Chinese language learning 'paradox' explained Thank you for such detailed corrections and suggestions, I can understand them, and I learned a lot. Especially, inefficent/profitless,pay/spend. In regard to the 'paradox', I actually mean Chinese especially it's writing system is perhaps the most difficult language to learn, but Chinese itself does have something in reward. The characters is exactly invented to make the spread possible, no matter in geography or in history.(which is because the connection necessity or even desire in the acient times, when people speak very differnt languages colloquially. ) And it's quite the truth. As for geography, we know Japan(and Korea) adopt Kanji in writing and is still using them today, so Chinese people can comprehend/guess some Japanese essays even when they don't know how to pronounce them. As for history, they can comprehend their accient text written more than 2,000 years before, with only little effort to get used to the specific gramma, and maybe a dictionary for help. This is very different in the case of those oral-based language systems. But despite the fact, today only few Chinese people take the advantage of this, which make the time-consuming learning of their language seems quite profitless. And in addition to that, it's English not Chinese to be the commuting language world wide, so it will be another time exhausting task for them to cover through!