Chi­na is the 800 pound goril­la among the new emerg­ing world pow­ers Its econ­o­my, says Gold­man Sachs, may out­size every econ­o­my except the Unit­ed States by 2016, and even sur­pass the US as soon as 2039. There is no point in bela­bor­ing things. Chi­na will be a force to be reck­oned with.

Accord­ing to yesterday’s New York Times, the hottest lan­guage being stud­ied right now by busi­ness trav­el­ers is Man­darin, and quite right­ly so. Man­darin is the offi­cial lan­guage of Chi­na and Tai­wan, and it’s also spo­ken in Sin­ga­pore. (Can­tonese is wide­ly spo­ken in Hong Kong.) As the Times arti­cle notes, speak­ing a lit­tle Man­darin can trans­late into new busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties, and so it could be worth spend­ing some time get­ting con­ver­sant in the lan­guage. You could spend $2,500 for a week-long Man­darin course. How­ev­er, if you’d like to do it on the cheap, we have some sol­id, free resources for you.

To get up and run­ning, you’ll want to check out the well-reviewed pod­cast called Chi­nese Lessons with Serge Mel­nyk (iTunes Feed Web Site). Put togeth­er by an Eng­lish speak­er who stud­ied Man­darin Chi­nese for almost 20 years (and who has lived in Bei­jing and Shang­hai for 12 years), the free pod­cast cur­rent­ly offers 55 lessons that last between 20 and 30 min­utes on aver­age. A sec­ond option, which also gets very high marks, is Chinesepod.com (iTunes Feed Web Site). Pro­duced by native speak­ers, these dai­ly audio pod­casts, each 10 to 20 min­utes in length, will immerse you in col­lo­qui­al (read: use­ful) Man­darin. Both of these pod­casts are free, and the freely avail­able mate­r­i­al will keep you busy for some time. How­ev­er, each pod­cast also offers addi­tion­al resources for a rea­son­able fee, although you can cer­tain­ly get by with­out them.

Beyond these pod­casts, you may want to check out a cou­ple oth­er free alter­na­tives: Think and Talk Like the Chi­nese (iTunes Web Site) and Chi­nese Learn Online (iTunes Feed Web Site). Also, if you’re look­ing for more sys­tem­at­ic approach­es to learn­ing Man­darin, we’ve includ­ed some options in our new Ama­zon store.

Also, one of our read­ers asked us to through this one into the mix: Chinese-Tools.com

Please see the pre­vi­ous install­ments in this series:

Part 1: Brazil­ian Por­tuguese
Part 2: Russ­ian
Part 3: Hin­di

See Open Culture’s pod­cast col­lec­tions: Arts & Cul­ture — Audio Books — For­eign Lan­guage Lessons — News & Infor­ma­tion — Tech­nol­o­gy — Uni­ver­si­ty (Gen­er­al) — Uni­ver­si­ty (B‑School)

If you take even the slight­est time to read the news­pa­per these days, you’ll know that the two
most impor­tant emerg­ing pow­ers are India and Chi­na. Gold­man Sachs main­tains that India has posi­tioned itself to become a dom­i­nant glob­al sup­pli­er of man­u­fac­tured goods and ser­vices, and, in the com­ing decades, it’s econ­o­my will like­ly grow faster than any oth­er. With­in 30 years, you can expect India to have the third largest econ­o­my over­all, right behind the US and Chi­na. Watch out for India.

Among Indi­a’s huge pop­u­la­tion of 1.1 bil­lion peo­ple, Hin­di is the dom­i­nant and offi­cial lan­guage. Yet it’s impor­tant to note that, as a result of Britain’s long colo­nial involve­ment in India, an esti­mat­ed 4% of the pop­u­lace speaks Eng­lish. This might not sound like much, but when you do the math, it turns out that you’re actu­al­ly talk­ing about 40+ mil­lion peo­ple, which makes India one of the largest Eng­lish speak­ing coun­tries in the world. And the impact is only ampli­fied when you con­sid­er that Eng­lish is spo­ken main­ly by the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic elite.

Although the preva­lence of Eng­lish is itself con­tribut­ing to Indi­a’s eco­nom­ic growth (just think of how many Amer­i­can call-cen­ter jobs have migrat­ed to India in recent years), and although Eng­lish will like­ly remain the lin­gua fran­ca of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, it seems log­i­cal to assume that Hin­di, spo­ken by 40% of the coun­try, will become more impor­tant as the coun­try grows into the third largest econ­o­my.

