CHINA IMMERSION INSTITUTE

I know a QA manager in China who can't speak Chinese; he says he doesn't need to speak Chinese.

Obviously, it is possible to hire a translator in most situations and often many of your younger colleagues and employees will be able to speak English. You can also find managers who have lived in China for 10 or 15 years who will very proudly state that they can't speak a word of Chinese. What those people can't tell you is what is going on around them 24 hours a day. They can't tell you about the Chinese world that surrounds them, and, in fact, they are often oblivious to the profound impact that it has on everything they do. It is educational to be able to understand what the Chinese say within earshot of these people who are completely isolated from the world around them. Ask yourself this; are you willing to trust your business or your position to a translator? I think most people would say no. How important is it in business to understand office politics? You certainly won't be able to do that very well without understanding the language and the culture of the people that surround you. Knowing just a little Chinese can make the difference between being a successful manager and being literally a joke to the Chinese.

Don't take my word for it! Have a look at this research paper published by Cambridge Judge Business School [See pg. 9 (pdf pg.11), Language Barriers]. Download here.

Can I start doing business without Chinese and learn it later?

You certainly can, but you would be at a distinct disadvantage. In some cases, you will actually be barred from holding some high-level positions by not being perfectly functional in Chinese. As you might have read, "Goldman Sachs Group Inc, the world's most profitable investment bank, couldn't name the co-head of investment banking in Asia as chief executive officer of its Beijing joint venture because his knowledge of Chinese was too weak..."

Don't take my word for it! Read about it here at
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2007-07/12/content_5433884.htm

How much Chinese do I need to learn?

That really depends on what you want to do with your Chinese. If you only want to function in daily life situations, then you can get by with being able to speak a few hundred works and read a few hundred characters. Completing CII's Chinese 101 course would more than satisfy those needs, and that will take about 6 to 8 weeks of intensive study. If you want to do more than that, you will need to commit to a longer project. Completing CII's Elementary and Intermediate courses will give you an approximately 4000-word vocabulary. Considering that it only takes about 2400 characters to recognize 99% of any modern text, we can take you a long way with just 4 courses.

How long will it take me to learn Chinese?

Studying Chinese, as with studying any foreign language, is a life-long endeavor, but one and a half to two years of intensive study will be sufficient to bring you to a level that would allow you to live your life and do your business in China in Chinese. Basically, it takes from 6-8 weeks of intensive study to complete one of our 6 courses. To complete all six will take about 50 weeks or about one and a half academic years.

Don't Chinese people largely speak English?

Theoretically, every Chinese person with a college education knows some English—just like, theoretically, most American high school students know some French or Spanish. But since most people in China do not attend university, the vast majority is completely unable to speak English to any degree. In the end, if you don't speak Chinese, you will only be able to communicate with a select few people around you. As for the rest, you will be completely isolated from them.

How many words do I need in order to do business?

In order to do business in China in Chinese, you will need a vocabulary of not less than 6000 words. Actually, in order to be considered highly proficient in speaking, reading, writing and listening to Chinese for business purposes, you will most likely need a vocabulary of about 8000 words.

Where is CII located?

China Immersion Institute is located in Zhuozhou, Hebei Province, 36 miles from downtown Beijing.

How many characters are there in Chinese?

Well, the newest large Chinese dictionary lists 54,000 characters, but this shouldn't cause you to worry. Consider this: According to Dr. Daniel Kane in his wonderful book The Chinese Language, 28 different characters make up 20% of a typical text; 163 characters 50%; 243 characters 60%; 363 characters 70%; 560 characters 80%; and 950 characters 90%. Therefore, by knowing 950 characters you know 90% of almost any modern text. To reach 99%, you need just 2400 characters. By completing CII's Chinese 101, 102 and 201, you will have surpassed the 99% recognition point by a couple hundred characters.

Is Chinese really as difficult as people say?

As a person who has studied a number of languages in his life, I would have to honestly say no. I don't think it is so very difficult.

In my own experience, my first foreign language was Latin, and I followed that one by Homeric Greek. As a native English speaker, I found the conjugations and declensions nightmarish. Memorizing endless paradigms made me seriously doubt I would ever make it, but I did. If fact, I grew to love it. Later, I studied German. Once again, declensions and conjugations were absorbing more and more of my life. After a year of German, I abandoned the project. I was a successful student—I can still ask directions and order a meal in German, but I didn't want to go any further than that. Nevertheless, I still wanted to add a modern language to my repertoire. I asked a professor of mine the following question (I was actually joking): Could you suggest a modern language without declensions or conjugations? To my great surprise, he looked me straight in the face and said one word that changed my life: CHINESE.

