If Chinese Mandarin seems exotic compared to the other languages offered, your instincts are correct. For me, Chinese was appealing because words are not made up of letters, but of pictorial characters, which are composed of radicals. Some words are a single character, and some words comprise several characters.

These characters turned out to be the most difficult, and also the most rewarding part of learning Chinese. “The hardest thing about Chinese is reading the Chinese characters,” said 10th grader Yahiela Eliakim, “It makes me want to kill myself.”

BHSEC teaches traditional characters, as opposed to the simplified characters that are now used in China. However, this is no object in understanding or speaking Chinese, and once you know traditional characters, simplified writing is not so hard to master.

Memorizing characters can be time consuming, but it is manageable if you are motivated to set aside time for it. Even just pulling out flashcards on the bus or subway will suffice. Depending on your memorization ability, doing Chinese homework and reviewing the characters can take anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour every night.

10th grader Melanie Cisse agreed that Chinese has its difficulties “but if you’re interested in it, you won’t find it that hard.” Studying Mandarin is challenging, but infinitely rewarding.

The biggest danger in learning Chinese is getting behind on character memorization. The class doesn’t cover chapters at the same speed as other language classes do, and for a good reason. It takes two to three weeks to learn a lesson, including four or five quizzes and an exam on all the material the lesson covers. If you don’t devote time to memorizing the characters, or employ the potent cramming strategy for quizzes, then the final exam can, and will, be a heavy blow.

But Chinese is more satisfying that it would be for me to learn Latin, French, or Spanish. Each new character I memorize, each new dialogue I read, and each entry I write in my Chinese journal is an accomplishment. Chinese definitely has the biggest ‘wow factor’ of any language offered at BHSEC.

There are approximately 1.3 billion Chinese speakers in the world, and Mandarin is the most widely spoken language in the world, with 850 million speakers. Appropriately dubbed the ‘language of the future,’ Mandarin is forecast to become the most important language in international politics and financial and cultural exchange.

Chinese students at BHSEC are one step ahead of the game.