Hello everyone and I have to excuse myself for missing several blog articles this month. My next full blog post will be coming this weekend and in order to shorten the wait for you I present a very interesting infographic by LearnMandarinNow.
This infographic gives anyone who is interested in studying Chinese in China a very good overview. You can see here where you can study, the slight differences depending on the country, the different study programs, how long it might take and also how high the costs might be of the whole experience.
Did you ever go to a country to study the native language there, or do you plan such language study trip?
Crazy Chinese Family 
Hi. I did study Mandarin for three months in Beijing prior to my three year posting and I found the only way to properly learn the language was to immerse yourself in the country and just speak every day to shopkeepers and taxi drivers etc. a great way to learn if you have the opportunity. Thanks for the post good to read about other ways to learn Mandarin.
I also think the best and quickest way to learn a language is to live in that country for some time. It probably also depends on the country, for example it will be hard to learn the language in Scandinavian countries as everyone speaks good English and thus the temptation might be just to give in and communicate in English instead of the language you want to learn.
I completely agree. And I even found that I could speak English in Beijing if I wanted in a lot of places but realised it wouldn’t increase my skills if I did.
I heard that Mandarin is one of the tough language to learn, My cousin study her medicine in China and she is fluent in the language. I guess I am too lazy to learn it otherwise it will be so helpful as there is large number of Chinese population in Sydney. Looking forward to read your post.
In my opinion Mandarin is a lot more easier than Finnish! Finnish is a demonic language with way too much grammar
I dunno..I think I’ m deficient in language learning…when I can’t read the script, it’s harder for me to learn a language. That’s why I think my Toishanese dialect never progressed (well, drastically regressed with assimilation) : I need to learn the script. Too much to deal with ideograms.
I must sound old. It was enough that I learned French…I had to as a mandatory requirement to complete my university English lit. degree.
I am actually also really bad with learning languages. Sure I am fluent in English and nearly fluent in Finnish, know my way around Mandarin and a bit of Russian but that is all due to years of learning. In school I was always one of the worst students in English and the other languages we had (Russian and Latin), besides that I also never got rid of my German accent when speaking other languages
Ok am abit lost here since I thought Finnish was your lst language. But clearly you’ve spent a lot more adult years in Germany. You’re way better than I on a Chinese dialect since I know my broken fluency is something only my mother can understand. I took 3 years of high school Latin in addition to mandatory French.
German is actually my first language and Finnish should be my second but then again I had much more practice with English during the past years.
Interesting CCF! Which language emotionally speaks to you in terms of best self-expression?
So you dream in German? Serious question. I dream in English but did on rare occasion dream in Chinese in terms of people dialogue.
I believe that I dream mostly in English, followed by German and then by Finnish.However Finnish is very rare and is usually only when I have some odd dream about swimming (professional swimming which I did till 2010 in Finland)
I’d love to study in China one day, and it would be amazing! I would probably spend some time in Beijing/Shanghai, but then go to some of the smaller cities – as these are still the size of European capitals!
Good luck with you goal! To study the language in China itself would be the best option but then again it always depends on the person (what study type and then most importantly the time and the money).
I have been to China multiple times but it was never for studies, just relaxing there for a few weeks with great food and then back to Europe 🙂