Yes, it is true. Chinese has no declensions and no conjugations. There is no tense in Chinese! Once you learn a word, that's it: it doesn't change its form AT ALL! In Chinese, there is no "I go, you go, he goes, I went, you went, he went, I will go, you will go, he will go." There is just GO. Today, I go. Yesterday, I go. Tomorrow, I go.

The grammar basically follows a SVO pattern, meaning the subject goes first, the verb goes second and the object follows—just like in English.

You may ask: if it's that easy, why do so many people say it's hard? Well, what the language gives you in grammar, it takes a lot out of you in pronunciation and writing.

The sounds of Chinese are not difficult for the average English speaker. We have most Chinese sounds in our own language. There are a few that you don't find in English or other European languages, but they are easily disposed of. The problem for most learners of Chinese is the fact that Chinese is a tonal language. There are 4 tones and one neutral tone. When you say a word with a different tone, it changes the meaning radically.

For example, if I say the word "Ma" with a high-level tone, it means mother. If I say it with a falling and then rising tone, it means horse. Learning to use the tones correctly is considered one of the very hardest parts for foreigners to master, but it is certainly doable. In fact, many foreigners have better standard pronunciation than many southern Chinese people.

The other difficult part is the writing system.

The Chinese writing system is not phonetic like European languages. It is ideographic. Chinese characters are graphics that indicate ideas and sometimes pictures. Despite appearances, the characters are not just random squiggles. They are a highly evolved system of communication that is capable of doing a great deal more than our phonetically transcribed languages can. As you may or may not know, there are many different dialects in China—actually, many of these dialects are about as closely related as Bavarian German is to Bostonian English, but, and this is the amazing thing, the characters allow all the different speakers to transcribe their dialects into the same universally readable form.

It would be like a German saying dreieck; a Romanian saying triunghi, and a Croat saying trokut. It is almost certain they wouldn't understand each other. However, if just one of them drew this on a piece of paper: , they would all instantly know the meaning: triangle.

The characters take a certain amount of patience to learn, and they do not take any artistic ability to write them. Personally, I love Chinese characters and don't feel they are a burden at all. Outside of pronunciation and writing, Chinese really is a very easy language.

I've heard that there are several dialects of Chinese spoken throughout China. For instance, Cantonese is quite popular in southern China. Shouldn't I study Cantonese if I'm going to be posted in the south?

You're right. There are scores of dialects spoken in China. In fact, they're often classified into nine or ten major groups, most of which are mutually unintelligible. I say nine or ten not because I'm not sure about how many there are but because the experts can't decide exactly how to classify them or how many groups there are.

In days gone by, it was conventional wisdom to say that it was best to learn the dialect of the area in which you lived. In other words, if you worked with the government, in let's say the late 19th century, and you spent much of your time in Beijing, you'd learn the Beijing dialect. If you were a businessperson, spending much of your time in port cities like Shanghai or Guangzhou, then you'd learn either the Wu dialect or Cantonese (Yue dialect), respectively. This unfortunate state of affairs would leave people unable to communicate easily throughout large regions—or even small regions. In fact, there was an old saying: "Travel five miles, hear five languages." You'll notice that I began this paragraph with the phrase "in days gone by". This conventional wisdom is, thankfully, no longer conventional or applicable.

In 1982, the Chinese government, in its new constitution, promoted the popularization of Putonghua (meaning "common language", most often translated as Mandarin in English). This policy has proven to be extremely successful. Today, it's rare to meet any Chinese who's not fluent in Mandarin. If you do, it's probably because you're in an extremely remote area or talking to someone who's extremely old.

Even in areas that are famous for their local dialects like Shanghai, Guangdong or Guangxi, Mandarin has become the predominant language in the classroom, the government and all service industries. Now, that doesn't mean that dialects are now dead—far from it!

Walking down the street in any of these areas, you will hear the delightful buzz of exotic, unfamiliar sounds. However, the moment you walk over and ask a polite question in Mandarin, the mysterious cacophony transforms into streams of familiarity. It is important to realize that at that moment you are not speaking in a shared foreign language; well, it's a foreign language to you but not to them!

Most Chinese are, from our point of view, multilingual, but they don't see it that way. When they shift from Wu or Cantonese or Miao to Mandarin it's a nearly seamless, unconscious transition. The local dialect is used for friends and family and is a kind of cultural bond to the local community or area, but they are equally, and often more highly, skilled at the use of Mandarin than their local dialects. After all, it was the dialect they were educated in.

These days, if foreigners wish to learn one or more of these local dialects, and doing so is not without reward, it is typically after they have already become very fluent in Mandarin (or Putonghua), the national language.

To answer your question more directly, you need to study Mandarin (Putonghua) not Cantonese. By learning the common language, you will be able to communicate with most everybody, not only in the south but everywhere.