually opening up its borders, there is more and more opportunity now to visit that mysterious and fascinating country, either on holiday or on business.

If you feel like walking along the Great Wall of China, cruising down the Yangtze River, following the Silk Road, discovering the Forbidden City or hiking in the Chinese mountains, there is nothing to stop you!

For facts and inspiration - and to book your trip - check out travelchinaguide.com.

Whatever your connection with China, you will find your visits, holidays and business meetings vastly enhanced by being able to speak the language. It is really not as difficult as you might imagine. It takes a while to learn to write Chinese, to become familiar with the form and meaning of the characters, but there are a lot of excellent resources available to help you. Also, you don't actually have to write in Chinese characters until you feel ready - although it is useful to recognise some and be able to read a bit - because many Chinese nowadays are accustomed to Pinyin, a romanised alphabet for Chinese writing.

The grammar, however, is fairly straightforward and logical. Chinese sentence structure is similar to that of English (subject-verb-object), there are no irregular verbs, the verbs don't change according to tense as they do in most languages and there are no noun plurals to learn.

To get an idea of what Mandarin sounds like, you can explore the Real Chinese section of the BBC website.