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Zuckerberg Speaks Mandarin, Blows Everyone’s Mind

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Re: Zuckerberg Speaks Mandarin, Blows Everyone’s Mind

#41

Post by LunaSea »

Keats wrote: post #18
zhaphod wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually context matters here. If some one from USA/UK/France, for example, learns a new language it definitely is a surprise. May be blows the mind is not the right word. On the other hand, it is common for people from Southern India to know 4 or 5 languages and it is not surprising.

We do learn 2 foreign languages in France during school (English + German/Spanish/Italian/whatever) so I'm not really sure why it would be a surprise to hear a french speak another language. They might suck at it though.

Because there's "learning" and learning.

French people "learn" german and english but are terrible at it even after learning it for 10 years.

Scandinavian people learn english and are actually fluent with a good pronunciation after a few years.

Re: Zuckerberg Speaks Mandarin, Blows Everyone’s Mind

#42

Post by sergiosgc »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #38

Does anyone has some experience with this, i speak Dutch, German, English (Germanic languages) and French (Latin language). I suppose it would be easier for me to learn Spanish or another language. But would it also help me to learn Mandarin?

Similarity in European languages helps. I speak Portuguese natively. It means Spanish is very easy and Italian a bit more difficult, but can be both picked up "by ear" just listening to TV shows. French is the first latin language that really required formal teaching to learn. English is taught at school from an early age, so while I recognize I'd never pick it up autonomously, it is now in the area of "easy languages".

Mandarin is probably so far from European languages that I can't even identify the expected learning roadblocks.

P.S: kudos on speaking Dutch. Amazingly difficult language. Tough pronunciation, strange grammar (for us coming from non-germanic languages at least).

Re: Zuckerberg Speaks Mandarin, Blows Everyone’s Mind

#43

Post by kokey »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #38

Does anyone has some experience with this, i speak Dutch, German, English (Germanic languages) and French (Latin language). I suppose it would be easier for me to learn Spanish or another language. But would it also help me to learn Mandarin?

You probably learned a bit of the Germanic and Latin languages from a youngish age and many of it at school and over many years. It would help you to try learning some Mandarin just to realise how hard it is to learn for a very long list of reasons.

Re: Zuckerberg Speaks Mandarin, Blows Everyone’s Mind

#44

Post by SyneRyder »

Keats wrote: post #18
zhaphod wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually context matters here. If some one from USA/UK/France, for example, learns a new language it definitely is a surprise. May be blows the mind is not the right word. On the other hand, it is common for people from Southern India to know 4 or 5 languages and it is not surprising.

We do learn 2 foreign languages in France during school (English + German/Spanish/Italian/whatever) so I'm not really sure why it would be a surprise to hear a french speak another language. They might suck at it though.

I think it's because of a stereotype in America/Australia etc that the French are very protective of their language (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_policy_in_France ) and would rather people learned French than "lower themselves" to using English. When I was in Paris in the mid 90s there was some sense of that.

It's probably changed now - while I haven't been to France lately, in other parts of Europe when I try to practice the local language, people under 30 always tell me "Please, speak English, we understand and it is easier for both of us."

Re: Zuckerberg Speaks Mandarin, Blows Everyone’s Mind

#46

Post by gambiting »

LunaSea wrote: post #39
rmc wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite a lot of people don't.

Come to Luxembourg where kids are required to know 3 languages by age 10 and 4 by age 13. Learning a language is not impressive in any way. The only people who's mind was blown are probably people living in large countries like the US, the UK, France ...etc.

Do you know many kids under the age of 10 who are CEOs of multi-billion dollar companies and who still had time to learn a language that shares absolutely no commonalities with their mother tongues?

Re: Zuckerberg Speaks Mandarin, Blows Everyone’s Mind

#47

Post by LunaSea »

gambiting wrote: post #46
LunaSea wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come to Luxembourg where kids are required to know 3 languages by age 10 and 4 by age 13. Learning a language is not impressive in any way. The only people who's mind was blown are probably people living in large countries like the US, the UK, France ...etc.

Do you know many kids under the age of 10 who are CEOs of multi-billion dollar companies and who still had time to learn a language that shares absolutely no commonalities with their mother tongues?

Well after more than 10 years living with someone that is chinese you would hope that he at least speaks the language.

He's the CEO but his job is also to delegate.

Re: Zuckerberg Speaks Mandarin, Blows Everyone’s Mind

#48

Post by gambiting »

zhaphod wrote: post #7
rmc wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite a lot of people don't.

Actually context matters here. If some one from USA/UK/France, for example, learns a new language it definitely is a surprise. May be blows the mind is not the right word. On the other hand, it is common for people from Southern India to know 4 or 5 languages and it is not surprising.

As a European who speaks three languages fluently, meeting someone who can speak another language is certainly not surprising. However, I think we are comparing wrong things here. As my native language is Slavic in origins, I would find learning another Slavic language incredibly easy. In fact, today I can understand more than 50% of Russian or Czech without ever learning either of those languages. Having learnt English to a highly proficient level, I then had no trouble learning German to a very high level too.

However, in Zuckerberg's case what he has done is incredibly impressive because he has learned a language which shares no commonalities with his own native tongue, all while being a CEO of a multi-billion dollar company. That alone makes it worthwhile news to community of geeks HN is.

Re: Zuckerberg Speaks Mandarin, Blows Everyone’s Mind

#49

Post by song »

xiaoma wrote: post #36
chaghalibaghali wrote: post #9

Very impressive, Mandarin is one of the most difficult languages for native English speakers to learn: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Language_Learning_Dif...

Mandarin is the easiest of any of the Chinese languages. It only has four tones instead of seven or more, there are a wealth of language teaching materials and a lot of natively-produced media, ranging from children's books to near-hollywood scale move productions. Cantonese, on the other hand, has a decent amount of media but relatively little in terms of materials aimed at teaching foreigners. Taiwanese learners ha…

Definitely, learning Mandarin is way easier than any of the dialects. I tried to learn Teochew to communicate with my wife's family but the lack of learning materials and of romanization system similar to pinyin for Teochew makes it very difficult to learn.

Re: Zuckerberg Speaks Mandarin, Blows Everyone’s Mind

#50

Post by Shivetya »

raverbashing wrote: post #28
reuven wrote: post #21

It comes down to: (1) Chinese people are blown away when a Westerner speaks Chinese, and (2) Americans are blown away by anyone who speaks Chinese. I have been taking daily Mandarin lessons for the last few months, since I'm traveling increasingly often to Beijing to teach programming classes (in English), and want to be able to communicate more easily with my students and colleagues. I'm having a super-fun time with…

Or maybe "Americans are blown away by anyone who speaks another language?"

Americans and foreign nationals. Anecdotal, friend returned from China many years ago after being paid to go teach English and some other minor courses. Got married while in China and after his stint there she was granted permission to move to America with him.

Long story short, they frequent different ethnic grocery stores and restaurants and some customers will make comment about them, directed at his wife, that they fully don't expect him to understand. Needless to say he does and usually replies kindly with how nice it is today and did the see that great item on a certain aisle.

So it works both ways, for many of us the need to learn a second language isn't there and the ambition to do so doesn't work well without the need.

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