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.