People seem to be aware of the difficulties of written Chinese, with literally thousands of unrelated characters, which seem to follow no phonetic system. This thought alone is enough to scare away many would-be students.

What's not so immediately obvious is just how straightforward and comparatively simple the spoken language is. The grammar and vocabulary that makes up day to day conversation in Mandarin Chinese is surprisingly basic and intuitive.

Now I'll tell you why:

First of all, in spoken Chinese, fewere words are used to express oneself than seems to be the case in English. A good example of this is the word "shang", meaning "up". Shang is such a useful and ubiquitous word, it's hard to give a full overview of it's meaning, though it can be used in any of the following situations:

"shang" = up

shang mian = on top

shang huo che = get on the train (bus, plane etc)

shang da xue = start university (work, lesson, class etc)

Indeed, it's understanding how simple words are used in a multitude of different situations, though differently from English, which fast-tracks the learning process.

Another example of the relative simplicity of spoken Chinese is the absence of articles, which are rife in English.

A, the, am, of and to don't exist in Chinese and are the bane of English language learners the world over. For example; "I want to go to" is simply "I want go" in Chinese. Same too with "I want eat, I want see, I want buy".

I frequently hear my girlfriend chatting on her cell-phone...

"Ni gan ma?", literally "You do what?", translates to "What are you doing?".

Obviously, there is a longer and more convoluted way to express yourself in Chinese language, however it's often overlooked just how easy things can be, when you really start to listen to native speakers.

A final example is the work "kan", which means "to see", look, watch, read, observe, pay attention to etc..

So to with "ting", meaning "to hear", or "listen".

Trying to explain the difference between "see", "look" and "watch" to a native Chinese speaker is not an easy task.

In conclusion, the budding Chinese language learner should not be perturbed by the seemingly insurmountable task of memorizing Chinese Characters. Day to day spoken Chinese is quite straight forward and simple. Focus your efforts on mastering the oral-aural basics and learning Chinese just might be fun!