When I was in primary school, we learnt French.

It was not by choice, it just happened to be what was taught at my school.

A few years later in high school, with no great passion for the language of love, I dropped out of the classes, cast it aside and resigned myself to the great Australian tradition of monolingualism.

Years later, with school a distant memory, I took a chance on a language described as one of the hardest in the world - Mandarin.

It has been a fruitful pursuit ever since, and as my curiosity about all things Chinese increase, I cannot help feel it would have been nice to have known about this language and culture a lot earlier in life.

Fortunately, for a small group of New South Wales kindergarten students, they will be in a position to tackle this challenging but useful language a lot earlier than I could.

That has because the State Government has announced that four schools will next year begin an ambitious new bilingual program to teach students from their first year onwards the four key languages of our region.

Initially parents will be given the option to choose whether they want their five-year-old to do 90 minutes a day of either Mandarin, Japanese, Korean or Indonesian.

Over time, the use of these languages will blend into other classes, except English and Maths.

The long term goal is to give the kids a solid grounding in the language by the time they get to High School.

As a person who reluctantly tolerated French classes before abandoning them at the first chance in high school, my first thought was that the children would not embrace these languages.

But then I remembered how I only had to endure one French class per week.

With at least 90 minutes of language classes each day, I suspect these children will have little choice but to embrace what they are learning.

As for the parents, it appears a general enthusiasm for signing their children up for a taste of the East was a key factor in the selection of the four schools - Rouse Hill Public, Murray Farm Public at Carlingford, Campsie Public, and Scotts Head Public.

Sharon Tribolet from the P&C for the school starting the Mandarin classes - Rouse Hill Public - says most parents will take up the opportunity.

Rouse Hill already has an established Mandarin program, and Ms Tribolet has dismissed concerns that bilingual schooling could disadvantage non-Asian students who cannot practice the language at home, pointing out that many students who top HSC language courses each year do not have any family members with whom they can speak the language they studied.

Another concern raised by some parents is that mastering the tones, characters, grammar and tongue-twisting sounds needed to speak Asian languages properly could be too much for primary school kids to deal with.

But Dr Niv Horesh from the School of Languages and Linguistics at the University of New South Wales says it is all the more important that learning Asian languages begins sooner rather than later, because it takes considerably longer to master them.

But the Chinese Studies lecturer says "it's going to require a lot more attention and encouragement on the part of educators to make students understand the benefits they can reap by starting to learn these languages early."

And as for those people who question the point of it, given that millions of people in Asia are already learning and speaking English, Dr Horesh warns that might not be a permanent trend.

"The presumption that English will continue to be widely used for business in the future is not reasonable," he says.

Whether or not this Bilingual program will produce a generation of young, fluent, Asia-literate young people is anyone's guess.

But I just wish I could have had the head-start on Mandarin that these kids will get when they say their first 'Ni hao' next year.