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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

#151

Post by vonklaus »

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.

To summarize Marc Andreesen: When I heard about the Whats App deal, I thought, wow it's worth that much. That must be what it's worth. Should I believe someone on the internet, or Mark Zuckerberg, who had painstakingly researched it, has access to the real financials and bet his own money and the future of his company on it.

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

#152

Post by shin_lao »

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…

It's much harder to learn a language from scratch at that age with that kind of schedule.

Every human language is hard to learn once you go beyond the basics, but what makes a language hard to learn for you is the distance with your mother tongue.

And guess what? Mandarin is one of the most difficult language to learn for a native English speaker.

http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/lang...

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

#153

Post by astrange »

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.

It's not hard to understand someone speaking poor English, and we're used to encountering ESL speakers. On the other hand, if I make a mistake in Japanese, especially when writing, nobody can understand me. It takes a lot of practice to get from being able to use a convenience store to having any kind of conversation.

Some of that is because they're not used to non-native speakers, but much of it is just the structure of the language and room for error-correction. I'd assume it's the same for Mandarin with so many short words and tones.

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

#154

Post by shin_lao »

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.

You're speaking four related western European languages.

For example, when you learned English, notwithstanding the fact that you are surrounded by English since you're a child, you had from day one several thousands words of vocabulary and knew a superset of the English grammar (FYI, 45% of English words are of French origin).

I'm fluent in three European languages as well. I can feel that I could pick up Italian or Dutch very easily (I'm > 35 y.o.). When trying Russian with my gf, I don't have the same feeling.

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

#155

Post by yzzxy »

rockymeza wrote: post #147
yzzxy wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, there you go. Anecdote =/= reality. However, the magnitude of the task remains similar.

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

#156

Post by westiseast »

astrange wrote: post #153
contravert wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not hard to understand someone speaking poor English, and we're used to encountering ESL speakers. On the other hand, if I make a mistake in Japanese, especially when writing, nobody can understand me. It takes a lot of practice to get from being able to use a convenience store to having any kind of conversation. Some of that is because they're not used to non-native speakers, but much of it is just the structur…

I wouldn't really agree. Mark makes lots of grammar, vocab, pronunciation and tonal mistakes and the audience seems to understand him with no problems. Spoken Chinese isnt tgat hard and in some ways is much more forgiving than English for non native speakers.

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

#157

Post by stangeek »

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.

Exactly. If learning Chinese is so difficult for an English speaker, why wouldn't the opposite be true?

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

#158

Post by OoTheNigerian »

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…

It may be good to explain what ILR 1,2,3 mean especially as you make reference to them so many times and is basically a fulcrum for your argument.

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

#159

Post by stangeek »

United857 wrote: post #136
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…

He is probably the first CEO of a American $200 billion dollar company to do so though -- and in public.

...which is probably very telling about the general open mindness of American CEOs of $200bn companies ;)

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

#160

Post by westiseast »

shin_lao wrote: post #152
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…

It's much harder to learn a language from scratch at that age with that kind of schedule. Every human language is hard to learn once you go beyond the basics, but what makes a language hard to learn for you is the distance with your mother tongue. And guess what? Mandarin is one of the most difficult language to learn for a native English speaker. http://www.effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/lang...

Yes and no - achieving real fluency after a certain age is very very hard, near impossible. Writing chinese by hand is exceptionally difficult too. Typing characters using pinyin inputs is significantly easier. Speaking in simple conversations like Mark has is really not that hard - again, not to undermine him specifically, but rather to dispel the idea that this is some superhuman achievement. he's at at moderate level in spoken Chinese, I would expect any learner who has the same teachers and a Chinese wife and family to achieve a similar level in that amount of time.
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