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Mark Zuckerberg Answers Q&A in Mandarin at Chinese University

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Re: Mark Zuckerberg Answers Q&A in Mandarin at Chinese University

#111

Post by hawkice »

nogridbag wrote: post #106
bobjordan wrote: post #59

I've lived in China 5 years now and our skill levels are comparable so I'm pretty impressed. It's really just basic conversation but the Chinese people will love him for getting this far with it. This along with move to join Tsinghua board will create massive goodwill for FB.

oh man, this doesn't give me much hope. I'm visiting China next fall and was hoping I could have a good handle on the basics by then. I'm learning via Pimsleur and right now I can only say strange phrases like "Would you like to go to the hotel with me?" and "How much money?" I'm joking slightly, I've learned a little bit more than that. But I swear Pimsleur targets their lessons at single men trying to meet foreigne…

So, my thing about Pimsleur is that I assume they intend for you to supplement it. For instance, given what you've learned already, you can probably say, "I would like to order two beers." but CANNOT, if you rely solely on Pimsleur, say "I would like to order seven beers." Because they teach you some sentences and what they mean but don't teach you basics.

Languages are vast oceans of meaning and composition -- 90 hours simply is not enough for Chinese (or any language, really, reality itself is too complex to describe with a system that simple).

I'd recommend learning the characters using Heisig's Remembering the Hanzi (this should take about 100-200 hours), and then shifting to HSK (which should be pretty easy post-character learning) + full sentences.

If you like Pimsleur, keep with it, although I get made fun of for sounding like a northerner a bit from using it for pronunciation help when I was beginning. :)

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Answers Q&A in Mandarin at Chinese University

#112

Post by S4M »

thoughtpalette wrote: post #5

Regardless of his technical achievements, learning a second language ( and such disconnected one ) is super impressive. Great job.

Hmm dude, everybody here who is not a native English speaker knows at least a second language on top of his mother tongue. I'm French, fluent in English and conversational in Spanish and German and I don't think it's so impressive.

Chinese on the other hand is a bit tougher because the writing is so different.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Answers Q&A in Mandarin at Chinese University

#113

Post by nly »

pyrmont wrote: post #110

Appraisal of the quality of Zuckerberg's Mandarin: http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/10/22/mark_zuckerbe...

Wow, well that site was designed by a bunch of dicks. If you scroll down too much to read the article it throws a whopping great big nag screen at you insisting that you register (for free) to continue reading. Then, when you close the wretched thing, using the provided X, it just dumps you on to their home page.

It's like they thought to themselves 'How can we do a paywall but replace all of the users usual disappointment with utter irritation?'

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Answers Q&A in Mandarin at Chinese University

#114

Post by comatose_kid »

puredemo wrote: post #97
mandeepj wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just instagram. We should not forget to mention Whatsapp, internet via drones and Oculus

Whats App was a huge mistake though. That data is not worth Billions.

why do you think data was the only or largest driver?

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Answers Q&A in Mandarin at Chinese University

#116

Post by Ollinson »

talltofu wrote: post #31

Highly impressed. I used to brush him off as just another wunderkind who got lucky. In retrospect, his business acumen, especially when acquiring Instagram for a then pricely sum of a billion dollars has made me realize that he truly is special.

Very possible a typo but the term is "princely sum."

No criticism but if you didn't know I thought you might want to.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Answers Q&A in Mandarin at Chinese University

#117

Post by PhasmaFelis »

mikepalmer wrote: post #45

The guy just seriously raised the bar for qualification as a "scrappy founder"! This will be widely replayed in China, he will be 2x the rock star that he already is. Maybe he can Jack Ma can do English/Chinese practice together online?

I don't think Zuck has been a scrappy anything in years. I'm pretty sure you're disqualified from "scrappy" once you make your first billion. (Possible exception: Notch.)

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Answers Q&A in Mandarin at Chinese University

#118

Post by click170 »

nly wrote: post #113
pyrmont wrote: post #110

Appraisal of the quality of Zuckerberg's Mandarin: http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/10/22/mark_zuckerbe...

Wow, well that site was designed by a bunch of dicks. If you scroll down too much to read the article it throws a whopping great big nag screen at you insisting that you register (for free) to continue reading. Then, when you close the wretched thing, using the provided X, it just dumps you on to their home page. It's like they thought to themselves 'How can we do a paywall but replace all of the users usual disappoi…

NoScript is your friend, I saw no such nag screen.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Answers Q&A in Mandarin at Chinese University

#119

Post by mikeash »

molloy wrote: post #35
higherpurpose wrote: post #28

A German professor once told me German is actually harder to learn than Chinese.

Of course a German professor would say that. (-: I've taken years of both languages in high school and college, and I'd have to disagree with him. An example of the difference in difficulty is that when you learn German coming from an English background there are only four more letters to learn (ä, ö, ü and ß), whereas there are 214 Mandarin radicals to memorize. And these radicals aren't even the entire "alphabet",…

I know almost no German, but I learned French to fluency and know spoken Mandarin somewhat well.

I think that talking about the relative difficulty of a language as a whole is not really workable. There are different aspects which order differently.

For example, if you already speak English then you'll find German vocabulary far easier to learn. There will be a lot of shared or similar words that you can build on. In Mandarin, there are almost no common words, so you basically have to start from scratch.

On the other hand, Mandarin grammar is pretty simple. No conjugations, no genders, just slightly different word order from what you're used to. If you know how to say "I eat noodles" and you know how to say "yesterday" then you know how to say "I ate noodles yesterday". We spent a long time learning how to conjugate the various past tenses in French class, and I believe German is similar.

I think there's no contest when it comes to reading and writing. Learning to read and write Mandarin is almost like learning a whole separate language from the spoken version.

I think the easy grammar helps give Mandarin a big advantage, especially if you're learning it for casual conversations. But that advantage is greatly reversed in other areas. Much will depend on what the individual language learner finds easy and hard to learn.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg Answers Q&A in Mandarin at Chinese University

#120

Post by Wogef »

cottonseed wrote: post #104
Wogef wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely correct. Only about 10% of the successful long-term foreign businessmen I know here speak passable Chinese. Chinese love when you speak the language- but that does not unfortunately translate into the sort of tangible business advantages that many students of Mandarin hope for. It's a wonderful language, and loads of fun to learn- but the ROI is not as high as other areas of study.

Where's "here"? I lived in Shanghai 3 years I would have put that number pretty close to 0%.

>Where's "here"? I lived in Shanghai 3 years I would have put that number pretty close to 0%.

Shenzhen. You're right, 10% is being generous but a lot of long time expats pick up Mandarin not at work but through the "long haired dictionary" method.

I don't know any successful business people that have been here for more than five years that feel it's essential for business. Foreign companies fail here all the time due to not understanding culture, I've never heard of any failing due to the language barrier.

Value comes from scarcity- fully bilingual people simply are not scarce in China.

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