Job Discussion Forums

[dean_a_jones]

I don't think that spoken Chinese is that hard to learn. The tones are a bit tricky to get the hang of, and there are a lot of homophones, but the language structure is not that hard to get your head around. If you are adept at picking up a language, then I don't think this aspect of it will be too tough. The biggest problem is that if you learn standard Chinese, you may struggle with any local dialects (and vice versa). Young people tend to speak both their local dialect and putonghua, so it probably makes sense to learn standard Mandarin, although you will also have to/will pick up local stuff in your day-to-day dealing with locals.

The written language is another matter altogether.