If you ever sat down to eat in a Chinese restaurant, there’s a good chance you have had the opportunity to hear Chinese spoken fluently. The menu most likely contained beautiful Chinese characters depicting food offerings. This beautiful language lends its self to roots that began over 4000 years ago from the Sino- Tibetan vernacular form. Today, the most common style of Chinese used is the Mandarin Chinese language.

There are many methods available to learn to read Chinese. The written characters have been narrowed down to about 30 strokes for over 40,000 characters used. Chinese grammar is different and easier than English, as there is no noun inflections and verbs are basic in structure. If you are going to tackle the art of reading Chinese, begin with memorization and consistency in character identification of each character, and there are a lot. It can become overwhelming to the untrained eyes, but understanding of these characters is foremost before learning to read Chinese. The use of a Chinese dictionary can be your best friend, as you start to identify the relationship and categories of each character. It cannot be stressed enough to consistently use word association, memorization and dictionary definitions to develop skill in reading Chinese. The idea being able to put together characters you see on paper and pull up the information stored from the learning process so you can recognize what you are reading.

This is how you develop an initial beginning vocabulary in Chinese. The English language uses spaces to separate words that form sentences. However, the grammar used in the Chinese language does not. It is equally important to incorporate Chinese grammar into your dissection of the language if you embark on the skill of learning to read Chinese. Do not become discouraged, breakthrough’s in reading the language come after awhile from continual application. You can develop a fair enough reading level by studying and practicing the characters. It is also recommended to practice the writing of Chinese characters so the reading is more understandable. The Chinese language is written in parallel and vertically so formable sentence breaks occur naturally. Your brain will start to recognize patterns formed by the characters. Also an interesting task to master while studying the language, is the radical components and phonetics of each character. This is skill mastered in speaking, but as necessary in reading and writing as well if you really wish to thoroughly comprehend content in reading of the language.

Learning to read Chinese may be your goal this year. And with the Chinese language gaining momentum to be mastered other than English, and second to Spanish, there is more demand for those who have some command of this old world language. If not for personal, then for business, the Chinese language is finding it’s way rapidly into the daily lives of many. As for the demand, there is also mass supply of resources available to the wishful learner to accommodate their studying needs. Be brave on your quest, know success with reading the Chinese language inevitable.