The native language is always the most important language

Our native language is the first language we learn. This happens automatically, so we don't notice it. Most people only have one native language. All other languages are studied as foreign languages. Of course there are also people who grow up with multiple languages. However, they typically speak these languages with differing levels of fluency. Often, the languages are also used differently. One language is used at work, for example. The other is used at home. How well we speak a language is dependent on multiple factors. When we learn it as small children, we typically learn it very well. Our speech centre works most effectively in these years of life. How often we speak a language is also important. The more often we use it, the better we speak it. But researchers believe a person can never speak two languages equally well. One language is always the more important language. Experiments seem to confirm this hypothesis. Various people were tested in one study. Half of the test subjects spoke two languages fluently. Chinese was the native language and English the second. The other half of the subjects only spoke English as their native language. The test subjects had to solve simple tasks in English. While doing so, the activity of their brains was measured. And differences appeared in the brains of the test subjects! In the multilingual individuals, one region of the brain was especially active. The monolingual individuals, on the other hand, showed no activity in this region. Both groups solved the tasks equally fast and well. Despite this, the Chinese still translated everything into their native language…

Guess the language!

Chinese is the language with the most speakers worldwide. That said, there is not one but rather several Chinese languages. They all belong to the Sino-Tibetan language family. A total of about 1.3 billion people speak Chinese. The majority of those people live in the People's Republic of China or in Taiwan. The largest Chinese language is Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin. As the official language of the People's Republic of China, it is the native language of 850 million people. Other Chinese languages are often only recognized as dialects.

Mandarin is understood by almost all Chinese-speaking people. All Chinese have a common writing system that is between 4000 and 5000 years old. For this reason, Chinese has the longest literary tradition of any language. Chinese characters are more difficult than alphabetic systems. The grammar is relatively easy to learn, however, which allows a person to advance quickly. And more and more people want to learn Chinese. Have the courage to try it - Chinese is the language of the future!