The Mandarin language is one of the mostly spoken languages in the world today.
In other words, it has the highest number of speakers.
The Standard Mandarin for instance is used in all schools in China. We are not encouraging everyone to learn Mandarin because we are switching diplomatic ties soon – far from it.
We are simply saying learning and understanding some basic Mandarin would prove useful especially for our young people who will become our leaders in future.
The Republic of China (ROC) Embassy in Honiara is co-hosting the learning of Mandarin language at the Solomon Islands National University.
This is a good initiative so we must encourage our students to enrol.
Mandarin language is both spoken in China and Taiwan, but currently our students going on scholarship to study in Taiwan needs some basic knowledge of the language.
In fact most of those doing undergraduate studies in Taiwan will do a Mandarin Language course before enrolling in their degree studies.
The ROC Embassy in Honiara was instrumental in hosting this course at SINU and now recipients of Taiwan Scholarships took the Mandarin Course here at home.
Since the Mandarin language is spoken by millions of people and being one of the most spoken languages in the world, it is arguably the language of business today.
Most of our imported goods come from China. We also export our logs to China.
We are seeing goods sold in local shops littered with Chinese characters.
Perhaps if we understand some kind of Mandarin language, it will benefit us tremendously.
Mandarin is therefore a useful language to learn; not only for education, commerce and business but also in international relations and diplomacy.
We do not want to dwell on the political side of things, except to say that Mandarin would be useful language to learn.
Perhaps in doing so, we will get to understand more about China and Taiwan.
It would be useful if our students or even political leaders learn and grasp the Mandarin language.
As such we fully support the Mandarin Language course at SINU with assistance from ROC Embassy and encourage more students to enrol in it.
Congratulations to the Taiwan Scholarship recipients who have successfully undergone the Mandarin Language course at SINU.
Xie Xie!
