With China now the world’s second largest economy and increasing its influence all the time, it’s no surprise that Mandarin is becoming the language to master.Just look at the case of the American lawyer who left his job, upped sticks and moved his family to Western China to study the language, the recent launch of the New York Times’ Chinese language site, or even Bloomberg’s ranking of Confucius’ tongue as top business language, excluding English – they all point to the importance of communicating with this economic superpower on its terms.But the reality is speaking Chinese is tough going. It’s [...]