Learning Mandarin

In 1998, just 6,000 student enrolled in Mandarin programmes. That figure is now 50,000.

"Students want to sign up for it; parents are asking for it; communities are asking for it," said Brett Lovejoy, of the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages.

"It's self-evident that children will be much better off economically and in job seeking if Chinese programmes are adopted."

In the UK, the number of students at colleges and universities taking Chinese as their main subject doubled between 2002 and 2005. Similar increases are reported in most Western nations.

This has not happened without encouragement from Beijing, where the government is actively promoting the speaking of Mandarin abroad.

Hundreds of teachers have been sent to Africa, and since 2004, China has set up "Confucius Institutes" around the world, actively promoting Mandarin Chinese.

So far, they have signed contracts with 40 universities in 25 countries to establish these joint projects.

Global language

And professor David Crystal, a leading authority on how languages work and how they change, explained that the explosion in the numbers learning Chinese is also down to demographic influences at home.

"In modern times, as cultures have changed - especially in Britain, the United States and Australia - as the countries have become increasingly multi-cultural and multi-ethnic, then the languages that come with those groups of immigrants become an increasingly important part of the culture," he said.

Adapted from BBC news, January 2007

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