At the moment, there’s not exact­ly a pletho­ra of pod­casts that will teach you Hin­di. How­ev­er, the most promi­nent one is per­haps the most con­cep­tu­al­ly cool. It’s called Learn Hin­di from Bol­ly­wood Movies (iTunes Feed Web Site). Bol­ly­wood is the infor­mal name giv­en to Indi­a’s Hin­di-lan­guage film indus­try. And the idea here is that you can pick up some Hin­di as they play and explain select­ed clips from well-known Bol­ly­wood films. So far, they’ve put togeth­er 21 episodes, which are a bit kitsch, often bizarrely humor­ous, and not par­tic­u­lar­ly slick when it comes to sound qual­i­ty. If you want to sam­ple it, check out this seg­ment which will teach you how to get a trav­el­er’s visa. Final­ly, if Bol­ly­wood is your thing, you’ll want to check out this Eng­lish-speak­ing pod­cast, Pod­Masti — Every­thing You Ever Want­ed to Know about Bol­ly­wood & India (iTunes — Feed — Web Site).

In terms of oth­er free Hin­di lan­guage resources, we’d rec­om­mend review­ing this web page that has col­lect­ed and cat­e­go­rized a host of web-based resources for learn­ing Hin­di. It will point you in a lot of good direc­tions. Oth­er­wise, if you want a more com­pre­hen­sive approach, you can take a look at the sev­er­al items that we’ve placed in our new Ama­zon store. Giv­en the dearth of free options, these may be worth explor­ing.

Tomor­row, we end with Chi­nese, where we have lots of free pod­casts in store for you. If you missed Parts 1 & 2, you can catch them here.

Part 1: Brazil­ian Por­tuguese

Part 2: Russ­ian

See Open Cul­ture’s pod­cast col­lec­tions: Arts & Cul­ture — Audio Books — For­eign Lan­guage Lessons — News & Infor­ma­tion — Tech­nol­o­gy — Uni­ver­si­ty (Gen­er­al) — Uni­ver­si­ty (B‑School)

If you need a new/bigger iPod or iPod Gear to lis­ten to our pod­casts, snag one from our new Ama­zon store.

Along with Brazil, Rus­sia is the oth­er junior mem­ber of the BRICs (see Part 1 for more on the BRIC con­cept.)

While it’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly the coun­try that’s first on Amer­i­ca’s list of future eco­nom­ic com­peti­tors, it’s expect­ed to be a play­er. And, if Gold­man Sachs is right, Rus­sia, a resource-rich nation, will over­take Italy’s econ­o­my in 2018; France’s in 2024; the UK’s in 2027 and Ger­many’s in 2028 — that’s assum­ing that none of its under­ly­ing prob­lems (a declin­ing pop­u­la­tion, Vladimir Putin’s heavy-hand­ed pol­i­tics, envi­ron­men­tal dete­ri­o­ra­tion, etc.) become too severe.

Through­out the Cold War, the Russ­ian lan­guage was very in vogue. When the Wall fell in 1989, it fad­ed. Now, if the eco­nom­ic pre­dic­tions hold true, it could become the lan­guage of the future yet again. As of this moment, there’s no short­age of good pod­casts that can get you speak­ing a lit­tle Russ­ian. First, we’ll point you to A Spoon­ful of Russ­ian (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). This well-reviewed pod­cast gives you a chance to learn con­ver­sa­tion­al Russ­ian from a native Russ­ian speak­er (Natalia Wor­thing­ton), and when it comes to teach­ing the alpha­bet, they use video to teach Cyril­lic let­ters.

Next, if you’re look­ing to do busi­ness in Russ­ian, this pod­cast is for you. Sim­ply called

Busi­ness Russ­ian (iTunes Feed Web Site) this series, pre­sent­ed by the UCLA Cen­ter for World Lan­guages, teach­es stu­dents, as you could guess, the essen­tials of Russ­ian busi­ness com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Final­ly, to give things a lit­tle more of an intel­lec­tu­al twist, we present

Russ­ian Lit­er­a­ture (iTunes Feed), anoth­er UCLA pod­cast that lets users improve their
com­pre­hen­sion and vocab­u­lary by lis­ten­ing to excerpts from Tol­stoy,
Gogol, Chekhov and oth­er Russ­ian lit­er­ary greats.

Final­ly, if you’re look­ing for a more com­pre­hen­sive approach to learn­ing Russ­ian, we’ve list­ed sev­er­al prod­ucts on the mar­ket in our new Ama­zon store.

See our com­plete col­lec­tion of For­eign Lan­guage Les­son Pod­casts.

