About one-sixth of the world’s population lists Mandarin Chinese as their native language. In United States of America,
Modern Language Association reported that the number of students in two- and four-year college courses studying Chinese rose by 20 percent between 1998 and 2002, to slightly more than 33,000. Many non-Chinese speakers have been flocking to language schools to learn the language. Multi-national companies who seek to have a slice of the economic pie in China are also sending their executives and managers for the language lessons. Chinese is rated as one of the most difficult asian languages, together with Japanese and Korean, for people whose native language is English. In addition, the language was not learnt by any westerner until the 16th century. There are indeed a few factors for the
increasing usage of the language.
As the main economic powerhouse in Asia, China is becoming a main point of contact where business meetings and seminars take place. Knowing how to speak the basic Chinese language in formal and business conversations is therefore, important. This is due to the increasing commercial and cultural awareness of China. However, non-chinese speakers,especially the westerners find the
learning of the language daunting. This is because Chinese is basically, a tonal language. There are usually four tones of a syallabus. The meaning of a syallabus changes when the tone is shifted. For an example, zhū (first tone) can mean a pig (猪), zhŭ can mean (主) a owner. And so, please do not call the owner of a restaurant a pig in China!
The language translation from English to Chinese and vice versa of various business documents around the world is also growing at considerable rates. However, learning the chinese language is usually not enough to understand the culture in China where relations (关系) matters a great deal. But, indeed it is the first step of breaking the first communication barrier.