Mandarin and English have surprisingly similar grammar (though the former has also been called "grammarless", partly because its verbs never conjugate). However, their phonologies and their writing systems are very widely separated. While English uses the Roman alphabet, Mandarin uses the hanzi, which are difficult to transliterate into any alphabet at all. Mandarin is a tonal language and it's difficult for English speakers to pick up on the tones at all; conversely, it's difficult for Mandarin speakers to pick up on the stress of English.

Since Mandarin is the most widely spoken language in the world, it is presumably one of the simplest. It seems that way is much simpler than English.

Many experts noted that as millions more Chinese started to go online, Mandarin might challenge the dominance of English as the lingua franca. Mandarin may evolve into the secondary language of business and/or academia, but the likelihood that it will replace English as the primary language is quite low. One structural change that could help other languages prosper online is coming from the New Concept Mandarin (NCM). New Concept Mandarin specializes in teaching Mandarin Chinese (Putonghua) as a second language. The story behind New Concept Mandarin is interesting because it has roots in a linguistic research and teaching program led by the institute's founder and CEO, Fu Xianling, at the Griffith University of Queensland in Australia.

Our students come from around the world - business executives and individuals that have the passion to learn from people who have the passion to teach. That might well speed the rise of other languages such as Learning Mandarin online.

So come and enroll now at New Concept Mandarin! You can also visit our partner site - New Concept Mandarin.