China has become more and more popular in the West. Business people are interested in the huge Chinese market, tourists are interested in the old Chinese culture and beautiful landscape, some students are interested in finding a good base for their further education or employment. All of these come to one point - the language. To overcome the cultural barrier and to better understand each other, one has to know the language first.
The Chinese languages are spoken by over one billion people. There are seven major language groups in China. Mandarin language group is the largest, which consists of a wide range of dialects. The Beijing ( Peking ) dialect was chosen as the national language in China at the beginning of the 20th century. It is called "Putonghua" in mainland China, "Guoyu" in Taiwan and "Mandarin" in the West.
