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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

#141

Post by contravert »

westiseast wrote: post #129

Gonna be a bit of a douche, but... Why do we go googoogaga over an English speaker learning a foreign language to a competent level, when this is something millions of people do regularly? Mark isn't the first person to learn a language in the middle of a busy job and life schedule. Doucheness not quite over - it's a big achievement, yeah, but Chinese isn't actually that hard, it's a bit of a myth perpetuated because…

You won't find a finer example of white privilege.

No one cares if a Chinese CEO (or anyone for that matter) speaks English, no matter the difficulty and effort the learning entails. Contrast this indifference with the flattery of the converse in this thread, and it's quite illuminating of the world we live in.

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

#142

Post by wes-exp »

ezequiel-garzon wrote: post #33

Even if Zuckerberg's main motivation was to learn his wife's language, I believe this will effectively raise the bar for CEOs in the years ahead. I wouldn't be surprised if this seemingly unnecessary skill could signify new business opportunities for large corporations.

Jon Huntsman, the politician and businessman, speaks Mandarin. As such, he served as US Ambassador to China. Zuck's not the first – I'm sure there are more examples out there.

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

#143

Post by ximeng »

yzzxy wrote: post #60
jamesdutc wrote: post #41

I wish the exoticising of the East would just go away. This mystique associated upon the Chinese language is horribly old-fashioned. It comes up far too often ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7624342 ) Of course, we should always encourage ourselves and others to learn foreign languages, even if only to dabble. Unfortunately, this is just gimmick, and bad gimmick at that. Compare to a completely normalised (and…

I largely agree that the mystique has to go, and that conversational Chinese is not nearly as hard to learn as believed, but I disagree that Mandarin is easy as a whole. Characters are hard. There are thousands of them, with only loose auditory or semantic meaning. Learning to write and read Chinese is almost always going to involve rote memorization, hopefully using spaced repetition. I've been studying Mandarin in…

I can write around 4000 characters / 7000 words according to Skritter and am pretty OK reading a newspaper. 10,000 characters is much more than you need.

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

#144

Post by westiseast »

contravert wrote: post #141
westiseast wrote: post #129

Gonna be a bit of a douche, but... Why do we go googoogaga over an English speaker learning a foreign language to a competent level, when this is something millions of people do regularly? Mark isn't the first person to learn a language in the middle of a busy job and life schedule. Doucheness not quite over - it's a big achievement, yeah, but Chinese isn't actually that hard, it's a bit of a myth perpetuated because…

You won't find a finer example of white privilege. No one cares if a Chinese CEO (or anyone for that matter) speaks English, no matter the difficulty and effort the learning entails. Contrast this indifference with the flattery of the converse in this thread, and it's quite illuminating of the world we live in.

Totally - I know plenty of Chinese people with equally busy lives who learn exceptional English because they have no choice. they often experience awful teachers, poor learning methods, and still manage it. I don't want to spit on Marks achievement, but I'd love a bit of realism - we should expect this standard, not wet our pants because one ridiculously rich guy can say "I like big fast trains" :)

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

#145

Post by dingaling »

mikeash wrote: post #119
molloy wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> On the other hand, Mandarin grammar is pretty simple. No conjugations, no genders, just slightly different word order from what you're used to

That's interesting to me as this week I stumbled into Afrikaans, which likewise lacks genders and conjugations and only apepars to have two tenses ( present and perfect ).

Which makes me wonder why other languages have evolved to such levels of complexity, since it seems entirely possible to conduct the affairs of a state without have a distinction between 'I eat' and 'he eats'.

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

#146

Post by dingaling »

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.

> That data is not worth Billions.

I don't know about that; the phone numbers of 600 million users ( and rising ) tied to their identity opens-up the possiblity of correlating geographic graph data.

For example, Joe with a Chicago phone number has six Seattle area-code contacts. That looks like a marketable opportunity, why not advertise him some flights from O'Hare to Sea-Tac?

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

#147

Post by rockymeza »

yzzxy wrote: post #60
jamesdutc wrote: post #41

I wish the exoticising of the East would just go away. This mystique associated upon the Chinese language is horribly old-fashioned. It comes up far too often ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7624342 ) Of course, we should always encourage ourselves and others to learn foreign languages, even if only to dabble. Unfortunately, this is just gimmick, and bad gimmick at that. Compare to a completely normalised (and…

I largely agree that the mystique has to go, and that conversational Chinese is not nearly as hard to learn as believed, but I disagree that Mandarin is easy as a whole. Characters are hard. There are thousands of them, with only loose auditory or semantic meaning. Learning to write and read Chinese is almost always going to involve rote memorization, hopefully using spaced repetition. I've been studying Mandarin in…

According to my newspaper reading professor, only college professors who study characters know up to 10,000 characters--and they are badasses. I think 3-4,000 is enough for normal human beings. Anything above that is just downright nerdy.

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

#148

Post by unethical_ban »

S4M wrote: post #112
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.

It's impressive in America, where it's not needed, and moreso because Chinese is "exotic" and superficially less "practical" than learning Spanish, which is a useful thing to know south of New York.

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

#149

Post by tunesmith »

csa wrote: post #125

A review of his Mandarin based on a close listen of the first 5 minutes of the video and listening to the rest in the background while I type this (let me know if it changes later): tl;dr - Definitely ILR 1+, probably an ILR 2. Pronunciation needs a ton of work, but that's not the only aspect that is measured when analyzing speech. The foreign policy article (linked in another comment) is overly critical, imho. Detai…

"His style of answering questions was very American -- very direct."

I'm interested in more expanded thoughts on the above. In what way are non-Americans less "direct" than Americans? Is about politeness/rudeness, or something else? Wouldn't that make miscommunication more probable?

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

#150

Post by tomerico »

eitally wrote: post #108
sytelus wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have anything cite for this claim? All the research I'm aware of strongly suggests (1) It's extremely hard for adults to learn new languages - usually requiring many more hours compared to kids learning second language (2) Brain circuitry to hear, distinguish and pronounce new sounds effectively gets shutdown in older age.

I only have this anecdote. My wife, two kids (3 & 5 years old) and I have been taking Mandarin classes for the past six months. My wife & I pick up the concepts, grammar/patterns and vocabulary about three times faster than our kids (we are also forced to work harder at it because we're constantly reinforcing the lessons to them, so that inherently biases this analysis). That said, their pronunciation is muuuuuuuch b…

Kids learn by observing and interacting in the language. Adults usually learn the grammar and vocabulary directly, which is a slower mechanism for the brain.
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