Yes, another program for learning Chinese at your computer with your own teacher – only this one sounds like it’s got a lot of weight behind it (as in, the company’s got money and is publicly traded).
Could the claim made in the cited blog post – that 30 million foreigners are now studying Chinese – be true? Staggering. Maybe there really is room for all the competitors.
Anyway, I’ve gone and checked the TargetChinese site out, and as the blogger says, it’s still “rough around the edges.” I am having some serious issues with buttons that don’t work, but maybe that’s because they just opened shop 48 hours ago.
1
By Keir
“Could the claim …. that 30 million foreigners are now studying Chinese – be true? Staggering.”
Well, 4/5 of the world’s population are ‘foreigners’, so that number isn’t too impressive…
December 15, 2007 @ 8:19 am | Comment
2
By richard
Keir, fair point. How many people are studying English? Probably a few billion.
December 15, 2007 @ 12:39 pm | Comment
3
By otherlisa
It looks interesting but I couldn’t find any lessons past “novice” level – anyone else have that problem?
December 16, 2007 @ 6:04 am | Comment
4
By hkonger
How long did it take for one out of every seven human beings around the globe to speak English, almost 400 years of British colonialism? Although when the Brits left in 1997 after 150 years in HK, perhaps only +/- 30%(?)of its population is fluent in English.
Some of my buddies do the smartest thing, they enroll their kids the local HK Chinese schools, learn by rote i.e. the hard way, all through primary school. That way their kids are totally bi-lingual and really appreciate it when they enter Junior high in the west or some of the international schools in HK.
December 16, 2007 @ 7:19 am | Comment
5
By richard
Lisa, I had the same problem, and some of the buttons simply didn’t work. They’d better fix it soon, as first impressions count.
December 16, 2007 @ 3:05 pm | Comment