- For the Site, see Ling: Learn Chinese.
- Available both on the browser and as an iPhone App.
- I've found the initial page-load to be a bit slow in the browser (at least using Chrome), so anyone clicking the above link may need to be somewhat patient.
- Ling Introduction:
- China has the largest population of any country in the world. The country is steeped in history with a variety of different landscapes and climates spanning a significant portion of the continent. Knowing this, Mandarin Chinese is a very useful skill to possess for anyone who loves travel, history or anything cultural.
- Chinese is spoken by roughly 1.2 billion speakers as a first language, making it one of the most widely spoken languages worldwide. It belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family and has influenced many nearby languages. Mandarin Chinese is the most popular dialect. There are numerous smaller dialects that are spoken in China and other Chinese speaking countries such as Singapore.
- Chinese is written using morphemes - characters that represent single syllables. The language is tonal and uses 5 different tones. While grammatical inflections are not common, there is heavy use of particles to impart meaning. Classifiers are also used extensively for the purposes of counting nouns. It generally follows an SVO word order.
- Learning Chinese opens up the opportunity to communicate with over a billion people in China, as well as many others spread across the world. Not only is it great for work, it can be used to discover the history of the East Asia region, owing to its influence. In terms of languages, it is certainly one of the more practical options, which is why many people each year embark on the journey of learning Chinese.
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- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2025
- Mauve: Text by correspondent(s) or other author(s); © the author(s)