There are many different reasons for learning a new language. There is no right or wrong reason, and everyone has their own story. Learning a new language is a journey, and as with any journey there are ups and downs, times when things go well and times when you will want to give up. Every now and again, it is worth re-visiting the reason you decided to learn a new language.
My chosen language is Mandarin Chinese. So here are the top ten reasons (in no particular order) for learning Mandarin.
- Because a quarter of the world’s population lives in China
- To enhance my future employment prospects
- Because I am/will be doing business with Chinese people
- Because I live in China
- Because I plan to travel in China
- Because I am Chinese
- To learn about Chinese history and/or culture
- To increase my understanding of China today
- For a personal challenge
- Because there is/was this girl…
For me, my motivation is a combination of reasons 8 and 10. My wife is fluent in English so I’d say we can communicate pretty well without me learning a second language. But, I’d like to learn Mandarin to be able to communicate with her family, and to understand the country she calls home. We only ever see one side of China through the blinkered media in the West and I’d like to see and hear more about China from the inside.
So what are your reasons for studying Chinese? I’d love to know what I’ve missed off the list.
为什么你学中文？(wèishénme nǐ xué Zhōngwén?)
[Photo Credit] djking
Hi Bill – I find each 2 hour mandarin lesson I have is like a rollercoaster ride…starting off slow, full of anticipation, wonder, dread…it gets moving…I get in the flow…some good conversation…I’m flying high…feel invincible…but then i struggle to put a sentence together…plummeting down fast…confidence disappears…but the next minute back up we go etc.etc. Afterwards I’m worn out and more often than not I have a post-lesson powernap (and dream the odd mandarin sentence or two).
Using your list of reasons, I’m studying because of 1,2,3,5,7,8,9. No number 10 at present but fingers crossed ;-P
I’d add number 12 – visiting China changed my life. I have been to many places around the globe but none left such a greater impression on me than China. I’ve been in love ever since.
11. My mother-in-law speaks no English.
12. I wanted to know what the people in the office were saying about me (discovered it was rather boring).
13. Wanted to learn new ways to confuse annoying vendors because saying “bu yao” just wasn’t working, but “ni kuzi de la lian kai le” was funny.
I am Chinese so I learning Chinese. The last reason in the list is so funny ^_^
There is also always the “I had to learn a language for school and…” reasons:
1. I had to learn a language for school and the Chinese characters looked really pretty.
2. I had to learn a language for school and my program includes a study abroad and I thought China would be way more exotic than boring old Europe.
and there’s also:
3. I was taking a Chinese martial art class and started learning in the context of class and decided to go further and learn more than pleasantries, counting and how to say “start” and “stop”
Bridget
For me it’s 5ish: I will continue traveling to China.
Furthermore:
14. I’d like to be able to READ all those ads, brochures, newspapers, books.
Good Luck in learning Chinese. I am learning Japanese in Japan and boy o boy is it a task.
I am learning Chinese for the above reasons (not #6) and because it is one of the oldest languages that is still used today. Learning the richness of the language and how it has developed over thousands of years is very interesting. I am fascinated with chengyu and how easy it is to convey the meaning of a story with just 4 characters. I am also learning Chinese because the grammar is actually simple compared to many other languages. Plus it is cool to see people’s faces when they see me, a white guy, speaking Chinese to them.
I think all of those reasons, save for #6, have been my reason for studying Chinese at one point or another. At this point, I sometimes think my motivation is “geez, I’ve already invested so much time into it, I might as well get awesome.”
Really nice to know that there are so many non-Chinese interested in the language. Though I have stopped really studying Chinese, I still do keep in touch with it. Together with English, it is used in my daily conversations. There are some who learn the language while listening to songs, quite intriguing I might add.
Just being a curious cat here, are you learning the traditional or simplified characters?
The reason for many to most of my male class mates in my Chinese language school is that they have a Chinese wife or girlfriend. For the female class mates the reasons are however much less a Chinese partner, and more other reasons.
My daughter is nearly 7 and wants to learn Chinese because she likes the look of the letters. Not a bad reason for her age.
Reason 9 mainly, as a personal challenge, I felt guilty being able to only speak English and also needed something constructive to exercise those grey cells. There was also the matter of attempting to install part of another culture in my mind.
Another reason of my own was to experiment with how much Internet technologies may enhance learning. The last and most important reason is simply that it it fun.
I started with reason 7 and a variation on reason 10. I always remember being interested in Chinese culture / traditions / architecture and I had a lot of Mandarin speaking friends at university (From Mainland China, Taiwan,, HK, and Malaysia). So I thought I would follow my interests and get to understand my friends better by taking a course in Chinese Civilisation and another in Mandarin. I found I loved it and did quite well so I continued the language studies and wrote my Architecture Degree thesis on Pagodas in relation to Chinese Aesthetics.
Now reason 10 plays a more important role also!
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加油!!我正在学英语
Also, everywhere in the world there is a Chinese restaurant, if not a Chinese community. It can really come in handy.
but another one of my reasons that’s not listed is that I really like Chinese music, and Chinese karaoke is not in pinyin/jyutping!
btw, Chinese karaoke is also how the mainland Chinese learn to recognize traditional characters!
For me learning Spanish was greatly helped with a love of Spanish music. It really speeds things up and singing along to music can really help practise your vocal cords and mouth to the new and often alien phonemes.
