Summary

While all people come from different backgrounds with unique traditions, learning a new language is not only a way to communicate with one another, but also promotes global economic and social development.

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Language is one of the greatest forms of human connection and it plays a vital role in understanding one another. Learning a new language allows us to expand that connection across the globe, gaining deeper insight into different cultures and customs. This, in turn, allows us to increase our understanding of global issues and perspectives.

But in order to truly understand a language and the people who speak it, it’s important to engage with its history as well.

The Chinese language boasts the largest number of first-language speakers in the world and serves as one of the six official languages of the United Nations.

The earliest recognized Chinese characters still in existence are the oracle bone scripts, which date back to the Shang Dynasty.

China's vast territory, population migration, geographical barriers, and social history, have resulted in numerous dialects of Chinese and minority languages. China has 56 ethnic groups and over 80 languages, approximately 30 of which have written forms.

The various dialects can be divided into seven major categories: Northern, Wu, Min, Cantonese, Hakka, Gan, and Xiang.

The Northern dialect, also known as "Mandarin," is the most widely used dialect among the seven, with over 70% of the Chinese population using this dialect in some capacity.

After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, a common language was needed to facilitate communication and exchange between people from different regions. In January 1956, the State Council's plenary session made a decision to simplify Chinese characters and promote Mandarin throughout the country. Now, you can hear the Mandarin dialect all over China and in Chinese communities across the globe.

In fact, while English has long been a focus for students in China, in the U.S., there has been a large uptick in Mandarin students in recent years, with numbers doubling from 2015 to 2017, and still on the rise. Chinese has been incorporated into the curriculum at a number of schools across the country, in hopes of equipping the next generation of leaders with the skills they need to engage globally.

It’s been said that the knowledge of languages is the doorway to wisdom. And while all people come from different backgrounds with unique traditions, learning a new language is not only a way to communicate with one another, but also promotes global economic and social development.