There are a great number of languages in this world.
Even linguists don't know the accurate number of them.
Each language has its peculiar features, and I often enjoy comparing them.
Of course I know that it is ridiculous to reflect which language is the "best," but don't you think that it is interesting to think of their differences or their characteristics?
Today, some of my friends from Britain and the United States asked me which language he should learn as their third foreign language.
They said that they preferred an Far East Asian one.
I thought to myself, "Can I decide such an important thing?" At this time, I struck on an idea.
How about making a kind of a catalogue of languages for them?
I wanted to write three languages, but I found that I couldn't post them all because there is a limitation of the length of a text in this website.
So let me write one of them today. # Chinese.
Chinese has the most number of native speakers in the world, which amounts to about 1.3 billion.
It means that if all the people in this planet determined to play mahjong, about one Chinese speaker is in each table.
I can't assert this because I'm rubbish at calculating, though.
Anyway, whether you are willing to play mahjong or not, it will be your strength to able to speak Chinese.
Of course, there are some difficulties.
Firstly, Chinese characters are very hard to remember for people who are not from the Chinese cultural area, such as Japan, Vietnam or Korea.
Secondly, it is also very difficult to master its pronunciation.
It is even for people from Chinese cultural area.
For example, the sound "ma" changes its meanings into "mother", "hemp", "horse" and "swearing" by slight sound changes.
August 2013
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