Did you know that 1.3 BILLION people speak Chinese? That’s one in every six people on the planet. If you are going to learn a foreign language, picking up some Chinese might be a benefit in your future.
If you want to get started, Fluent in 3 Months has an excellent article providing the most commonly used Chinese words. Check it out below.
121 Core Chinese Words — The Most Commonly Used Words in Mandarin Chinese
Before traveling to another country where I don’t speak the language, I generally download and print out an article like this and treat it as a type of “flashcard” practice session. While valuable, I think that if you have a little more time, you should invest in a product like the Pimsleur audio language teaching tools. I think the audio component of language learning is important and I think most people learn better by actually speaking the new language as much as possible.
On my trip to Brazil earlier this month, I got by pretty well in Portuguese and the only training I did was the first 20 lessons of Pimsleur Brazilian Portuguese. The audio learning methods are especially useful if you can’t read your target language (like Cyrillic or Chinese).
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