The main theme of this essay is difficulties when learning Mandarin as a foreignlanguage in Sweden. Standardised Chinese, also called Mandarin Chinese will beintroduced as the new language choice in Swedish middle- and secondary schools.In order to investigate what difficulties Swedish pupils face when learning thislanguage, a questionnaire was sent to three Mandarin classes in Sweden. 36participants agreed to participate in the current study. The answers from thequestionnaire were compared to similar research, concerning British and Americanstudents of Mandarin. This essay finds that there are areas where research onBritish and American students point to the similar results as the current research.However, there are also areas where the results differ.