There are lots of myths about learning Mandarin Chinese which prevent people from even attempting to learn the language. I am here today to dispel some of these myths.

The first myth is that it's the hardest language in the world. I have been learning Mandarin for over ten years and can guarantee that there are languages with much harder grammar and pronunciation. Regarding the grammar, there are no verb conjugations and thus no tenses for verbs. The word order is subject, verb, object, which is very easy for speakers of Western languages to learn, with a few exceptions. Also, unlike western languages which have masculine and feminine nouns, Mandarin does not have any of this and there actually is no word for "the". So, no "el", la, "los" or "las" as in Spanish.

The second myth is that the tones are impossible to learn and that the language is impossible to pronounce in general. While Mandarin only has four tones which are quite easy to distinguish Thai, Cantonese (another dialect of Chinese) and Vietnamese have many more tones which are much harder to pronounce and distinguish. Also, while there are just a few sounds that are difficult to pronounce in Mandarin (particularly the zh and x sounds), Thai is full of almost-impossible vowel sounds and Turkish is full of extremely difficult consonants which most non-native speakers cannot imitate.

The third myth is that people everywhere believe and say that it's impossible to learn to speak Chinese. Have a look at my favorite videos on my YouTube channel and you'll see a great collection of videos with people of all ages and nationalities speaking Mandarin at varying levels.

The fourth myth is that people believe that one must know thousands of characters to have a fluent level in the language. Actually, while the more characters you know the better, for practical purposes of daily survival a minimum knowledge of several hundred characters is more realistic. Take it from me, it is possible to learn Mandarin if you get over the age-old myths!

Further your learning of Mandarin Chinese:

• study-languages.info: Learn Mandarin Chinese audio CD coures, electronic translators, phrase books and Chinese-to-English and English to-Chinese dictionaries
• freechineseblog.com: Free video tutorials for learning Mandarin Chines