Greetings all. Recently, I'm gradually understand the importance of language in our life which I previously did not take note of this before.

Especially to people who are in sales or marketing line that requires a lot of communication on language with clients and customers.

With an extra proficiency in language would definitely bring no harm but extra benefit to us.

What is language?

Language is defined as the communication of thoughts and feelings through a system of arbitrary signals, such as voice sounds, gestures, or written symbols. (Adopted from: http://www.answers.com/topic/language)

Without language, we can hardly can get others to understand us or our thoughts. However, many people (including myself) thinks that learning a new language is not easy and find it very easy to give up on picking up the new language.

For instance, one who is interested to learn Korean language would eventually purchase some Korean for beginners self-study texts to have a look or sign up for short courses aiming to learn about the language. However, we live in a country that do not have korean-speaking culture. Consequently, it will not have actual practice using Korean language except in the say 2 miserable hours Korean classes only.

I created a new topic & hoping to hear from the gurus to share some tips and essentials steps to take note of when learning a language.

Also, feel free to share what language do you think is important for today's world? For example: Japanese.

Thank you.

P/S: I'm not sure if I'm posting a new topic at the right section. Moderators, please moved the topic if this is not the correct section.

Hello Izdyharz, it's very nice to hear that you are interested on learning Mandarin. Despite of the matter of China becoming the giant of the world, learning an additional language would be an advantage to you. I'm sure people around you would be definitely be proud of you. Do you know who is Baki Zainal? He can speaks mandarin as well. Well, I think you can start to learn some basic mandarin on the internet before signing up for courses. Also, I do not know which school or institution is providing Mandarin for business communications and it seems very rare to hear about it. Maybe you should do some research bout it. I think if you can learn both Mandarin and Cantonese, then you can just proceed with it. But you can only choose one, go for Mandarin first. China speaks Mandarin. Cantonese is used by Hong Kong people but most of them actually can understand Mandarin as well. If there's a must to forgo one, please learn Mandarin first.

In addition, I have heard a lot of elderly said learning mandarin isn't really that tough but when it comes to the understanding the history and also the underlying moral of certain stories, that would take ages to comprehend and need a lot of contemplation + digestion. Personally, I'm can speak basic mandarin but still considered kind of poor in it. How unfortunate.

Seldom I see Malaysians are aiming to try and learn all the main languages in Malaysia. Sad to say, even me myself never thought of this before. Well, Tamil is indeed more common & widely used. I believe it will definitely is going to be beneficial to you some day in your life. I have mixed with all races since I'm young but unfortunately I don't really get to learn much other their language except some vulgar language.

Yes, learning a new language is really not easy. It takes lots of determinations half way your journey. Furthermore, my friend had shared me that even you seems like can pronounce all the new words but you don't have an environment for you to practice (I'm referring language like Spanish, French, Japanese, Korean and etc). However, if you are picking up Tamil/Punjabi, you have the advantage of having practical rather than learning it only in class. Cheerio! Wish you luck.