Music is often slower than spoken language (much slower) and the pronunciation is generally also clearer. And for some reason my mind just fixes on music much better than on conversations.
You should check out littlechinaworld.com. Its a website for westerners who write blogs in Chinese.
“A Chinese abroad (even if born abroad) is always a Chinese.” 50% of my Chinese class is made up of people who identify themselves as being Chinese. I know it sounds strange, but I think this is quite a common reason for wanting to learn a language.
Adam, you certainly aren’t lacking in reasons for motivation. I usually leave my Chinese lessons feeling like I’m ready to take on the world in Mandarin. I pick up the phone (my first opportunity to practice Chinese outside the classroom) and within thirty seconds I’ve slipped back into English for one reason or another.
You are right though, progress, just like enthusiasm (is there a link here?) is never smooth. It comes in waves. The important thing is to ride the wave as long as possible when it does come.
I can relate to reason 11 except that in my case it is the Father in-law. The scary fact is, he is learning English faster than I’m learning Chinese.
We don’t have any Chinese speakers in our current office, but I do love to eavesdrop tourists/students on the train to try and identify words and phrases that I know. For some reason I don’t feel at all guilty eavesdropping as it is highly unlikely I’ll follow the conversation at all.
Bridget, you are right. I completely overlooked that Mandarin is an increasingly common option in schools these days. It makes me sound old when I say that the language options I was offered were Sanskrit, Classical Greek, Latin or French. For some strange reason I dropped French. It would have been nice to learn at school, but in typical schoolboy style I can guarantee that I would have dropped out of anything optional, especially if it was language related.
Do you travel to China often? I still find a newspaper or magazine such a daunting prospect. I am trying to increase my exposure to 汉字 through SMS and Twitter. This keeps the messages short and in theory manageable. Progress is slow, but then again, I’m in no rush.
I’m born in China, and i’m a really Chinese. There is a simply method to identify a person are Chinese of not: if this man leaved a very long comment, may be he is not a really Chinese.Chinese don’t like to write a long comment.
You certainly seem to have thrown yourself in at the deep end by moving to Japan. Are you finding that constant immersion in the language is a benefit?
I have never looked in to the history of the language. I’d imagine the language has changed quite a bit over the years, especially with the pace of change of the country itself.
I find some aspects of the grammar quite challenging, almost backward. I find it difficult to remember these without an explanation as to “why” it is like that. It is a miracle I can speak English at all really as I can’t explain any of the rules or constructs behind the language.
Getting interested in the Characters at that age sounds like a perfect reason. I’m still finding that looking at the characters is more like a game of spot the difference.
Darran, I’m learning simplified characters. I should probably quantify that by saying that the main focus of my learning has been on spoken Chinese. The main reason for picking simplified characters is that my wife is from the mainland and we will probably end up living there at some point.
I managed to go through a couple of terms of Chinese lessons before anyone found out I had a Chinese wife. One day it came up in conversation and soon became the topic of conversation. If I’m truly honest, I guess I didn’t want to fall into that stereotype.
I find it interesting that it is very rare to find someone who is only interested in language. Almost every time, there is an associated interest in the culture, people and way of life. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it wasn’t possible to learn one without the other.
How much of our culture and way of life is reflected in our language?
I agree, language / communication reflects culture in a big way, especially so with Mandarin where the actual characters themselves give visual clues to the cultural meanings of the words.
If you’ve ever tried translating a movie or TV show from one language to the other, you will fully realize just how deeply intertwined language and culture are. :]
I think I’m some way off being able to translate anything at the moment. One day, one day I’ll get there.
To make the most of Chinese culinary offerings you not only need to learn to speak Chinese, but you need to learn to read 汉字 as well.
I’m not a big karaoke fan at all. I’ve yet to get up and sing a song in English, let alone Chinese. Maybe I should make the effort do a song in Chinese. At least then I’d be excused practising beforehand.
Chinese karaoke definitely helps to keep up my reading Chinese reading. Even when we learned some new structure in class, I would remember hearing/reading it at a Chinese karaoke video. i.e. 越來越，雖然。 。 。但是
You could go to the private karaoke rooms, instead of a bar. You can pick any song you want, and sing only in front of your friends, or even by yourself.
But just warning you, that Taiwanese and Hong Kong pop culture IS Chinese pop culture, so you would have to learn to recognize the traditional characters for most of the popular songs. I’ve actually never seen simplified karaoke, but then again, all of my favorite artists are from Either Taiwan or Hong Kong.
I’m not going to lie that Chinese karaoke was a big factor in deciding my study in traditional characters, rather than simplified. I don’t know how to write all of the simplified versions of the characters that I know, but I can recognize them because my teacher gives us all our tests in simplified characters.
However, because I do eventually want to learn to write the simplified characters as well, I think it’s easier to go from traditional to simplified, rather than the other way around.
Listening to cheesy music is OK when it’s under the pretext of language learning. I get away with musical murder because it’s all in the name of language learning.
Where it isn’t so good is with tonal languages such as Chinese. Singers, quite understandably, tend to throw out the tones whilst singing which is not necessarily a good thing in the early days of Chinese.
If you aren’t familiar with the tonal nature of Chinese, this video from ChinesePod (now quite old) gives some idea.