Skip to Main Content

Languages and Cultures

Chinese

Why why?

Chinese—

Most widely spoken first language used by about one fifth of the world’s population
Official language of mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and the UN
Widely spoken in Southeast Asia and other parts of the world
An increasingly important medium of global interaction
A tonal language, which is fun to learn and use
Not as difficult to learn as many imagine:
- Most sounds in Chinese similar to those in English
- Most characters made up of a semantic component and a phonetic one
- Sounds represented by Pinyin, which uses 25 of the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet
- Characters formed from eight basic strokes
- Character writing facilitated by simple rules for stroke sequence
- No requirement of learning both simplified and traditional characters

China—

The worlds’ most rapidly growing economy
Poised to be a global superpower
One of the four largest countries in the world
The biggest population in the world
Traditionally the center of Asian cultures
One of the four ancient civilizations with immense contributions
A unique and complex history of more than 5000 years
Different and extremely important ways of thinking
Geographic, ethnic and linguistic diversity

CHINA 1

CHINA 2

CHINA 3

CHINA 4

CHINA 5

CHINA 6

Email Fushun Le at lefush@umsl.edu if you have questions.

Photo credits: Fushun Le, Nicholas Glynn.

Can you guess where in China these photos were taken?