It’s been a while now that people have started to study Mandarin as a second language. In a world where the fastest growing economy has a language based on thousands of written characters, it becomes quite the challenge to learn it when it’s not your native tongue. During the summer I spent in China, I learned that even native speakers don’t fully speak Mandarin (or any other variation of the Chinese language for that matter) until they’re hitting their early teens. Talk about hard linguistics!
Today, it’s not just a strategic move to at least try to learn the basics, it’s becoming a large part of every day lives. Especially in the internet. English, typically known as the universal language, takes the same importance in the cyber world. However, Chinese is coming to a very close second with indication that it might overcome English in its first spot. Over 400 million internet users surf the WWW in Chinese! Check this out http://thenextweb.com/asia/2010/12/21/chinese-the-new-dominant-language-of-the-internet-infographic/
It becomes more and more evident that not only would be an enormous advantage to take lessons on the language, it will become a most definite need. Why not save the time and start teaching new generations this language since kindergarten? You know, like those trilingual school systems. Those generations are on fire!
English & Chinese, are a must in this day and age it seems. But with such rapid changes, will there even be a need for language in a near future? Quite the question.