Check in tomor­row for our third install­ment ded­i­cat­ed to speak­ing Hin­di.

Accord­ing to a much dis­cussed report by Gold­man Sachs, the economies of Brazil, Rus­sia, India, and Chi­na — or what they col­lec­tive­ly call the BRICs — are rapid­ly grow­ing and could over­shad­ow today’s major eco­nom­ic pow­ers (includ­ing the US) by 2050. What does that mean for you? One thing is for sure: To stay com­pet­i­tive in our glob­al­ized world, you’ll need to know more than Eng­lish. And you’ll be par­tic­u­lar­ly well served if you can speak the lan­guages of the BRICs.

Over the com­ing week, we’ll point you to pod­casts that will teach you some Por­tuguese, Russ­ian, Hin­di and Chi­nese. The pod­casts are all free, and they make learn­ing con­ve­nient and fun. Our cov­er­age will start with Brazil and work its way through the acronym.

If you need an iPod to lis­ten to our pod­casts, check out our new store on Ama­zon.

Part 1: Brazil­ian Por­tuguese

Brazil is South Amer­i­ca’s sleep­ing giant. Expec­ta­tions of this large, resource-rich coun­try

have always been high, and while the opti­mistic sce­nar­ios haven’t panned out so far, the coun­try’s for­tunes may be about to change. Accord­ing to the Gold­man Sachs report, Brazil’s econ­o­my could over­take Italy by 2025; France by 2031; and the UK and Ger­many by 2036. There may be obsta­cles and detours along the way. But, for now, things seem to be inch­ing in the right direc­tion. And, no mat­ter how things go, Brazil remains an out­stand­ing place to trav­el, and, for that rea­son alone, it’s a good idea to pick up some Por­tuguese.

Once a colony of Por­tu­gal, Brazil is the only South Amer­i­can coun­try that offi­cial­ly speaks Por­tuguese. But because Brazil’s pop­u­la­tion is so large (182,000,000), it turns out that Por­tuguese is the dom­i­nant lan­guage on the con­ti­nent, although just bare­ly. (51% speak Por­tuguese v. 49% Span­ish.) The Por­tuguese spo­ken by Brazil­ians is not quite the same as the ver­sion spo­ken in Por­tu­gal itself. You’ll find dif­fer­ences in pro­nun­ci­a­tion, into­na­tion, spelling, vocab­u­lary, gram­mar, etc.

Today, we’re high­light­ing three series of podcasts/mp3’s that will get you up to speed:

First, we have Brazil­ian Por­tuguese. It’s a home­grown intro­duc­tion to Brazil­ian Por­tuguese, which will teach you the dif­fer­ences between the lan­guage spo­ken in Brazil and that in Por­tu­gal, and it will also give you an intro­duc­tion to Brazil­ian cul­ture. Mp3s for lessons 1–16 can be found here; audio files for lessons 17 and beyond can be accessed here. (The lat­ter ones can also be locat­ed on iTunes.) Just as a gen­er­al note, the pod­cast qual­i­ty improves as the lessons get more advanced. So keep that in mind.

Sec­ond, we amaz­ing­ly stum­bled upon series of intro­duc­to­ry lessons, col­lec­tive­ly called Por­tuguese Pro­gram­mat­ic Course, that was put togeth­er by the US For­eign Ser­vice, and they’re appar­ent­ly now in the pub­lic domain. From this page, you can down­load pdf text files that accom­pa­ny relat­ed audio files that you’ll need to down­load and unzip. The For­eign Ser­vice approach to teach­ing lan­guages is gen­er­al­ly very well regard­ed. Lan­guage lovers will def­i­nite­ly want to check out the full col­lec­tion of For­eign Ser­vice lan­guage lessons here.

Third, we have “Ta Fal­a­do: Brazil­ian Por­tuguese Pro­nun­ci­a­tion for Span­ish Speak­ers” (iTunes Feed Web Site). This pod­cast is pro­duced by the Lan­guage Tech­nol­o­gy Cen­ter in the Depart­ment of Span­ish and Por­tuguese at UT-Austin, and it helps stu­dents who know some Span­ish make the tran­si­tion to speak­ing Por­tuguese.

Final­ly, if you’d like to take things to the next lev­el, then you can always check out some more com­pre­hen­sive lan­guage learn­ing sys­tems out on the mar­ket. We’ve list­ed a few in our Ama­zon store.

Next, Part 2: Learn­ing Russ­ian.

See our com­plete col­lec­tion of For­eign Lan­guage Les­son Pod­casts. It now cov­ers 17 lan­guages.