Very interesting article over in the New Yorker about Li Yang, the founder, head teacher, and editor-in-chief of Li Yang Crazy English.  He's tapping into a strong urge on the part of many Chinese to learn English.

Turns out he's quite the salesman and showman. 

Some very interesting statistics jump out of the article.

Linguists estimate the number of Chinese now studying or speaking English at between two hundred million and three hundred and fifty million, a figure that’s on the order of the population of the United States.

This is somewhat ironic right now as I am going to be going on a business trip to China in July and will be working on learning some basic Chinese.

Anybody have any good advice on learning some Chinese in 6 weeks?  I'm not looking for fluency, just some pleasantries and finding the toilet and ordering a beer, etc.  You know the important things.

Phonetic Alphabet for English

It'll never happen, but boy it'd make some things easier. 

What this gent doesn't take into account is the A-plus class, super intense, ingrained network effect inherent with the current spelling methodology (or lack there-of) used in the english language.

It's obvious that there would be some great benefit to simplifying the rule structure surrounding the way we spell.  But it ain't going to happen.