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Fewer university students are studying Mandarin

economist.com

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Re: Fewer university students are studying Mandarin

#51

Post by bohadi »

jamesaurichs wrote: post #11

There is 0 reason to learn mandarin if you're doing it for travel/business reasons In Taiwan street signs do mostly have English translations. A lot of citizens speak English, especially night market vendors. You'll also have a lot of native English speakers in Taipei due to expatriation from US and Canada. In Singapore signs officially are in English. And it's one of the four official languages, which means most peo…

>What's really screwy is the government has replaced most of the English translation on street signs from a literal translation to phonetic translation of the mandarin sound.

I don't think this is a fair take for a couple of reasons.

Mandarin is unlike other languages in that it's written form is famously ideographic. Phonetic translation is all that is done in any pair {L, M}. I assure you there is no such thing as a literal translation in any language.

Secondly, english as a global lingua franca is not a given and we in the anglosphere ought to be gracious in it's modern historical role, lest it decline (this is an exact mirror of dollar reserve privilege). Your statement reads as "be more accommodating for me". But through the prism of good manners it smacks of liberal entitlement.

>There is 0 reason to learn

hoo boy, i don't get paid enough for this... carry on

Re: Fewer university students are studying Mandarin

#52

Post by resolutebat »

rcme wrote: post #12
diego_moita wrote: post #8

Easy: 10 years ago Western companies though they could and should make businesses in China. Today, even many Chinese companies believe that China is not a good place for making business (e.g: AliBaba, Ever Grande, Country Garden, Tencent, etc). Slightly off-topic: about 15 years ago Golman Sachs would say that the BRICS were the next countries to become rich. Guess what... Brazil and South Africa reverted back to its…

China did become rich though.

Parts of China did, parts did not. The income inequality is really quite striking for what's notionally a communist worker's paradise.

A few years back I was in Xining, an obscure third-tier provincial capital. The main shopping street could have been Tokyo.or Seoul, full of neon, fancy brands and expensive restaurants. But you walk one single block out and you're in a street market with flies buzzing around sheep heads and slabs of meat hanging off hooks.

Re: Fewer university students are studying Mandarin

#53

Post by jeroenhd »

shaneoh wrote: post #17
nonethewiser wrote: post #15

It's just not that useful. It's only useful in China and foreigners can't really conduct business there. It's basically only useful if you move to China which is just a handful of people and shrinking at this point.

Can't the same argument be made of almost any language unless you live in a bilingual neighborhood?

"unless you live in a bilingual neighborhood" is key here. Many countries across the world teach English as a second language and in western trade it's the lingua franca. Mandarin is spoken in various countries, but many of the Mandarin-speaking countries also have English as a common second language.

Going by [this list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_num...), you can see how if you want to expand your reach, some languages make more sense to learn than others.

Re: Fewer university students are studying Mandarin

#54

Post by naniwaduni »

shaneoh wrote: post #17
nonethewiser wrote: post #15

It's just not that useful. It's only useful in China and foreigners can't really conduct business there. It's basically only useful if you move to China which is just a handful of people and shrinking at this point.

Can't the same argument be made of almost any language unless you live in a bilingual neighborhood?

Functionally bilingual neighborhoods are, in fact, quite common.

Re: Fewer university students are studying Mandarin

#55

Post by jamesaurichs »

bohadi wrote: post #51
jamesaurichs wrote: post #11

There is 0 reason to learn mandarin if you're doing it for travel/business reasons In Taiwan street signs do mostly have English translations. A lot of citizens speak English, especially night market vendors. You'll also have a lot of native English speakers in Taipei due to expatriation from US and Canada. In Singapore signs officially are in English. And it's one of the four official languages, which means most peo…

>What's really screwy is the government has replaced most of the English translation on street signs from a literal translation to phonetic translation of the mandarin sound. I don't think this is a fair take for a couple of reasons. Mandarin is unlike other languages in that it's written form is famously ideographic. Phonetic translation is all that is done in any pair {L, M}. I assure you there is no such thing as…

English IS the global lingua franca TODAY, used by most travelers to navigate through an unknown environment. if the signs in China are not translated into English TODAY, then there's no reason to go there TODAY.

Re: Fewer university students are studying Mandarin

#56

Post by code_biologist »

version_five wrote: post #4
NN88 wrote: post #3

Soft power matters. "Cool" matters. China will always struggle against freer and more open societies that bring people into their culture, music, art, and other forms of expression. The comparison to what Japan and South Korea have done should be a wake up call for these places. Even Russia doesn't have the cultural cachet it did during the Cold War.

I don't think framing it as unilaterally China's fault is helpful. Obviously they have their issues, though it seems like ~40 years of increasing trade with them has improved their standard of living and backed them off of a lot of ideology, even of they still have a long way to go. The issue now is the regression back to isolationism - according to the article it's over the past 10 years that interest has eroded.

Would it be helpful to frame it as unilaterally the fault of Xi Jinping and the rise of wolf warrior diplomacy?

Re: Fewer university students are studying Mandarin

#57

Post by shaneoh »

nonethewiser wrote: post #25
shaneoh wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't the same argument be made of almost any language unless you live in a bilingual neighborhood?

No because English is the de-facto language for trade.

Fair point, but I meant for English-native speakers in this context.

Re: Fewer university students are studying Mandarin

#58

Post by jamesaurichs »

vore wrote: post #50
jamesaurichs wrote: post #11

There is 0 reason to learn mandarin if you're doing it for travel/business reasons In Taiwan street signs do mostly have English translations. A lot of citizens speak English, especially night market vendors. You'll also have a lot of native English speakers in Taipei due to expatriation from US and Canada. In Singapore signs officially are in English. And it's one of the four official languages, which means most peo…

How are you going to do any kind of business with Chinese companies without speaking Chinese? Even if you use an interpreter, clearly someone in the loop is speaking Chinese.

If there are any business to do in China in the next 10-20 years. Foreign investment in China is down 90% this year. Again, international travel in China is down 97% this year. Apparently everyone else except hacker news readers are aware of the shift.

Re: Fewer university students are studying Mandarin

#59

Post by wmidwestranger »

rtpg wrote: post #40
jamesaurichs wrote: post #11

There is 0 reason to learn mandarin if you're doing it for travel/business reasons In Taiwan street signs do mostly have English translations. A lot of citizens speak English, especially night market vendors. You'll also have a lot of native English speakers in Taipei due to expatriation from US and Canada. In Singapore signs officially are in English. And it's one of the four official languages, which means most peo…

Even in places as English friendly as the Netherlands or Germany, working with locals is going to be smoother with a grasp of native tongues of the people you’re interacting with. And if you’re actually interested in riding the ranks as a career it’s a must that you can be able to work in the language comfortable for your superiors (in some places that’ll be English, of course…) It’s possible to not have it, but ever…

I recently read something suggesting that the US State Department and Foreign Intelligence Agencies are having a hard time with language training and I'm not sure anyone could hold up the argument that their capabilities have remained at the same level as during the Cold War. There are some circumstances that explain this, areas and languages of interest change more now. But I remember when Pakistan's underground nuclear test came as a surprise and even after the Global War on Whatever, I'm not sure the US ever had as much understanding as the Soviets. (Who knows about the Russians?)

Language will be a human struggle as long as humans run the world, I think you're absolutely correct on the meaningful and valuable practice of learning the language of the place you want to succeed in.

I'm only fluent in English, and I like it very much for its flexibility and expressivity, but I'm familiar with a handful of romantic languages and think every language has it's high and low points.

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