Let's Celebrate Chinese Language Day! (April 20th)

Today is Chinese Language Day and we want to celebrate one of the most widely used languages in the world!

For postgraduates looking to enhance their CV and boost global job prospects, learning a new language is a great way to get ahead. As globalisation takes over different industries, international relations is more important than it’s ever been.

If you can add a second or even third language to your skills repertoire, you can pave the way for a highly successful career, with increased earning and travel opportunities. With 1.3 billion Chinese language speakers worldwide (and not just in China), it’s a great language to learn if you’re looking to upskill.

At the University of Bolton, we welcome a number of Chinese students at foundation, undergraduate and postgraduate level, as well as students from all across Asia and the rest of the world. So our campus is very diverse, making it a great place to study if you want to meet people of different nationalities and expand your global network.

To celebrate Chinese Language Day, and our Chinese student community, here are some interesting ways to get involved!

Study the basics

You don’t have to take a full language course to take part in Chinese Language Day. Try learning a few simple phrases, or study numbers 1-10.

Learning Chinese can be a challenge because unlike other languages, there are no cases, genders, tenses or plurals. So it goes against what many linguists understand of their own mother tongue. But getting to know the basics can be fun, educational, and may prove useful in the future.

With no alphabet, you may also find yourself mesmerised in the art of Chinese writing too. There are over 80,000 Chinese characters and while they may appear confusing, some are actually very easy to recognise due to their visual resemblance to what they are describing.

Did you know: Chinese is the oldest written language in the world?