It will not have gone unnoticed by anyone that the Mandarin alphabet is the antipode of the Latin alphabet.

In addition to having to learn new vocabulary and grammar, you are also going to have to get serious about writing the language.

In this regard, like other languages such as Korean, Russian or Japanese, learning Chinese and its writing entails an added difficulty.

The Kangxi Chinese Dictionary compiles more than 47,000 different characters, while an educated student can know 5,000 to 6,000.

However, to be able to read a Chinese newspaper or understand almost all the documents of everyday life, you only need to know 2,000 characters.

Find out how to advance your knowledge of the Chinese language in this podcast.